McFerrin & The Audience: Music Meets Plot Prediction

AH TWITTER, HOW you serve things up to us in the dead of night in bite size portions.

I can't take credit for this -- I got it off the insanely great KH -- @kazza323, but also I think, @badlady was all over this too. Point being - this is from Boing Boing, with all their attendant usual goodness.

It makes an important point about the audience, I think.

It makes an important point about the audience that Canadian Producers, Writers, Development and Production Executives would do well to heed.

The audience?

They's smarter than you think. They see patterns and shit like that.

And with that, take it away Bobby McFerrin:

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Sometimes Writers Can't Help Being Twits

WRITERS, AS THE saying goes, write.

The funny thing is that writing tends to be so all consuming that one finds oneself in the need of a diversion now and again. Many writers who work a lot develop different kinds of hobbies. I know many who are obsessed with Golf (yawn.) And others who become serious, like, CRAZY serious foodies. There was a bit of a vogue a few years back to go heavy into the scotch realm -- which carries its own dangers, the personality being what it is and all. Poker caught many a fancy a while ago.

But there are a sad subset of us that just can't let go no matter what. I know writers whose hobbies are to write novels. Andy Borowitz made so much money off Fresh Prince of Bel Air that he has the enviable position of having the greatest writing related hobby of all time: he writes humour columns in the New Yorker. Others dabble in playwriting. I wrote the book and lyrics for a couple of musicals - but that doesn't count since it was before I was really getting heavy dramatic writing work.

It's too late and my fingers are too clumsy to entertain notions of the guitar. I bought an expensive camera at Christmas and I'm still taking stupid baby steps on how to use it.

But there's one funny bit of community that keeps popping up every few days on Twitter. It's one I embrace with glee. The first one I noticed was #firstdraftmovielines (a # tag before a subject on Twitter makes it an easy search term or something.) This was people deliberately mangling or rewriting movie lines. I think the one I came up with that I liked the most was "No Luke, I am your paternal Uncle."

Not highbrow, by any means, but fun. The great thing about Twitter, of course, is that it's all a great big mess. You follow people and they follow you and if you want to search a #hashtag you can see a whole bunch of people you don't know posting on the same subject.

Memes like these are interesting because the quality of the professional writers' output isn't always as inspired as some random thing that somebody else comes up with. And the greatest cultural "props" you can get is someone RT (re-tweeting) your message. That's when they pass it on to everyone on THEIR "follow" list. Imagine a big internetty version of that old shampoo ad: "and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on..."

It's also like that long-ago game I remember when people would try to come up with the best porno-title for a then-popular movie. (I still have nightmares about "Terms of En-rearment".) But like everything else in our globalized, capitalist world it seems, that died the the Adult Entertainment Business soon found it couldn't afford the entendre. There's no room for subtlety there anymore. No, no. If you want to stand out, you better be plain and clear. No room for wordplay anymore -- it's "Teenage Toesuckers#18" for you, bub.

But I digress.

Anyhow, the latest meme to fire up the Twitosphere and take my fancy yesterday was #failedchildrensbooktitles. I read a few that made me guffaw -- some real cleverness out there, both from my writer peeps and from the civilians on my list besides.

To give you a flavour for it -- this simple dash of post-internet chuckling, here's a few of mine that got big retweets:

Anne of Gangrene Gables

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Mercury Poisoning

Where The Sidewalk Ends in a Hail of Gunfire

A Wrinkle in Tim

Aladdin and the Relentless Carpet Bombing

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Thatcher

Bob The Builder Who Doesn't Show Up

Horton Hires a 'Ho

The Tragic School Bus

See? Not exactly Leacock Medal level humour here, but undeniably fun. And it was also kind of a trip to remember some of those books I loved as a kid. I also think one of the reasons why I find it so fun is because in a weird way it's a lot like a story room. That's what you do in a story room: you toss out idea after idea after idea.

You try to make people laugh.

Some ideas are dumb and die slow deaths of silence, (usually punctuated by some variation on 'hahhaha yeah, fuck you guys!) and some hit.

And that's why it's a joy being around story rooms when they're on.

