d e a d t h i n g s o n s t i c k s .

AS MY FRIEND David Antoniuk said just moments ago, "we're ready for a black President of the USA, but not a black Doctor Who?"

WTF, People! W.T.F.?

WELL HERE'S A weird one, especially if you're one of those still pining for Bryan Fuller's now-canceled Pushing Daisies.

While flip-flipping around last night, I managed to come upon the new Dead Like Me movie, which is coming out on DVD in February, and -- if it sells -- might be a precursor to resurrecting the cult series. (The first of Bryan Fuller's whimsical creations that was canceled too soon.)

After a quick bit of surfing around, I'm starting to think that there's a distinct possibility that this broadcast might have been a world premiere, on Super Channel, the high-on-the-dial other Canadian Pay TV channel that I think only me and Will Dixon have. They did such a great job promoting their channel that a guy who writes about TV every single day didn't know about it! Wow guys, congrats. In the bad Canadian P.R. department, I think we have a new champ-een!

I always had a soft spot for Dead Like Me. The series was one of the shows I took with me to South Africa in 2004. There's something about Ellen Muth's sardonic delivery, and the show's treatment of death that I found moving. (The show's a strange combo of the cynical and the sentimental. For instance, there are child grim reapers who run around taking the souls of pets. That's right, kids. Catholic dogma be damned. In this show, pets have souls! Say it with me -- "Awwwwwww.")

Not returning for the film -- Grumpy Mandy Patinkin, who played Rube, the mentor of the group, and Laura Harris, who played Daisy. (Daisy is in the movie, but she's played by Sarah Wynter -- who played Laura Harris' sister on 24. Weird.)

Judging by the credits, the movie also shifted filming locations from Vancouver to Montreal (though the city still stands in for Seattle.) Wynter is fine in the role, if a little less effortlessly bitchy, and at least Montreal doesn't look like Vancouver. (Calm down Vancouver, I don't mean that as a slight, I just mean, you know, every fifth TV series with that Vancouver look always kind of hurt Dead Like Me, when compared to some of its higher budget U.S. rivals.)

Set five years after the series ends, George and her fellow reapers are adjusting to change. They discover that their old gathering spot, Der Waffle Haus, has burned down. Rube is also AWOL, and in his place is Henry Ian Cusick, trying his best to make you forget Desmond on LOST. The Reapers' new boss has traded in post-it notes for text messages -- and his work ethic is a bit suspect as well. Far from Rube's lectures on accepting fate and not trying to get around the machinations of death, the movie quickly becomes a sort of Death Takes a Holiday adventure, where the characters take on the taboo.

For George, that means revealing herself to her now-16 year old sister, who's grown into a teenager without shedding any of her awkwardness and alienation. George and her sister have great chemistry. And the turn in the sister's plot, while telegraphed early, is surprisingly effective.

The movie is sweet and not quite as sharp as some of the better episodes of the series, but the desire to upgrade the look bears fruit for the DVD market -- the special effects are way better, it's more cinematic, and there are some great and satisfying set pieces. Even a high speed car chase! The comedy and pathos mix well, and it's fun dropping in on these characters again. Especially George's daffy boss at Happy Time temps, Delores.

The ending clearly springboards for the possible resurrection of the series. But the heart of the story is really George and her sister -- which was always the heart of the TV show for me, too.

I'd be pleased as punch to see this show return from the dead, so when the movie comes out in February, be sure to check it out. Or if you're in Canada, consider subscribing to Super Channel: the Witness Protection Program of Pay Channels.

Here's the trailer, which was apparently put out by the "viral" people at Super Channel. Note to Super Channel: you should try a little non-viral promo, too.



Oh, and the best part about this? It makes one of my examples in the Save Our Shows Campaigns post moot. Sigh. You know what? Somebody else can explain the whole exception proves the rule thing...I'm out!

(but still, getting a show -- or at least part of a show (2 cast members gone) up and running five years later? Pretty awesome achievement. And don't worry, the Dead Like Me movie is about a million times better than ... shudder ... the New WKRP. Brrr.)

SO YOU'VE PROBABLY heard by now that Scrubs is moving from NBC to ABC. There's lots of corporate-y stuff about that that can be covered elsewhere. But in an article I read noting the network change, this was my favorite part:

Attentive viewers may notice some other changes. [Scrubs creator/showrunner Bill] Lawrence said a popular character nicknamed the Todd is no longer allowed to wear the thong-style swimsuit he occasionally wore on NBC. "That was an actual edict from the head of standards at Disney," he said.

JAIME WEINMAN FROM Macleans picks up on the CBC's not-very-well-hidden flop sweat terror about promoting their new time-twisted comic drama Being Erica, which debuts this Monday at 9pm on CBC, (in The Border's former timeslot.)

This show is going for the same demographic as Sophie, but the promotional blitz for Sophie made the premise fairly clear. But Erica’s posters and tag lines don’t really tell you much of anything except that she’s “going back” to set things right — but the fact that the show is a time travel fantasy where she literally goes back in time to correct things in her past (call it a more self-centred version of Quantum Leap) is not obvious at all, at least in the print ads...

Networks, both U.S. and Canadian, sometimes seem to have this kind of reticence when promoting a show with a fantasy element; ...

I don’t know if it helps or hurts a show to soft-pedal the supernatural stuff, but I admit that it is very tricky to promote a show that has a fantasy aspect but otherwise aims to be realistic, like Life On Mars. The whole “magic realism” form seems to be more accepted in books, as well as movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But most TV shows are either “pure” fantasy or not.

Anything that muddies the hook of your show is a problem. The perceived solution (hide the premise) is so much worse than the problem it's trying to fix that I can't even imagine the thinking that goes into it. If people don't watch the show it won't be because of the premise. This is not spaceships in space shooting lasers. It's Peggy Sue Got Married.

None of this is new, of course. We talked about it on the blog last year. (And Weinman's covered the ground too, I believe.)

When you lose the clarifying ability of genre -- when you try to hide it, you lose sight, I think, of the mechanics of what you're doing -- and everything becomes softer and more slippery. If you're trying to run away from what kind of show it is, then how can you honestly talk about what needs to be in the show to reach -- never mind the audience that you want to trick into watching -- but the audience who would be predisposed to watch anyway?

In the network hallways, that leads to some frustrating conversations where they buy a sci-fi concept, and then fall over backwards trying to hide the sci-fi in it. You know how hard that is to write? Very.

