Toronto Life: Spectator

Spectator

Posts with category ‘Television’


Received wisdom not yet in place for the Internet

Lately, I spent some time talking to a guy whose job it is to advise another guy (one with more money) exactly what the future holds for the media. In that kind of job, it’s important to have forceful, reasoned views that point the way to concrete action. Why else would the latter pay the former to tell him what to do with his money? As required, the former went out and did scads of research into the future of the Internet—most importantly how to “monetize” content, which is the question pretty much everyone’s asking at the moment. At one point, he patted a stack of papers in front of him and announced that research shows people don’t want to watch TV on the Internet; they want to watch TV on their TVs. He said this in an effort to buttress his argument that people don’t “migrate” from one media to another (radio to TV, TV to the Internet, the Internet to another solar system, etc., etc.). Why then is The New York Times reporting that Google—one of the experts on how to monetize the Web—has just signed a deal with the creator of the cartoon Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane, to provide Web-only distribution for original material?

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Satirists of Canada: Your day has come!

The past few days have seen a considerable improvement in the climate for free speech in this country. First, the Canadian Human Rights Commission pitched out the egregious complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean’s (and Mark Steyn). And now, the Supreme Court of Canada, courtesy of the good offices of Justice Ian Binnie, reconfirmed the importance of and extended the purview of what counts as fair comment. A read-through of Binnie’s opinion—which spoke for the court’s 9–0 rout reversing a B.C. Court of Appeal decision that favoured anti-gay activist Kari Simpson over shock jock Rafe Mair—reveals a veritable free speech manifesto:

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Falling over ourselves to pay tribute to Tim Russert

Tim Russert, in case you hadn’t noticed, is dead. The longest serving host of the NBC political chat show Meet the Press passed to his eternal reward recently, and the Excited States of America lived up (or down) to its somewhat sardonic anglophilic nickname. At his memorial service, Bruce Springsteen sang and eulogized via video hookup. This in tribute to Russert’s working-class roots in benighted Buffalo (a city rapidly overtaking Detroit as a symbol of rust belt decline). At the “request of the family,” McCain and Obama sat together at the funeral, implying that, even in death, only Tim could reconcile America’s political divide. And more or less anyone in the media who deemed his passing worth mentioning was slavering in their praise. Even the New Yorker’s cleverer-than-thou David Remnick heaped on the praise with just the right touch of superiority.

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As long as the CBC is losing things…

OK, so CBC lost Hockey Night in Canada’s theme music. Now, having set that happy precedent, perhaps the Ceeb brain trust might, for the sake of good taste and our collective sanity, consider losing this jacket (and maybe even the guy in it).

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Bernardo tape released to the media, but not without pointless proviso

One of the surreal aspects of our 24-hour real-time media universe came into precise focus this morning in Justice David McComb’s fourth-floor courtroom at 361 University Avenue. He ordered that copies of Paul Bernardo’s interview with police regarding the Robert Baltovich case be released to the press. The order was carried out over a couple of hours, rendering the logistics in this matter chaotic, if not absurd. While a gaggle of press vultures (including this stooped reporter) hung over his shoulder, Iain MacKinnon—the lawyer who argued on behalf of CBC, CTV, CanWest and Rogers—burned copies of the original onto DVDs in order to make good on the court’s order. He even used his own laptop.

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Canada’s other national anthem sold to the highest bidder

After a 40-year run on CBC, Hockey Night in Canada has lost its theme song to CTV. Composer Dolores Claman—who had held out for a better licensing deal from CBC and then turned around and sold the rights in perpetuity to its competitor—said, “I am very moved by how so many Canadians have taken the hockey theme to heart. We are so pleased the song has found a new home.” What sentimentality. She made a smart financial decision. At any rate, the fool in all this is the CBC’s bumbler-in-chief, Richard Stursberg. He’s in charge of the national broadcaster and allowed its arguably most recognizable icon to slip through his fingers. Nice work. At least he’s still got George Stroumboulopoulos.

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The newsworthiest breast in Canada

At this time last week, l’affaire Bernier was taking wing and sending a Canadian news story flying around the world: “Over the course of 72 hours in midweek,” reported the Globe, “Ms. Couillard was the subject of thousands of articles and 821 TV reports in no fewer than 61 countries.” Moreover, “she took sole possession of a remarkable six per cent of all U.S. news coverage.” But in the blogosphere—where currency is the, uh, currency—sometimes it takes a solid week for a particular issue to come into focus. Take, for instance, John Barber’s “satire” of this coverage in last Saturday’s Globe. It was printed under the slug “Analysis” and titled “Thousands of articles, 821 TV shows, 61 countries and one breast.” That “breast” is the first of seven mentions (eight, if you count the cutline) in the piece, accompanied by two instances of the more ribald “knockers.”

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CityTV celebrates Ted Rogers’ 75th birthday by flouting journalistic standards

Canada’s idea of a media mogul (i.e., bland and ruthless), billionaire Ted Rogers (number 173 on the Forbes list, with seven-odd billion dollars), turned 75 years old on Tuesday. Rogers still makes news, and his pursuit of an NFL franchise for Toronto is one of the big business and sports stories of the moment. So when CityTV’s Web site decides to cover its owner’s birthday, while it’s a stretch, it does not beggar all credulity. If you were expecting a bland, pleasantly inoffensive statement of fact, much in keeping with the man himself, then you’d be wrong. CityTV provided a jaw-dropping hagiographic blow job that makes Mark Steyn’s coverage of Conrad Black look like All the President’s Men.