So if you've ever wondered what the story room thing was like, get on Twitter. Every once in a while, a meme breaks out and the boundaries between the pros and the people fall.

And yes, it's been pointed out, there's something a little sad about writers in their off time procrastinating from their paid writing work by trying to write for free to make a bunch of strangers laugh, but hey, it's better than stalking, right?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go buy a new lens for my Nikon. There comes a time when a man must put away Twitter things and get a real hobby.

Get The Most Out of Your Telly

FAT-PIE.COM's David Firth shows you how. (NSFW)

Take Back The Art

I MISSED THE specials. Didn't watch. Didn't watch the memorials, barely glanced at the coverage, kept my head down and kept working. Because at the root of it, I knew I couldn't think about the hagiography and the excuses, and the simplifications for the troubling, troubling legacy - both of what he did to himself, and finally, maybe, murkily, to others. But that route, the route of totally ignoring it, solidifies its own kind of poison in you, too. Not participating seems to take a stand -- even if taking a stand was the thing you wanted to avoid in the first place.

That's why this little clip, from Montreal, is so powerful to me. It restores what was good. It makes me smile. It reminds me once again that whatever trouble may dog or stain or ultimately destroy the artist, the point is, the art endures.

In a culture that seems to value that so little, where programs in the schools are the first to be cut, and governments play politics with the vulnerable and disguise it through bogus talk of fiscal responsibility and not ideology, it's important to remember, finally, finally -- the work endures.

I hope this finds you as it did me. Enjoy your day.

Ah, the Shining Promise of Youth...

VIA CHARLIE BROOKER, that is.

You were warned.

Gross Slaughters the Co-Pro "Magic Bullet"

PLENTY TO TALK about in Sticksville, lots of changes round the joint (and I'm not just talking the spiffy new three column layout) but it's going to keep for a little while so I can enjoy the Avalon Penisula.

But today, in a fine article by Gayle MacDonald, Paul Gross follows up on the comments he made last month, and that I first wrote about here. Considering the turns in the news of late, and some odd miscategorizations of Writers' takes on the same subject, I have never been so happy for an actor to take the lead on an issue.

But then again, Paul Gross is hardly just an actor. He's, as my friend and colleague Matt MacLennan might say, "the sauce."

From today's Globe & Mail: TV Partnerships are Great, Until They're Not:

In early June, while attending the Banff World Television Festival, actor Paul Gross sat down with a reporter to give his opinion on the current rush of Canadian TV producers, distributors and broadcasters vying to team up with American networks. Never one to hold his tongue, Gross – whose show Due South was the first Canadian-made show to win a prime-time slot on a major U.S. network – said things that very few in the gung-ho-to-sell crowd wanted to hear.

First, he warned that the Canadian industry should not rely too heavily on the U.S.-Canada co-production model, saying there is a danger of becoming “an assembly branch plant” for the American networks. “You might be putting in the lion's share of the money, but you do not control the fate of the production,” Gross said. “Sure, it's extraordinarily attractive. You get big exposure in a way you can't generate out of Canada alone. And it certainly helps with foreign sales to have ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox behind it. But it does bring some handcuffs that aren't all that attractive, creatively and for broadcasters.”

Jump ahead one month, and Gross's words seem oddly prescient. A little over a week ago, broadcasting giant NBC, which had teamed up with CTV to simulcast this summer's The Listener , announced it had decided to pull the plug on the Canadian-made drama halfway through its inaugural season.

“Canadians just need to be wary of certain pitfalls,” he adds. “While it's nice to have a U.S. partner, they can take a disproportionate amount of creative control over the show,” and without the U.S. licence fee, the production quality could decline. “On Due South , CBS had a huge amount of input,” Gross says, of the Mountie drama that ran on CBS – simulcast by CTV – for two seasons before the American network cancelled it. (Produced by Alliance Communications, Due South survived for four seasons in all thanks to CTV, the BBC and France's TF1.)

“It's an interesting thing,” adds Gross. “We'd all like [this model] to work seamlessly. But what people forget is that the American failure rate is unbelievably high: 85 to 90 per cent of new shows don't succeed. The Canadian market is slightly more forgiving.”