Because there are certain expectations people have in watching sci-fi product, whether it's called that or not. Can you imagine a soap opera without any sex, either actual or implied? What about a murder mystery where they said, "maybe we should think twice about having a body." But these straitjackets are applied to sci-fi shows all the time. You get notes that just aren't consistent with the genre -- there's no sense making a Six Feet Under observation in a show that's just not built that way. You find yourself getting notes that you can't take -- because you have the wrong premise, the wrong characters, the wrong sets. And all this comes out of the idea that it's okay to buy one kind of show and then say you're going to make another.

In the end, the reason why a lot of sci-fi product winds up being anemic, dull, or retreaded and bled of creativity is because in that development process, you have the people paying the piper begging writers to run away from the thing that is the very essence of the show.

It's a shame that CBC has finally taken a show that has a good, solid populist high-concept premise, and muddied the sale because it's afraid of it. It's like FOX north.

Having seen the pilot of the show, I hope that viewers tune in and give it a chance. I'll have more on the show hopefully in time for Monday.

EDIT: I should say that what both Weinman and I bury here is that the on-air promo does a good job of explaining the premise. It's more like they're trying to split the difference with the print, so that you get a wider audience...kind of like how they sometimes cut different trailers for the male/female or white/black audiences. But considering the CBC's promo budget -- however big it is for CBC -- is a pebble in the bucket in TV terms -- that's a risky strateregy.

ALAN SEPINWALL has a very interesting interview with Battlestar Galactica's Ronald Moore over at his digs. Moore is one of the writers that noobs really should be tracking, just because in all his podcasts and interviews, he's just so refreshingly open about the process. That kind of openness can sometimes work to a writer's detriment, especially in the case where they use it in the endless "there's a plan," "no, they're making it up as they go along," argument.

The problem with that argument is that the answer is: they're doing both of those things. But that nuance, and the reasoning behind that nuance, is not something that's ever going to translate to the mostly-wisdom free province of the internet message board.

Moore is the guy who admits mistakes in the writing while watching the show for a podcast. He's posted long recordings of discussions from the Writers' Room, for heaven's sake. And in Sepinwall's interview, here's the key exchange about the whole, "planned out" aspect of series writing:

In terms of "Galactica," how long have you known how you were going to end it?

In general terms, over the last year and a half, somewhere in the middle of season three I started asking, 'What's the shape of the ending? What's going to happen at the end of the show and what's going to be the case when they meet up with whoever they meet up with?' As we got into season three, I started thinking of it more seriously, and last summer, almost a year ago, we had a writer's summit up in Lake Tahoe and said, "It's going to end here." But a lot of the pieces didn't fall into place until I was sitting at the computer writing the teleplay that I realized exactly how the cards were going to fall for different characters.

One of the things I find interesting is, on "Lost," Cuse and Lindelof have always claimed they have a master plan and know where it's all going, and fandom has been skeptical at times and said, "Yeah, right." Whereas you've been pretty candid about the fact that you'll throw stuff out there and figure it out later, and yet people assume there's some cohesive plan to "Galactica." How do you pull that off to make it seem like there's a plan?

To me, that's the job. The job is to figure a way along in a story but make it all feel like it's seamless, to make it all make sense. Hopefully, if I've done my job right, when all is said and done and the story's been put to bed and you've got the entire set of DVDs before you and you watch them, that it feels like a cohesive narrative -- that stuff we just threw up and decided to take a flier on without ultimately knowing where it would pay off, when you look at in hindsight, that it all tracks. You're painting this large painting on this big canvas, and you may not know what it's going to look like at the end, but when you're done, you want it to feel like it's a cohesive vision and makes perfect sense.

So, for instance, when you decided who four of the Final Five would be, how much thought did you have to put into it before revealing it in "Crossroads," and how much was, "Oh, we'll say this and figure it out over the hiatus"?

The impulse to do it was literally an impulse. We were in the writers room on the finale of that season, always knew we would end season 3 on trial of Baltar and his acquittal, the writers had worked out a story and a plot, they were pitching it to me in the room. And I had a nagging sense that it wasn't big enough, on the level of jumping ahead a year or shooting Adama. And I literally made it up in the room, I said, "What if four of our characters walk from different parts of the ship, end up in a room and say, 'Oh my God, we're Cylons'? And we leave one for next season." And everyone said "Oh my God," and they were scared, and because they were scared, I knew I was right. And then we sat and spent a couple of hours talking about who those four would be. Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard to lock in who made the most sense and who would make the most story going forward.

To an element of the fanboy crowd, that is going to always be a maddening answer, because the only way to grok it is to think of it fully formed and ready to go. Which is weird, of course, since nobody bats an eye at artists' sketches or tests or studies for major paintings, or thinks that a demo of this song or that with different lyrics spoils the cohesiveness of the work. But there it is. You'll always be fighting the don'tgettits out there, who think that the ability to say, "this sucks" is the highest form of intellectual jousting.

But if you're trying to find your voice and your way, the combination of risk and doubt that suffuses every interview with Moore shows you he's the real deal. I learn something from every podcast he's done, and that's why, ultimately, despite off episodes and the occasional flaw, Battlestar Galactica is the show teaches me more about what I do than anything I currently watch.

Oh yeah, and the title of this post, I'm just being silly. I thought it was funny that he had the big writing summit for BSG up at Lake Tahoe. You know who else hung out at Tahoe...

EDIT: Hilarious. I go and write this post, and look what the VERY FIRST COMMENT over at Sepinwall's place is:

As much as I love this show, it really is frustrating to hear how RM just decides on a whim such major plot points as "let's make 4 main characters find out they are cylons". It really does call into question some of the earlier narrative and choices made by the writers and actors.

I appreciate Moore's honesty, but honest to Pete, maybe David Chase's "the work speaks for itself and I'm not explaining it" F-you is the right approach. Something to ponder...

WELL, IF YOU look at Alex Strachan's TV Preview for the January "Second Season," there's something to celebrate... Here's how the article looks in today's Canwest Papers (as culled from the Vancouver Province):

Some old, some new kick off second television season

CBC debuts two series, while Lost and 24 set to make big returns

Alex Strachan
Canwest News Service

Friday, January 02, 2009

Television unofficially launches its second season next week as a few returning favourites and some new series get ready to make their mid-season debuts. Here's a look at what to expect from networks on both sides of the border.

THE VIEW FROM CANADA

- Erin Karpluk, familiar to anyone who caught the sudsy, made-in-Vancouver kitchen drama Godiva's, will make her homegrown comedy debut as 30-something singleton Erica Strange in CBC's new romantic fantasy Being Erica.