Another Toronto producer, who asked not to be identified, worries that Canadian broadcasters will begin to rely too heavily on the bilateral model – and only order series based on Canadian-made pilots if there is an American broadcaster attached. “Some writers are reacting strongly against the unfairness of American networks putting in a minute amount of money and having so much creative control over casting and scripts,” he says. “And they worry that Canadian stories could suffer because the thinking seems to be: Unless you sell into the States, your show isn't worthy. That's the risk of playing in these leagues.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the paper today, a different kind of CanCon story that I first heard about from my friend Peter Mohan a while back. What happens if you don't go the U.S. sale route? Well with a little luck maybe you can inspire an entire nation:

It's a koo-koo article, right up until you hit this paragraph:

Slaughter's clumsiness and Homer Simpson-like fallibility had also always appealed to the Serbian sense of humour, which is self-deprecating – a trait Stewart believes Serbs share with Canadians. Stewart and Vespi heard time and again that Serbians loved the TV character because he would always come back after being beaten down in a fight. “The most powerful alliance in the world was bombing them, and they had a dictator, but they just kept getting up every morning and trying to get through it,” explains Stewart. “They responded to the goofiness of the character rather than anything heroic.”

So, you know, the next time it's said, "ah what does it matter if we try to get a Canadian sensibility up there on the screen? What possible difference could it make?" the answer is, "Fuck you. It could make the kind of difference you'd never even dream of. But you won't ever know that, because you won't even try."

Screw the presentations and position papers. Let's sic Nick Slaughter on the CRTC.

Now THAT would be some kind of shit to see.

The World

STILL TURTLING FOR NOW, but just a quick head poke to show you all the difference between the world of TV and the world we live in.

TV:

The World We Live In:

Via my once-and-future colleague, the great Matt MacLennan.

Time for a Rest

SOMETIMES THE FEVER burns, and sometimes it breaks, and sometimes you just wake up one day and don't remember if you're sick or well.

In any case, I'm taking a little break from this blog. A bit of exhaustion, a bit of ennui, a bit of, we'll, what else is there to say, really?

Don't know when I'll be back. Maybe a couple weeks. We'll see.

The Way It Is/Was

MY FRIEND HOWARD has one of the best takes I've read on the life and legacy of the last important Television Journalist.

Unfortunately there will never be another Walter Cronkite. Sure there will be great news people, great television hosts, but the world has changed. Television news will never be as important as it was. The internet has seen to that. The opportunity to speak to and sometimes for all the people just does not exist anymore in any medium.

The TV news business has changed too. It used to be a reporter centric medium where the guy on the site of the story provided the all the answers. Today it’s the news desk that writes and produces the stories. The reporter in most cases is just a face holding a microphone. It’s not a lack of reporting talent, it’s a lack of time. In the golden age a reporter had to produce one quality news story per day. Today they have to file for radio, TV, the internet and in some cases for multiple newscasts all day long. They have no time to think let alone assess a story.

Speed has become as important, if not more, than accuracy. And the technology allows for live reporting from any scene anywhere in the world. That means an anchor sitting in New York or Toronto is expected to comment on a story that’s happening right now in Teheran or Beijing. If we have the live pictures we go to air. The technology that was supposed to make TV news more accurate has in fact devalued the news. How can a man or woman sitting at a desk really know what’s happening 10,000 miles away?

A more important change has occurred since the Vietnam War. Politicians came to understand the power of TV. President Lyndon Johnson, I believe was first when he was quoted as saying that when he lost Walter Cronkite’s support for the war in Vietnam, he lost the American people. He decided not to run for re-election. Smart politicians since that time have learned the art of spin. Spin doctors are among their most important staff members. The purpose of all of this is to manipulate the media. In Walter’s time the media, to quote Marshall McLuhan, was the message. Today they are pawns to the message. The power has shifted. The Carl Roves of the world are better at getting their stories out than the reporters that cover them. Carl and his buddies have the time, the expertise and the money. All the reporters have is a camera and a microphone…easy pickings for the pros.

In the end it is no surprise that TV news just isn’t what it used to be. There are too many factors weighing against television journalism.

So when we look back at Walter Cronkite’s career and his amazing accomplishments we should shed a tear not just for the loss a great pioneer and icon but for television journalism. Walter Cronkite is both an example and a symbol of what it has lost and what it has become.

Hung Done

THIS IS WHAT passes for correspondence and discourse (and blogging) in my life right now. Today's blogging entry is entirely composed of a comment I made on Facebook from a friend asking me "What did you think of Hung?"

Hate it. Hated the script. Watched the show. Hated it. Usually like Anne Heche and Jane Adams. Hated them. Watched 3 episodes (got preview discs) for professional curiousity, got forty five minutes into ep 3 and said, "Eff this." Life is too short. I don't understand the hook. I don't understand why I should care. The thing is, this is a show that could only have been greenlit in Hollywood. The "hero" is the golden boy from High School that everyone secretly knew was peaking. Now we're supposed to care that his life is shit. No sale. Boo hoo. Don't you get it? We like that this guy failed. This guy failing validates the universe that the rest of us live in, where we were uncomfortable weirdoes in high school and had to fight to come into our own later. We had to fight to be interesting. The fact that the whole premise is that an uninteresting guy falls back on his big dick is just... well, it's a spectacular, spectacular miss. Feh.

Sadly, I think that actually about covers it.

Hack Hack Hack

THIS IS UTTERLY AWESOME.

Screenwriting Tip #30

How you treat your minor characters says a lot about the kind of person you are. I don’t want to spend 110 pages inside your head if you’re a douchebag

And BTW, I found it here. Nice catch, oh new blogger on le block scripto-canadien...

Throwing Stones

SOMETIMES PILOTS don't go. It's a fact of life. And lots of times when they don't, because of CTF requirements, they get burned off with little or no promotion in the summer.

There's a pilot on CBC on Wednesday night this week called Throwing Stones. (Wednes

day, 9pm...uh, 9:30 in Newfoundland? Is that right? Am I ever going to get that right?

It's about women's curling, and it's one of those things that, you know, came close. It's instructive to watch and speculate why you think the network didn't pick it up.

Part of the heartbreak of series tv is that I guarantee you one of the reasons the show didn't get picked up WAS NOT because people didn't work hard on it.

Making TV is gosh darn hard.

I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing from the writing talents behind this pilot -- Lara Azzopardi and Julia Cohen, again soon. But in the meantime, why not check out what they put out there with hope, and hopes of what might have been?

A bit about the show...

Meet Patti, Shirley, Annette, Cindy and Marge – Five very different women just trying to stay afloat amidst the chaos of life: demanding children, high-maintenance husbands, mortgages that keep them awake at night, uninspiring jobs, and all the challenges that come from being a wife, a mother and more significantly, a woman. They’re working class women who do it all and more. And they’re just desperate for a little me time. They are the real desperate housewives.

BUT…all is forgotten, all is left behind when they are together, playing, training, and competing for their true love…curling. They are proud members of the West Kildonan Curling Club in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Don’t worry – this is NOT a show about curling. For our women, curling is just their escape, their girls’ night out and, frequently, a metaphor for life.

The Canadian Showrunner. An Endangered Species?

THERE WAS AN article in the last issue of Playback that really cheesed me off. It cheesed me off because, once again, it was a standard Producer-driven line about Canada not having enough writing talent to do their shows.

You hear this a lot; it's a standard line that certain companies and members of the CFTPA use to try and encourage another agenda: loosening the rules so that "American" writers can be brought in, as the holy grail to save us. That chorus, while not universal, has certainly increased since Canadian shows started selling to the USA -- despite the fact that there is zero evidence of the need. If you look at the list of commercially and/or artistically successful Canadian shows from the last few years: Durham County, Slings & Arrows, Corner Gas, The Rick Mercer Report, Trailer Park Boys, Flashpoint, Intelligence, DaVinci's Inquest, Being Erica, and Murdoch Mysteries -- to name just a few -- the commonality is that none of them had "American writers" on to "save" them. A bunch of other shows that did go that route, I will not name here. They were not so lucky. They were not saved.