Being Erica bows Monday on CBC. Pick up Sunday's Province for more about the Vancouver star.

- Wild Roses, CBC's new, adult-themed, female-driven take on its rural, cattle-country ensemble drama Heartland, follows the clash of wills between ranch-owning sisters, played by Sarah Power and Michelle Harrison, and a rapacious oil developer, played by Gary Hudson.

- SCTV hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie return in Bob & Doug, an animated version of their Great White North series of comedy sketches, complete with half-empty bottles of beer.

THE VIEW FROM NEXT DOOR

- Lost, which enjoyed a fine comeback season last year, will return with new episodes on Jan. 21. (article continues)

Okay, on first glance that's a pretty standard preview article right?

But it's not.

What Strachan's done is give homegrown shows something that they rarely get in this country: parity.

Not only are they mentioned in the SAME preview article as the returning or new U.S. shows, they're actually in there as the lede. And he manages to plug a future feature article on the Canadian actor besides!

I argued last month that ghettoizing Canadian shows in coverage was one of the major subtle signals that point and contribute to the "dismissible" mentality of "Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows."

Usually in the paper it's treated as a thing apart. In fall preview articles, they spend lots of column space on U.S. shows, and if you're lucky, the Canadian stuff gets covered in a sidebar. In discussions of how the business is changing, Canadian writers may write all about Jay Leno, and the fortunes of NBC, but even for a Canadian audience they don't mention things like the upcoming CRTC license renewal hearings, and how that might affect what homegrown shows there are to watch.

To read an article on Canadian TV networks, in the Globe Report on Business, you'd think that one hundred percent of the point of broadcasting in Canada was to re-broadcast American shows. It's ninety-five percent, true. And Lord knows, they'd probably like for it to be 100 percent -- but it's not. Not yet.

By hiving off and making sure that Canadian TV is usually only talked about in this separate bubble, it subtly reinforces the point of view that it's something different, something, in the stentorian tones of my long-gone Catholic youth: something slightly unholy.

This kind of disconnect and separation is what allows a lot of the misapprehensions and fictions to keep bubbling through; it's what allows some people to turn up their noses at Trailer Park Boys and talk about it like it's an object of shame, and not a show that brings hordes of fans out every time the actors make a personal appearance. It's what allows a double standard where Canadian shows are judged (sometimes) by a harsher yardstick -- and 'judged' is probably the wrong word, what I really mean is "dismissed."

Strachan is generous in his editorial approach -- even I wouldn't say that you should necessarily put the homegrown shows first -- but he even has some fun with the view from here, view from there stuff.

Point is, it's all there, he lays it out, and the subtle intimation is that "your viewing choices are up to you, but here is ALL the information about what's coming up."

That's really all we Canadian creatives can ask for. Although there are those out there who go a whole lot further. Which only hurts us all. John Doyle wrote a couple weeks ago in his week of cranky, that newspaper writers were not Canadian TV's publicity arm. He's right. They're not. Neither should they put their fingers on the scale and lightly review shows just cause they're from Canada. In the long run, that helps nobody: it burns their credibility, excuses the sins of substandard Canadian fare (there is still much of that, and a lot of people making tv who maybe shouldn't be) and lets down the primary function of newspaper coverage of TV: to inform the audience as to what they can see out there. Now is not the time for anybody in the newspaper biz to be messing with the audience's sense of how well they're being informed.

I don't always agree on Strachan's take on TV, but he is remarkably even-handed, and as near as I've ever been able to tell, he doesn't have one set of rules for homegrown product and U.S. fare. That's admirable.

This is one kind of parity with the U.S. that we should all celebrate. The rest is up to us.

(Sidebar: one other funny thing I haven't been able to work in to any other article I've written lately. A pretty constant thing I hear from colleagues is how discouraged they are when they read the comments on any article on Canadian TV, because they're always hateful, ill-informed, bleating the same defeatist or myopic B.S. So last month I started an experiment. I started reading the comments on all the news articles I read, too. And all the business articles. And you know what? We're not so special. It seems that most people that take the time to comment on articles are weird, reactionary yahoos. The content of the article seems to be irrelevant. Oh Internet! I kvell for those lost days when you were full of smart people talking about physics and Star Trek!)

FOR PART ONE, click here. For Part Two, here.


3) The House That Ruth Built

Part of being an Irish American is being aware of your deep seeded propensity for a kind of maudlin sentimentality. It can bubble up and get on you at anytime. Kind of like baby spit up.

Ritual and history become important. Maybe it's the writer in me too, getting slutty for any kind of symbolism you can seize upon.

But whatever the reason, one of the big moments for me this year came on a Thursday night at the end of June. I met my friend Matt at the Union Square subway station in Manhattan, and we climbed on the Number 4 for the trip up to 161st Street and River Avenue.

The last game I saw at Yankee Stadium was with my Uncle Christy. That's when my Yankees had names like Bucky Dent, Lou Pinella as a player, Catfish and Goose and Reggie Jackson and the Captain and Catcher, the late, great Thurman Munson. And yes, I know it was really the 2nd Yankee Stadium I went to -- the post '73 reno stadium...but it was still physically in the same place. It had the advantage of all the old ghosts. That's another thing we American Micks love...the old ghosts.

My Uncle's gone now, but I'll always remember being a ten year old, walking out from the grey halls into the light, and looking down on that field in wonder. My Uncle knew every cop, it seemed, and waved to a bunch of other types along the way. Matt and I sat in our box seats on the first base line, a couple sections back, and watched a reasonably lackluster game. The team wasn't in fine form. But it didn't matter. It was the stadium of my dreams, and when I closed my eyes, I still see and feel the roar of the crowd...all the crowds, stretching back to Mantle and Gehrig and the Babe.

I visited Wrigley for the first time this year, too, and felt a similar chill. It's the chill I felt the first time I saw a hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

All these new stadiums may be sleeker, and have more boxes for the big money. But when I close my eyes, all that vibrant color fades to brilliant black and white -- and the cheer goes down the line, through generations gone.

The Yankees lost. But it didn't matter. When the organ started and they played "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," I hid my Irish eyes in my palm, pulled the cap a little lower, and sniffed the air in that stadium for the last time. Spilling out onto the street after the final out, I looked around and it occurred to me, absently, "I was born not too far from here" The thought seemed otherworldly, almost inconceivably strange and so much less relatable than the ritual I'd just gone through.