The problem with the "loosen the rules so we can hire real writers" formulation, of course is that they never get to bring back David Shore or Hart Hanson -- guys who are doing just fine in the Hollywood system, thanks. No, this blinkered, short sighted, self-hating-Canadian tub of codswaddle catches 3rd or 4th tier American talent and holds them up because -- Gasp! -- they once worked down in the Ewwwe Esss of Ehhhh. See that, Martha? We done gone got ourefs some 'Murricans!

Make no mistake. As the "industry consultation" process goes on in the promotion of the new CMF (Canada Media Fund, the successor to the CTF) a lot of people behind the scenes are agitating for the relaxation of the 10/10 rule for domestic tax credits. "If you want better shows," the whisper goes, "we need to be able to import American talent! American showrunners!" For they, you see, are the grail.

Mary Darling from Little Mosque on the Prairie has been saying this for years. New behemoth Entertainment One makes this pitch frequently to those with ears in the right places. The latest was Shaftesbury's Christina Jennings.

Luckily, Canadian writers have Maureen Parker and the WGC on point. Here was Maureen's response to that interview in the last issue of Playback. I don't know if there's any truth to the rumor that Playback edited Maureen down, but knowing Maureen, I have to tell you she has plenty more to say on the subject of defending homegrown writers and Showrunners.

Thanks Maureen. (And Playback, too, for printing the response, in whatever form.)

From the latest Playback:

In the Playback article "Who's Minding the Store?" (June 22) - after noting that The Listener's initial ratings were a little soft - Christina Jennings is cited lamenting that Canada has "too few showrunners to fuel its drama-making machine." So if the "winning streak" of Canadian shows airing in U.S. primetime stalls with The Listener, it seems we're to understand that a lack of Canadian showrunning talent is to blame. I completely disagree with this conclusion - so let's talk facts before pointing fingers.

Ms. Jennings is right about one thing - after the disastrous 1999 CRTC Television Policy decimated drama production in Canada, some skilled Canadian writers and a few showrunners went south. However, despite this, we have retained and developed many exceptionally gifted and experienced showrunners. And with only seven one-hour dramas in production, and just six more in development, there's demand for only 13 showrunners in Canada right now.

A recent Writers Guild of Canada showrunner roundtable drew 30 of Canada's most experienced showrunners - so shortage of Canadian showrunners is not the issue. The fact is there are more seasoned and talented showrunners in Canada than there are shows to run. And on top of that, we also have an outstanding crop of potential showrunners readying in the nation's story departments.

But Canadian showrunners must have the professional respect that allows them to do their job. They must be given the creative control necessary to realize the original vision of the show - the vision that was the very reason the networks picked up the show in the first place.

Maureen Parker,


Executive director, 


Writers Guild of Canada

Working on Sundays

Really, really blows.

MJ & The Wicked Crooked

DAY OFF. THEORETICALLY. Today we shift to a Sunday to Thursday week with a Friday-Saturday weekend. It's something a lot of shows do because it's easier to get into locations on a Sunday that you would never be able to shoot in during the week -- an office, or a courthouse, or a bank, for instance. Even a Bar is more likely to close for you on a Sunday than, say, a Thursday.

The Story Department is also switching over, because, well, if you don't -- you kind of wind up working six days a week anyway.

So today is my weekend. And it's a gorgeous, Sunny day in St. John's. So that's something.

Except...

I have a big rewrite to do on the show after the show that's prepping now. Again, it's the third script I've passed this week. Boo hoo for me. I expect no tears -- that's the gig. But does the sun have to be quite so shiny? Does the reflection off the water have to be so beautifully brilliant?

Sigh.

In other news, I've had wearying and disconnected thoughts about the whole Michael Jackson thing and just didn't even have the energy to articulate them. Luckily, my friend Howard has. Go read his new blog, Medium Close Up on the subject. It's a bracing dose of "how the hell did we get here really?"

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to leave this dark coffee shop now and find somewhere to set up the laptop where I can at least see the Narrows. I'm thinking The Rooms.

Enjoy your weekend.

You Aint Going Nowhere

ONE OF THE funniest things about working and living in St. John's is trying to get around, when you come from away.