A shuffle toward the subway. An express pulled up, we got in, and thirty minutes later I was back at the Hotel Bar in Grammercy -- like none of it had never happened.

But it did happen. And believe you me, that's one pilgrimage I'll never regret.

But there, that picture of the brand new stadium under the lights...mmm...well...

It's never too late for new memories, right?

Number 4 train, here I come...

2) The Genius setting on the New Ipods.

Because I don't know how it knows. But damn.


1) November 4, 2008.

I probably can't match my heartfelt here.

But if I had to choose just one inspiring thing from this year, the thing that will carry me forward through the tough time ahead, it's the fruit of that wonderful moment of 11PM ET, November 2008.

The rejection of the politics of smear and fear; the fiction of the Bradley effect, the turnout, the redemption, the feeling that maybe thought and thoughtfulness and wisdom would hold sway now, finally, after so long.

It's already changed some of what I'm writing, and how I approached one project. It will be interesting to see if my old show, The Border, rises to the challenge of transforming itself from a Bush-era conception of the Canada-U.S. relationship to that new reality. I'm rooting for them.

Meanwhile, optimism is in, as is pragmatism and sense.

It'll be wonderful and exciting to see what characters and situations TV writers come up with now. Just read the story of where this chapter of American history came from, and you realize that the stories we have to tell are more diverse, more exciting, more unusual, and more unlikely than we've dared to dream of before.

The dreams are different in a Yes We Can world. And Thank God for that.


Twenty more sleeps.

KATHY GRIFFIN'S only good line was about whether Jack Cafferty ever gets so mad at Wolf Blitzer that he just punches him in the face. But Anderson Cooper and her were the most uncomfortable couple since Liza and David Guest.

Solange seems genuinely talented.

Step back Pussycat Girls. Not you.

Carson Daly is now, and always will be, a douche.

Dick Clark seems like maybe he's gone downhill in the last year.

Ryan Seacrest makes my neck itch. And not in that good way.

Tim Russert's son will not soon erase anybody's memory of his dad.

The Clintons' dancing was sweet.

There was one couple on one of the channels who seemed to make out for like, an hour.

Roger Hodgson got old. Seriously? Supertramp songs? Props to the guy playing soprano sax at minus 20. That shit aint easy.

So CBS has just given up on anyone under 60 tuning in?

Didn't see the chicken cannon. Didn't miss the chicken cannon. Sorry Bill.

Natasha Bedingfield = Yummy.

Fergie is still nasty.

Citytv at Nathan Philips....dude, you need some guests. And no, the touring cast of Jersey Boys does not count.

Wine with friends 1, New Year's TV, 0.

What's next?

EDIT, Jan 2: Great. Now, apparently Kathy Griffin's in trouble. Dudes, YOU HIRED HER! Geez!

A SAFE AND Happy New Year to You all.

























































































(Thanks to this lovely flickr set, as spied by Very Short List)

DIXON helpfully pointed out that this post was pretty good, too.

THIS was my favorite post from the last year.

SIGH. WALTON & EPSTEIN are going to be impossible about this.

But way to go, Montreal, anyway...

MONTREAL -- In the 1970s, 80s and into the 90s, Montreal was saddled with scores of murders each year, a bloody battle that kept police busy and the crime tabloids happy. This year is closing out with a different kind of Montreal crime story: Homicides have hit record lows.

Police report that, provided there are none today and tomorrow, 2008 is ending with 29 homicides, the smallest number recorded since the creation of the force in 1972.

Since murder is considered a reliable barometer of social violence, police cautiously argue that Montreal is one of the safest major North American cities. Attempted murders are down, too.

"Montreal is becoming like the suburbs," said Clément Rose, police commander of the major crimes division in Montreal. "People have this impression that Montreal is violent. That impression is false, really false, and these figures are real."

FOR PART ONE of this list, go here.

6) The Pause That Refreshes

It's interesting, and little sad, that we lost Harold Pinter a few days ago. Pinter famously popularized the formalized (pause).

Television has generally abhorred that pause. The theory is that you don't give someone the chance to change the channel. But many of the most memorable moments in TV over the last year have come from precisely that very real, very human impulse.

Michael Chiklis managed to make an extraordinarily long pause before his confession scene in the penultimate episode of The Shield into something of a bravura high wire act. You held your breath with him, wondering how he would start, what would he say? What would be enough?

It takes a dramatist with confidence to hang so much on the absence of words, and a special kind of actor to play it.

The brooding, quiet pause is the spiritual opposite of the needle drop broody montage -- a TV storytelling device that's gone from fresh and freeing to cliche in just a few short years.

It's the pauses after each line, the exquisite sense of a character weighing his responsibility to answer or her choice to stay silent as venerable, and important that gives Mad Men its stately, mesmerizing pace. It's the storytelling equivalent of the soft spoken person at the dinner who everyone strains to hear. There's a lot of bombast in TV. So when that pause comes, I lean forward and still to hear. I just can't help it.

5) Citytv

This is the saddest item on my list. There's a parking lot, for sure. And it was never paradise. But that Joni Mitchell phrase about not knowing what you've got 'til it's gone was never truer than when used to describe Citytv.

If you spent any time in Toronto in the 1970's or 80's and happened to turn on a television, you'd know Citytv the moment you saw it. Fiercely local, puckish and independent, the station made its bones in the early years by breaking rules. It got attention for the Baby Blue Movie on Friday nights, which was pretty much exactly what it sounded like. It was one of the first stations in North America to shoot the news on videotape. It eschewed the traditional anchor desk, and under the guiding hand of impresario and ringleader Moses Znaimer, pioneered a kind of television where the process was the story. A building was wired so you could plug in anywhere and shoot anywhere; walk, talk, shoot -- no studios, no fakery, just what happened.


They hired correspondents that looked like the urban city that Toronto was becoming. Instead of plastic haired white guys, you had the colors of the rainbow. They started a music video show, The New Music, that was one of the first, best, and most invaluable sources of music that was breaking not on the radio. Leading edge, not trailing. A few years later that show would be joined by other magazine formats that no one had tried before: Fashion Television. Who'd ever thought of running footage of fashion shows every week, and talking to designers on camera? Why would anyone wat...boobs? Hell. I'm in. There was also Movie Television, a show that treated movies seriously that grew out of Citylights, and the interviews of the great Brian Linehan, and mediatelevision, a show that I worked on for four years.
A show that did stories on the internet while CBC was still struggling to define what it was for its viewers; a program that had an email address before nearly any other program. There was also Citylimits, an all night free-for-all program that showed strange videos before that was the thing to do, and gave a young comic named Mike Myers exposure in the wee hours of the morning.