It's something my friend Jeff told me just before I left Toronto. "Wait til the first time you have to ask for directions."

I didn't know exactly what he meant, but I had a slight gleaning. You look at a map of St. John's and environs and you see the million little cowpaths that make up the city's road system; eddies and gouges worn through long before motorcars or locomotion entered the equation.

Add in steep banking hills and constantly changing topography, and ... well, no, actually, it still doesn't prepare you for

Rawlins Cross. Nothing prepares you for Rawlins Cross.

The first time I found myself at Rawlins Cross, I had to pull over once I'd cleared it and have myself a good little cry.

But for the most part you learn your routes and your ways of getting places, and you never, ever, ever try to find a different way, and town isn't all that big, so you get by.

Unless you have to ask where you're going.

"Oh, if you want to get there, b'y, you gotta go up past the old church and turn left at where the Drugstore used to be; then keep going straight and when you've hit the North Atlantic station you've gone too far."

Um. Sorry?

"Yer going to go past the old Rec center, past that restaurant that used to be the Afghan place."

Are either of these things marked? The rec centre? The Afghan place?"

"Are you retarded? They're not there anymore."

Oh. Thank you.

[Drives away aimlessly and sadly]

I have been here almost three months. In that time, I've been directed to go up past the where the funeral home is, told to turn left at the "ugly green house" and told to go the address on Water Street "where the motorcycles are usually in front."

My lovely Story Coordinator, K.MacRhubarb, who will henceforth replace Jimmy the Bat in stories of yore, (Sorry Jimmy, and ladies, he's still single, and also available for work -- I can send you a resume and a glossy) just yesterday, told me about a way to get somewhere that required me to go past the "Old Zellers Mall." Now, understand, there is no Zellers in this mall. You don't describe it in terms of the name of the Mall, which is fine, because it's not like there's a sign at the mall, either.

They all know the reference points, how to get around, where to go, and the best way to get there. And they'd love to tell you, they're only too happy to do so -- but sadly, it's like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard was marooned on the planet with the dude from the species who was only able to talk in metaphors that referenced his people's past history.

So, yeah, I'd really like to go find the place they're scouting to shoot Thursday, but I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to go seek out Darmok at Tanagra where the walls fell. I mean, I haven't even had a fucking coffee yet.

I started laughing about this yesterday, and one of the other writers, Perry, (co-creator of Republic of Doyle) said that he remembered being bewildered as an adult when someone asked him how many blocks away something was.

They just don't think this way. Where a road dead ends up a hill and circles around, and an intersection has four or five choices -- what's a block, anyway?

I think of my early socialization, numbered streets, East-West, where the direction changes, the grid, long New York blocks and realize anew how different your reference points can be, and how that shapes the way you relate to distance.

That still doesn't mean, you know, that an address wouldn't help now and then. Cause it's hard getting that out of people sometimes. And here's the kicker: Google Maps is wrong. Seriously. A lot of the time, their directions in St. John's suck.

Still, even if it was accurate, I'm not sure that this morning at 8'o'clock that I would have gotten much luck with putting in, "_____Scrapyard, Blackhead Road in Shea Heights on the way to Cape Spear."

I mean, Google Maps is cool. But not that cool.

Thank God the 2nd AD called as I was in my car, thinking about...I don't know... driving aimlessly till I hit a cliff.

Ah well.

You know, this is probably all because the day after they joined Confederation, we made them switch to driving on the right. Seriously. People have ways of getting back at you.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a phone charger. I think I'm going to start out looking at the store by the thing on the way to the Capelin, hang a left at that place the whale beached back in 92.

Interesting Times

A SHORT BLAST from the Futon Critic brings with it many, many ripples.

LOS ANGELES (thefutoncritic.com) -- CBS has rescinded its decision to bring back "Flashpoint" this summer.

The first of nine new episodes had been set for Fridays at 9:00/8:00c starting July 17.

Network sources have confirmed the change as the Canadian import will now return at midseason. Repeats however will continue in said hour for the rest of the summer.

Now, there are several unanswered questions here that have interesting implications for the future of the "reverse simulcast" (CTV's term) model of selling-Cancon/CTF shows into the United States.