By the time the station moved to 299 Queen Street West, it had been taken over by the CHUM corporation. Soon after, the local station was joined by Muchmusic, which for my generation growing up in an era where the Baby Boomers had a chokehold on the radio, was so much more than just the Canadian equivalent of MTV. Like MTV, they had VJ's. Unlike MTV, these VJ's did their shifts LIVE. And you could go down and watch them working, through the window, or out on the street, as the city streamed by. Much's whole gig was TRL, long before TRL ever existed.

And then there was Speakers Corner. A video booth on the corner where you could pop in some change and spout off. And they'd run it -- on the air. Speaker's Corner gave rise to local celebrities, bands, political arguments -- anticipating YouTube by about two decades.

Citytv's programming, an eclectic mix of those magazine shows, ethnic programming, and recycled movies, wasn't the point. The atmosphere was the point. The fact that you could tune in and see your corner in a station ID, with Mark Dailey's voice intoning "From Leslieville," "The Beaches," "Taking a stroll in the Annex," "Hanging out at the docks," "Feeling the fruit at the St. Lawrence market ... wait for it... "This is Citytv...Everywhere."


And it was. When, in my job, I found myself having to sometimes visit local stations in other cities in Canada and the USA, I was always struck by how sterile and cut off from the city they seemed. One station in Houston seemed to me to be in a bunker. This was the farthest thing away from local tv.

Citytv suffered a decline through the nineties ... the old story ... it stopped innovating and started copying. All the things that the station did that blazed trails -- one person crews and videography, walk around newscasts, hand held shooting -- others caught up with it. The cult of personality around Znaimer became restrictive where it once was vibrant; the fact that so many of the people who worked there had never worked anywhere else became a liability, not a strength, as good ideas from elsewhere in the business never filtered in and filtered down.

City didn't pay its employees too well, but those employees were loyal. HR had two people. Accounting was tiny. The promo producers would cut eclectic and weird promos that were almost as funny as the programs. You'd hear strange back-announced V/O's at two in the morning and ask yourself, "did I just hear that?"

But in the 1990's, after two cable channels grew to six, then ten, then twelve and the number of employees went from hundreds to thousands, something started to get lost. The company was now a huge media company still trying to act like a mom and pop shop. You'd hear the exhortation to work harder and keep that maverick spirit going while you'd open your email and see that so-and-so was now a Vice President...and then a Senior Vice President....and now an Executive Vice President...

The legendary Film Fest parties and Muchmusic bashes started becoming wristband-only affairs. The perks of working there -- meeting the occasional pop star or actor or celebrity, got replaced with memos telling you not to look at Tom Cruise if you happened to see him in the hallway. The funny v/o's stopped. Promos became homogenized, and the graphics started to look like every other station on the air. U.S. consultants came in and started pushing Action Weather and the same old same... power within the structure became the goal, not the product...

By the time CHUM was sold a few years ago, much of the charm of what was once great about the place had evaporated or collapsed under the weight of ego or an inability to recognize the changing nature of the business, but CTV came in and said they'd bought a brand, and that they wanted to preserve that brand.


Last month, about a hundred employees in the building were laid off in the third or fourth wave of layoffs since I left the station at the end of 2000. I barely know anyone there anymore. Speakers Corner, The New Music, the sense of fun and informality -- it's all gone. The company's now split, with Citytv as part of the Rogers family, and the specialties under the CTV rubric.

In a few days, even the old number of the building 416 591 5757 -- will disappear, replaced by a CTV exchange.

The spirit of the place that I watched when I was a kid, the place I dreamed of working for when I was a teen, all of that's gone. You go for a meeting in that station now, and ... it's just another TV station.

Maybe that's inevitable. Change happens. But it's hard to argue that something essential hasn't been lost.

And the only good news is that like a lot of influential things that come and go in their time, the ripples spread out. Spy Magazine was a bright and short lived humor mag in the 1980's and early 1990's...but its spirit followed employees to places like Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, New York, and a hundred other places.

Likewise, you'll find some of those Znaimeristas out there directing segments for Rick Mercer, or producing entertainment at E! You'll see it in moments of George on The Hour, or CBC Radio 3, or writers who write comedy or drama shows.

In many ways, though, my reaction is one of relief. After watching a slow death by a thousand cuts, now you can say, "it's gone." And let it go.

But oh man, was it inspiring and fun while it lasted.

4) The 2nd Act Turn in The Dark Night

Mmm hmm. Yeah, Ledger's good. Wow. Great stunt. Ha. Michael Caine. Morgan Freeman's such a badass. Mmm. Yeah, cool Imax stuntage. Mmm. (Look at cell phone for time). Oh no! Wow, yeah that was cool. Mmm. Hum. Man, this is getting to be kind of long. Same old same, and...

...and then comes the two ferries, and the choice of the people on the ferries, and suddenly the Dark Knight became something other than an action movie.

I was so surprised by that turn, and the meatiness of the problem. Depth in an action picture? Who knew?

The final part of the list comes on New Year's day.

IS PRETTY GREAT reading. And lordyloo, he's right about Cobie Smulders.

OKAY, STICKSTERS. Here's the problem. If you'll look over to left, you'll see a new poll. I'm at a crossroads here and I don't know what to do, other than to throw myself upon the mercy and/or wisdom of my readers.

So I got a package a week or so ago. That's not unusual. My propensity for ordering things off Amazon at 3am, and the occasional TV screener from interesting P.R. companies that understand the value of sending bloggers screeners means I'm always getting packages.

but this one was different. It was weirdly shaped -- long and thin. I opened it up and immediately recognized it from my visits to a hundred TV production company offices through the years.

It was that long fancy-papered, calligraphied certificate noting that I had been nominated for a Gemini Award. There it is, "nominee" stamped in leaf. Or, um...ink. Anyway, it's very high quality printing. Litho'd, maybe? I don't know.

When you go into a meeting, there's usually a Vanity wall, where you see all these certificates framed and ready. Gemini Winner, Gemini Nominee, New York Festivals Gold, Houston Worldfest Silver, etc, etc, etc.

Now, sure, none of those have the psychic weight of an Emmy, or the physical weight of a Gemini statue, which, believe me, I would gladly display. But I don't have one of those statues because I lost.

So what do I do with this certificate thing? Do I get it framed? Put it up in the office? I mean, really? Am I that guy?

Or does it go in a drawer? I just....I mean, once you get the first one framed, aren't you committing to being that guy, with one of those walls? I'm really not sure I'm that guy.

What do you think? Am I that guy?

Vote at left. Thanks.

EDIT: Also, on the docket for discussion. Is it good to be that guy, or not? Discuss.

SO, 2008. AN inordinately high number of people of my acquaintance seem to be saying stuff like, "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, 2008" or "Good riddance," or the pithy and short, "Fuck 2008, man." I guess some of that happens every year, but it seems a little more, shall we say pointed, this year.

And why not? Everybody's RRSP's and 401K's are bleeding red, both Canada and the U.S. endured nasty (and in the case of the U.S., nearly endless) elections, and if you're in television or film, apparently the sky is falling. Ah well. What can you do?

For myself, 2008 was a more modest year. Not quite as many scripts produced, only one show staffed on, the start of a new development deal, and a decision to move on from that show. (Last year at this time I had never been on a show that went two seasons, and now I'm leaving a show that just got picked up for a third. Funny world.)

There were creative conflicts along the way -- as there always are -- but hey, I learned to like being on set, and I won an award from my peers. (A Canadian Screenwriting Award for Across The River to Motor City, waaay back in April) I also got a Gemini nomination. My first, so I guess now I can get on the bus. (Provided I have the fare, I mean...)

We got a few new voices in the Scribosphere, Canadian Division -- and we also got to hear from a Director, which provided for a much needed perspective check. The problems of regulation, indifference, incompetence and privilege -- the four horsemen of the Canadian TV apocalypse, continued to sow their oats. But we're kicking out the jams, bit by bit. We'll get there eventually. Or, you know, die trying, I guess.

When I look back on what inspired me this year, it's a split and strange list. Pieces of things rather than the whole -- testimony maybe to my constantly shifting attentions through the year. Clearly somebody needs to focus.

What were your inspirations this year? Have at it in the comments below.

Again, this isn't necessarily a ranking. Just a list. Here's the start of it, anyway:

Year End List 2008, Fuel for Inspiration:

10) Neil Young: Canterbury House, 1968 & ACC, 2008

Reinvention is a funny thing. Imagine you're just a few days shy of your 21st birthday. You were in a band that did pretty well, but they broke up six months ago. Nobody really knows who you are. You're about to release your first solo album.

You get booked to do a couple of solo shows in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And the place sells out. Everybody's shocked -- nobody more than you. You're scared. They practically have to push you on stage.

You're Neil Young. But nobody really knows what that means. Yet.

The recording of those Canterbury House shows, released officially just a few weeks ago, 40 years after the shows themselves, is something I've listened to obsessively over the last couple of weeks. I just can't stop. It's so amazing to hear this guy who I know as grizzled and prickly strumming up there, dorky and unsure of himself, chatty as hell. (Neil Young! Chatty! I know!) He tells funny stories about Canada and working at Coles' bookstore. And then he does Sugar Mountain and you don't breathe for about three minutes.

The sound of an artist finding his voice is unbearably moving to me. Something about this recording just feels like it should be private -- that somehow its secrets should not reveal themselves to us. But that's the thing about art, isn't it? It always reveals more than you want it to, which is probably one of the reasons why you do it.

If you're any sort of an artist starting out, unsure of your voice, this CD is going to help you. It reminds you with humility that we all start out somewhere. And that, incredibly, who we're meant to be is something you can hear from the very start -- maybe only in a bit here and a piece there. But you can hear it, if you listen.

A few weeks ago I got to see the other end of that journey. A sold out concert at the Air Canada Centre, where Neil came out and wowed the crowd while barely saying a word. The electric, the acoustic sets were sublime -- his voice fuller and less ragged than I've heard it before. All that and a closing cover of "A Day in the Life." One of the best concerts I saw this year. (Thanks, sis.)

The two things are inextricably linked for me -- like bookends. I guess that's when you know you're getting on a bit -- when you find longevity itself inspiring!

9) Tina Fey: Actor, Writer, Palin

I can't possibly add anything new -- certainly not to the excellent Vanity Fair profile now on the stands. But Fey proved this year that the trust that comedy aficionados had put in her was not misplaced. Her triumphant return to Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin might have gotten all the attention (and maybe even influenced an election,) but it benefited 30 Rock, too, and that's what I cared about most. Iamatvjunkie has a handy dandy Year in Tina Fey recap here.

Through it all, she's maintained perspective, humility and a refreshing groundedness.

Sometimes the good girls win. And bitch is definitely the new black.

8) David Milch on The Complete Deadwood

It's a gorgeous package, of course. But the true gem on the excellent series set of Deadwood is a dreamy, stream-of-consciousness disquisition by Milch as he walks the empty standing sets of Deadwood. "The Meaning of Endings: David Milch on the Conclusion of Deadwood."

It's twenty-two minutes long, and at turns hilarious, ineffably sad, educational and frustrating.

For fans, the juice here is that Milch admits on camera that those Deadwood movies are probably never going to happen, which gives him license to explore and reveal some of the plotlines that might have been. And they are juicy. The struggle to civilize the camp in Season 3 leads up to weightier fare -- including the real life fire that consumed most of the town in 1879.

But for the writer, it's a wake. Milch lectures on the impossibility of endings, of venerating how things end as the most important part of all. That in life, we never know our endings. It's partly that professorial thing that Milch always does, but it's also a guy bucking against the restrictions of an audience who demands closed homilies -- things that add up to a point; things that offer tidy conclusions so unlike the messy, dropped threads of a life.

It's a wounded walk. It's creativity and regret spilling forth. It's raw, and wonderful and heartbreaking.

7) Tom Stoppard's Rock & Roll

Back in February, I got to see Tom Stoppard's play Rock & Roll in New York. Here's what I wrote about it at the time:

ROCK N’ROLL is Tom Stoppard’s story of the life and times of several characters from shortly after the end of the Prague Spring in 1968, to the end of the “Velvet Revolution” which brought Vaclev Havel to power in 1989.

The show unfolds the stories mainly through the eyes of two protagontists. Max, played by Brian Cox, is one of the last unreconstructed Soviet-style British communists. Jan (Rufus Sewell,) starts out as one of Max’s students as Cambridge, but returns home to Prague to look after his mother.

But what Rock N’ Roll is really about is the intersection of culture and politics. It also, at the margins, tells the story of the Czech band “The Plastic People of the Universe,” whose persecution in the 1970s led to a sensational trial, and Charter 77 – a manifesto of sorts that for Havel and other dissidents, started the reclamation of their society from the Communist jackboot.