1. CBS pays a very small part of Flashpoint's budget; CTV pays a slightly bigger chunk. You and me (through the CTF, tax credits, etc) pay way more. Does CTV now have to wait til 2010 to show their hit show? Or will they forego the simulcast and choose to show the show first? Can they even do that if they want to?
2. What does this mean for the future of the show? CBS is going to delay "new" episodes for a year. But those episodes are being shot right now in Toronto. By the time they air, the production unit will have disbanded, unless there's an order for more episodes...
3. CTV has committed to more episodes; CBS hasn't. It's quite possible that CBS could call those 9 eps of FP "a new season." What happens to CTV's "3rd Season" order if CBS doesn't come in? Can they afford to make the show for less money? (FP's 1st season was 13 eps, and its second season was 18 eps. That's how they produced them. CBS (with CTV following suit) aired 9 of the first season, then delayed the back four and the first 9 of season 2 and ran them together. What we're talking about now is the "back nine" of season 2. Yes. I know it's confusing.)
4. Does this delay mean that FP will be able to find more of those rare, non-snobby writers?
5. Is it possible that the "made for America" model isn't the be all and end all that the Canadian networks and the CFTPA say it is?

Not as simple as it seems, now, is it, Doyle?

UPDATE: Playback's Amy Haggar has some original reporting today that clarifies and corrects some of the stuff in this post:

The first nine episodes of the season aired in simulcast on CBS and CTV from January through May. CBS had planned to run the remaining episodes from July into September out of simulcast. Mustos says CTV had previously decided not to air the back nine in step with the U.S. network, and instead planned to run them at some unspecified time in the fall.

A CTV spokesperson said the net has still "not confirmed its broadcast plans for the remainder of season two."

Mustos says CTV has ordered a third season of the show, another 13 hours, and there is hope that CBS will return to the series, too, which could see the third season bumped to another 18 eps.

Reprint: Sucky Canadian Broadcast Websites

Originally published 1/28/09

WHY YES, I AM having focus issues today. Gawrsh, how can you tell? Jill Golick weighs in with a short piece today on the paucity of follow-through by Canadian broadcasters on their series offerings. In her case, she picks on Canwest over Global and Da Kink in My Hair, but to be fair, neither of the other major broadcasters, CTV or CBC, do much better. In short, here's the number one disconnect in the world of Canadian TV, 21st Century style.

TV Guide or listings magazines have gone the way of the dodo in record time. Absolutely everybody under the age of about 40 now finds out program info either from some sort of on-screen menu system on their TV or through the web.

For the USA, you can go to Zap2it or Futon Critic, but the best way to find out is to go to the network site itself. There, besides streaming clips or downloads, wallpapers, docs, special web content and what have you, you're going to find the synopsis and info that you need.

Updated faithfully.

In Canada, smaller network advertising budgets are made even less effective by a haphazard strategy for getting info up on the website and keeping it updated. Back when TV listings books were the rage, you could usually count on the Canadian programs getting shafted. Half the time because they were moved to and fro or pre-empted at the last minute depending on which simulcast was being chased. But the rest of it was timeline stuff. They just wouldn't get the proper listings stuff in on time. That continues into the digital age. More than fifty percent of the time, when it's a Canadian program on my onscreen PVR menu, if the description of the show (beyond the title and the rating) comes up at all, it's usually a generic series description and not a specific episode description. The info isn't set up on time.

If there is a web page for the show, the info -- next episode, episode descriptions, pictures, whatever other stuff you might have, is usually updated haphazardly. The next page is not programmed and ready to go live after the end of the broadcast of the previous week's show. Information is wrong, or missing. Typos and misspellings are frequent. Cast information, information on the music in the show, credits, synopses, photos -- all the stuff show fans are accustomed to being able to access now -- none of it is availabe. And like Jill points out, if there is a program forum, nine times out of ten it's a ghost town without any official person designated to answer questions. If you do manage to attract fan attention, it quickly withers because they realize nobody's paying attention.