The love Jan has for music transcends politics, which is precisely what the above passage is about – it’s what makes it so dangerous. Through his thirty year journey, Jan, who starts out politically agnostic, is gradually pushed into dissidence simply because his desire to be left alone, to listen to the Plastics and music, can’t be accommodated.

Rock N’Roll is ultimately about so much more – the wilting promise of the sixties, paganism and freedom of thought and expression; a love story, a lament for Syd Barret (really). It’s meaty and provocative and vibrant and moving.

I’ve never been to Prague. I know very little about Syd Barret, pitifully little of the writings of Vaclev Havel – but such is the power of culture that I’ll be seeking each of these things out now.

That power, for a cultural product to get you thinking about something else you're concerned about -- the power to inspire lateral connections, to, in essence, momentarily rewire your brain -- is ultimately why I do what I do. To entertain is to inform. There is no difference for me. Proof positive is the rest of that February entry -- what seeing Rock & Roll told me about my industry and how the system works here: how we, too, are salt eaters. I read it back now and it's probably one of my favorite entries.

Ironically, Lee Goldberg picked up on my short comments re: Heather Havrilesky this weekend. Goldberg's a great blogger and a very successful writer. But lately he's taken to writing about Canadian TV with a typical American's understanding of the actual problems of the industry. Which is to say, not much. Wonder if he'll read this one?

More from the list tomorrow or New Year's Eve.

For past lists, click here.

EVER HAVE ONE of those days where everything you see and hear seems to be of a piece? Well, further to the bitchslap doled out by Salon to TV, here is a series of articles about other media in trouble, in transition, or both -- all gleaned from today's New York Times.

First, an intriguing article about what used to be called the "Sunday Funnies" are trying to survive the doom-and-gloom downward spiral of the modern newspaper. Leslie Berlin's article hits close to home for me. Not only was I one-time comics fanatic (I used to buy a paper I hated just to get their superior comics on the weekend) who's largely fallen out of the habit, but I also can identify with the wistful edge to Stephan Patsis, the creator of Pearls Before Swine, as he describes getting into a medium that he's always loved when the party seems to be over:

IN many ways, Stephan Pastis is living his dream. In 2002, after years of frustration, he quit his job as a lawyer to pursue cartooning. Today his daily strip, “Pearls Before Swine,” appears in more than 500 newspapers. He says he answers his fan mail “in groups of 100.”

Nevertheless, he can’t help worrying.

“Newspapers are declining,” he says. “For a syndicated cartoonist, that’s like finally making it to the major leagues and being told the stadiums are all closing, so there’s no place to play.”

From Comics and their attempts to stay relevant in a post-Newspaper world, let's go to satellite radio, where Mel Karmazin is fighting a very different battle, and one that's unthinkable from the panicked strata of TV and Radio: subscribers are going up; so is revenue, but it still may not be enough:

“If you take a look around at all of the media space — I’m not trying to paint the rosy picture because we have challenges connected to our liquidity and certainly our stock price is dreadful,” Mr. Karmazin says. “But, you know, our revenues are growing double digits. We’re growing subscribers. We’re not losing subscribers.

“So if would be unfair to compare us to a newspaper business that’s losing circulation and losing revenue, traditional television, traditional radio,” he adds. “They have fundamental company flaws or industry flaws.”

But Sirius XM does have a serious flaw in its capital structure. Its costs, which include servicing its pile of debt, appear to be too high to make the business viable.

Mr. Cheen, the analyst, agrees with Mr. Karmazin that satellite radio is a delightful product and gives him credit for showing revenue growth amid the economic downturn. “But you don’t have any unlevered, free cash flow, dude,” he says of Mr. Karmazin and his company. “In this environment, how do you walk on water?

“This is the drama of it all,” Mr. Cheen continues. “No one is suggesting this media is not a viable media. It’s just poorly capitalized.”

The conversation in TV right now is all about alternative revenue models, and product placement, and sponsored programming -- anything to replace the current broken advertising model. Yet if we take a peek at the canary in a coalmine -- the music business -- Jon Pareles finds a world where the term "selling out" has lost its stigma. As the music becomes a marketing tool for product, rather than a product itself; are artists facing new pressures to tailor their output to be marketing-friendly -- putting their creative expression behind the imperatives of the marketing machine it's selling ou--sorry -- synergizing with?

With telling ambivalence, Brooklyn Vegan, the widely read, indie-loving music blog, recently started a column, “This Week in Music Licensing: It’s Not Selling Out Anymore,” but soon dropped the “selling out” half of the title. There’s no longer a clear dividing line for selling out, if there ever was.

And as music becomes a means to an end — pushing a separate product, whether it’s a concert ticket or a clothing line, a movie scene or a Web ad — a tectonic shift is under way. Record sales channeled the taste of the broad, volatile public into a performer’s paycheck. As music sales dwindle, licensers become a far more influential target audience. Unlike nonprofessional music fans who might immerse themselves in a song or album they love, music licensers want a track that’s attractive but not too distracting — just a tease, not a revelation.

It’s almost enough to make someone miss those former villains of philistinism, the recording companies. Labels had an interest in music that would hold listeners on its own terms; selling it was their meal ticket. Labels, and to some extent radio stations and music television, also had a stake in nurturing stars who would keep fans returning to find out what happened next, allowing their catalogs to be perennially rediscovered. By contrast, licensers have no interest beyond the immediate effect of a certain song, and can save money by dealing with unknowns.

I mean, hell yeah, I downloaded that Chairlift song cause I heard it on the Ipod Nano commercial. But I also got the Glasvegas song cause I heard it on SiriusXM. Oh Lord, what's an aging hipster to do?

Well, for one thing, you could mourn the death of the Polaroid.

Ugh.

Just as I'm reaching for the Advil, and saying to myself, "yes, but Box Office receipts are up!" comes Michael Cieply to tell me it aint necessarily so...

Looking back, in fact, 2008 may be remembered as the year when Hollywood succeeded in redefining the Big Event.

A “movie of the century” — something that made you want to dress up, get in line, and act silly just to see it — used to come along every year or two. The “Star Wars” films had that quality. So did “Titanic,” in a quieter, dreamier sort of way.

But heart-stopping film events like that have been popping up every few weeks this year.

Or at least it felt that way if you were willing to close your eyes and take a ride with Hollywood’s marketing mavens and those who help them along in the media, old and new.

It’s all great fun — and, in the heat of the moment, can seem tantalizingly real. Remember the high-heeled stampede toward “Sex and the City”? What a romp! Cosmopolitans. Bus tours. Girls’ nights out.

Eventually, about 22 million tickets were sold. That puts it on a par with “Steel Magnolias” in 1989 or “The First Wives Club” in 1996 — movies that played to about the same number of viewers, but did so with considerably less noise.

“It’s certainly easier to create a media event, if you have the right stars and get the right traction,” said Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist who, with Michael Levin, has made a study of contemporary publicity in a book, “Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?,” which was recently published by Portfolio Hardcover.

The problem, Mr. Bragman said, “is that there’s shockingly little relationship between the publicity, i.e., the hype, and butts in seats.”

Of course, to bring everything full circle, and back to my little corner of the mediasphere... let's point out that at a time when hype has become so efficient and effective that we think everything's a blockbuster even if it isn't, that the Canadian Film and TV industry still gets failing grades in the very basics of publicity: phoning people back, sending out screeners, mounting innovative events, coming up with a coherent marketing message for a movie, spending money on effective ads for a broadcast premiere, etc, etc, etc.

Hollywood is staying afloat on an oceanliner of hype. And we can't even figure out how to point our dinghy at the open sea.

Right. That's it. Daddy needs a lie down and three fingers of the quality.

And no more papers today!

SALON'S HEATHER HAVRILESKY weighs in with a hilarious and bracing J'accuse against the powers that be in the TV business. When I think of how sensitive Canadain creators get to critics like John Doyle, it makes me positively giggle. Havrilesky manages to take square aim at almost every network, and many of the top shows, in a broadside entitled "The Year The Small Screen Fell Flat."

In fact, the manner in which the intelligence and intricacy of "Lost's" first seasons devolved into self-parody mirrors a larger problem with the way TV shows are staffed and managed: Trusted, known talents create stunning pilots that are picked up on the basis of one episode and a loose mess of ideas and plotlines for the first season. With a rare combination of luck and network support, the first season is declared a hit, and then the talented showrunners depart for various multimillion-dollar development deals, leaving their heirs -- less headstrong, less inventive writing teams -- to imitate their original work until they've successfully run that big, lovely ship into rocky ground once and for all. The talented showrunners are then called back from their respective highly paid but mostly half-assed secondary creations to bring the original show back to its former glory, only to find -- surprise! -- that it's beyond saving.

Show me your favorite drama that lost its luster after a season or two, and I'll show you a creator or team of co-creators who departed for greener pastures a long time ago. Let's not mince words here: The TV industry is badly run, and there's far too much big money flashed around every corner for sustainable efforts to take root. The shows that maintained their quality over several seasons -- "The Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," "The Shield," "The Wire," "Deadwood" -- were all run by stubborn, outspoken eccentrics who 1) set the bar high for themselves, year after year, 2) believed in their creation above all others and placed that belief above the big money they were offered elsewhere, 3) had faith in the network that supported and embraced their creation (in most cases, HBO), and knew that the show would never have found such a welcome home elsewhere, and 4) had no interest in drawing out their stories indefinitely, "ER"-style, past the point where hey should naturally conclude.

As I said, you may quibble over some of her individual program choices. (For my part, I find Sons of Anarchy kind of bracing, with characters at least as compelling as early Sopranos, and I also think that LOST successfully righted a two-season long slide at the end of Season 3. I can't complain much about Season 4 because as a viewer I really quite enjoyed it. But to describe Heroes as "one long, CGI-punctuated discussion between two precocious teenagers on the nature of good and evil"? Ouch.)

But it's Havrilesky's summation of the true shape of the problem facing the U.S. industry that gives me the greatest agita:

But the TV industry is scrambling to adjust its business model in a cruel and unforgiving new world, where viewers suddenly expect to watch any show they want, whenever they want it. Like newspapers, book publishing and the music industry, TV networks and cable channels are trying desperately to distribute their shows in new, convenient ways while still delivering the advertising that keeps their multibillion-dollar industry afloat.

Although DVRs have been around for several years now, 2008 was the year that regular broadcast programming seemed to lose its hold on the population once and for all. The advent and immediate popularity of Hulu, which NBC launched earlier this year, underscored how many viewers were willing to try out new formats and watch their favorite shows on new platforms. Not surprisingly, ratings have been dismal across the four major networks all year, and now advertising cutbacks due to the recession are forcing the TV industry's hand like never before.

But even as the networks scrambled to offer their shows online, hoping to bring back the audiences they were losing elsewhere, they remained confused about how to milk adequate advertising revenue from this new model. Just look at "Gossip Girl," a smart, sophisticated teen soap that sank in the traditional ratings while it remained hugely popular online. Reflecting the same bad judgment that pushed "Easy Money" off the air while salvaging "Privileged" and "90210," the CW foolishly attempted to cut off its online episodes to hungry fans, thereby alienating one of its few sources of loyal viewers.

Even if the networks figure out a way to keep their profits high under this new paradigm, they can't change the fact that their pie is being cut up into smaller and smaller pieces, shared among hundreds of cable channels, original Web programming sites, and untold new, cheaper sources of content moving forward. Shelly Palmer, author of "Television Disrupted: The Transition From Network TV to Networked TV," writes on his Web site, "When the dust settles, there will not be room for four major broadcast networks all producing high-end shows, all week long."

Why is this so scary?

Because I work in Canada. And in Canada, they haven't even mastered the art of listening to or managing talent at any level. In Canada, the discussions about how to extend the life of the broadcast TV model don't go much farther than "go to the CRTC and see if they'll give you free money from cable subscribers."

The changes that have come down the pike in the last year -- the speed of them -- is truly astounding, and the simple, shit-scary fact is that Canadian broadcast business does not have their traditional two or three year window to dick around and figure out how they're going to cherry pick a solution.

The business model here -- buy U.S. shows at dumped fire sale prices, and show 'em at the same time while you paste on your commercials -- was always a far more fragile model than the one in the USA. But as the model that made their piggyback-industry possible crumbles, all the signs point toward the mandarins here taking in exactly the wrong lessons, and doubling down on a dying strategy.

The development infrastructure here is poor and listless, without clear goals. There's still the hangover of thinking of homegrown fresh product as afterthought. And Canada, even more than the U.S., does not do well with embracing original thinkers, stubborn people committed to a singular goal, or obsessives. The Tall Poppy rules are in full effect.

There's a gunfight coming, and from where I sit, it looks more likely than ever that someone here's going to get their head blown off without ever having had the guts to take the safety off.