There's one other major structural thing that excacerbates this whole problem: The Bell Fund. The Bell Fund is a web/multimedia fund that you can access to partially fund a website for a TV show. The fund has way more projects trying to get funding than it has money to give out. (By about a three to one margin.) The fund also tends to favor out-there weird promotional websites that have some sort of new technology hook....webisodes or some sort of game or virtual space, or proprietary engine with all this wonderful ancillary content. You can see current examples for Canadian Shows like Being Erica or ZOS. What is often buried in this stuff, is the stuff that viewers actually want when they hear about a new show: meat and potatoes stuff like broadcast times, streams, downloads, and info. Sure, you can go on the virtual journey or share your stories or open your virtual locker or take part in a virtual interrogation or milk a virtual unicorn or something, but when is the fucker on? That's harder to find. And that's if you GET the funding. Remember, the fund is way oversubscribed. So what sometimes happens is that you get a super-flashy bells and whistles Mr. Kite Magorium Emporium Website Special for your first year, and then that disappears -- or sits unloved or un-updated for months and months afterward.

Then it comes to Season 2. And you have the big comedown. My Ex-show had that this year.

The Comedown involves the network off supporting another show, maybe one in its first season. (Remember, there are limited budgets, and Mommy has to feed the baby first.) So instead of animated dragons or hello kitty lite brite scalable profiles and virtual avatars that smack your ass and call you judy, you find yourself begging the network webmaster to change the card on the site that still says, "Season Two will return in Fall 2008!" In the case of The Ex-show, the network still holds the website, but updating is slow. So the new site -- such as it is, doesn't launch until the day of the broadcast. (And other shows on the same network have their premiere dates come and go before the site is changed.) Again, they're all like this. No company's better than any other at this stuff. They all kind of suck at it. It's low priority, and the attention to detail on a weekly basis is close to nil. From that bottom, as the show wears on, you realize that neglect before the first episode was actually the high point. Now, it's a sad and unloved death march to try to get even the simplest things changed: is the synopsis up? Is the episode title right? Have they posted the pictures from the ep? All that basic, meat and potatoes stuff doesn't get done unless you harass, harass, harass. You might be lucky, like the Ex-show, and have a savvy volunteer that keeps things moving on Facebook or tries their damndest to get the things updated on time. But it's not automatic, and it's never easy. It's quite a comedown from those heady first season website dreams. Of course, by then the web firm is on to the next Bell Funded project. It's sink or swim time, boys.

And as is our custom in the Canadian industry, we usually just sink. What there isn't, is a recognition on the part of the network that the firmament has shifted. Your website working with up to date program information when viewers want it is part of the cost of doing business. Except here it's not. They don't want to pay for it. They don't accept the responsiblity of doing it right. You hear tons of promises, which never materialize, and nobody particularly cares or thinks they're responsible.

And then they go to the CRTC and say the only way to save their business is to get carriage fees. I've been listening to Web and interactive people make promises about how the synergy between TV and the Web will work since 1994.

Seriously. Fifteen years.

The problems now are exactly the same. Nothing's gotten better. The Bell Fund, nice an idea as it is, does nothing to change that. We ignore the meat and potatoes. And then wonder why we don't get a million viewers for our shows.

If I did my job like this, in every one of the episodes that has my name under the written by, at about the 3/4 mark, actors would just turn to camera and stare, open-mouthed, for three minutes. Maybe somebody would fart. But hey, the Bell Fund deadline's coming up! Get those applications ready!

Oooh, a virtual Rock'em Sockem Dress up your virtual avatar in cheese and crinoline alternate reality roleplay with remixable clips and flash-animated build your own comic book random plotline generator, with exclusive documentary two way Ichat connectivity, XBOX-live hookup capability and echoes of MUD's running on the Grand Theft Auto engine? How delightful! When's the show on again? And who's the hot chick who plays the scientist? Oh. Okay. Thanks anyway. Wonder what's on FOX? By the bye, ZOS airs Mondays on TMN and Movie Central. Being Erica is Monday at 9pm on CBC. Da Kink in My Hair returns to Global Feb. 12. Check the volunteer-run, no Bell Funding TV-eh? site for details.

***

If you'd like to comment, please click through to the original post.