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Cue the madness—Drabinsky and Gottlieb are now on trial

After a mere decade of delays and distractions, former theatre impresario and alleged fraudster Garth Drabinsky will finally see the inside of a Canadian courtroom. He and his Livent Inc. partner Myron Gottlieb are facing criminal charges before Ontario Superior Court Judge Mary Lou Benotto—she of the tainted blood trial. Reporting on CBC Radio this morning, Mike Hornbrook pointed out that it’s considered “Canada’s largest ever prosecution of corporate fraud”—a good thing, too, considering the Americans were ready to prosecute these two as long ago as 1999. Unlike their former board member Conrad Black, Gottlieb and Drabinsky had the good sense to hole up in Canada and wait for the RCMP to conduct its investigation (an indictment took three years). As for the subsequent delay in the case coming to trial, Drabinsky can thank (in part) a certain aforementioned peer of the realm: the Crown was only too happy to accommodate Eddie Greenspan’s crowded calendar as he flew about the continent defending Black.

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Corks pop at the CBC after hair’s breadth victory over Global

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Among the more hair-pulling, knuckle-biting, rant-inducing items of last week was the CBC’s widely reported announcement (cue the confetti, elephants and brass bands) that for the winter/spring season of ’07–’08 the CBC beat Global, moving into second place among Canadian television networks, just behind CTV. Pardon my Slovenian, but so bleeping what? For CBC Strangeloves to leap up and down in Valkyric ecstasy because they “posted a prime-time share of 7.8 during the winter/spring season, compared with Global’s share of 7.4, relying on BBM Nielsen Media data that were collected from viewers aged 2-plus from October 1, 2007, to April 6, 2008 (7 to 11 p.m.)” thoroughly demeans what is supposed to be a noble enterprise. Quacking on about numbers in this context reminds me of those godawful attempts by various chinless royals to humanize the Crown by appearing on British game shows.

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Push comes to shove for Conrad Black

Conrad Black’s latest misadventure, a lawsuit brought by a Chicago cameraman seeking punitive and compensatory damages issuing from Lord Black’s alleged attempt to remove him from his shoulder, was much reported in the Canadian press recently. Each occasion of its telling included a standard piece of now-hilarious legal bulletproofing: “None of the allegations have been proven in court.”

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Gaffe of the Week: Tory hacks caught on tape!

This morning’s on-line version of The Hill Times offers a thorough and thoughtful summary of what, for lack of a better handle, I’ll call the Sparrow’s Folly. I am referring, of course, to the ill-fated effort of the PMO’s media machine to spin the RCMP’s investigation into alleged election finance malfeasance. In events that sound remarkably like the embarrassing jokes told by your Uncle Lester after several too many at Christmas, three Torys—a flack (party spokesman Ryan Sparrow), a hack (Tory campaign director Doug Finley) and a lawyer (Paul Lepsoe)—held a secret briefing in an Ottawa hotel for selected journalists (this after changing the location to put other ink-stained hounds off the scent). They were found out, confronted by the excluded journos and forced to flee down a fire escape. I’m not making that up. Promise.

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Rays of sanity in an otherwise crazy campaign

A few days ago, in response to my post on the Clinton-Obama debate in Philadelphia, the following note from Princeton politics professor Peter Meyers was forwarded to me. It read in part:

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Bill C-10 sucks, report Ang Lee, Trailer Park Boy

Following in the footsteps of Sarah Polley’s C-10 protestations, it’s practically the march on Montgomery these days up Ottawa way. Robb Wells, better known as the comically Machiavellian Ricky on Trailer Park Boys, went before the CRTC last week to demand more Canadian content on our TV screens. While he was at it, the Star reported that he took an overdue shot at cable maven Jim Shaw, the Alberta tight-ass whose complaints about Trailer Park Boys merge with C-10 to form a nexus of idiocy.

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Hillary Clinton: one part Susan B. Anthony, one part Carly Simon and one part Joe McCarthy

In the aftermath of what was, by just about anybody’s estimation, a rout of Barack Obama in Wednesday night’s primary debate, Hillary Clinton moved to the horsey hills of Philadelphia college country to conduct a town hall in front of an adoring crowd at Haverford College (the oldest college of Quaker origin in the United States—who knew?). Hillary kicked back in front of a mostly female audience, sharing a stage with her mother and daughter and, for the better part of 90 minutes, conducted a sisterly love-in whose subtext was “Sisters, we certainly kicked some ass last night.”

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Dispatches from the surreal calamity of last night’s Democratic leadership debate

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Last night, in a massive Philadelphia museum devoted to the American Constitution, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hammered away at each other—gladiators in the great Democratic political contest. The debate itself, part of the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, took place in a smallish TV theatre and was moderated by ABC correspondents Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Outside that small room, though, in a massive cathedral of spin, looking out 30-foot-high windows at Independence Hall, a thousand journos banged away at laptops, murmured into microphones and adjusted their ties and blouses before the camera. This horde represented an array of newspapers, Web sites, blogs, and radio and TV stations bearing a Dadaesque constellation of acronyms from throughout the world—ABC, NBC, CBS, WLS, WLAY, WABC, WDKA, WSYR, BBC, CNN, C-SPAN—most of which were repeated out along 6th Street, where satellite trucks stretched into the distance like a futuristic trailer park and news helicopters floated above. It was American madness pure and thick, and I wandered through it, as Leonard Cohen would say, like a lost Canadian.

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Sarah Polley warns that Bill C-10 may look good at dinner, but we’ll regret it in the morning

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Sarah Polley is in Ottawa today along with a lot of other “Canadian stars” telling the Senate to amend Bill C-10 so as to prevent Tory hacks from yanking film financing after the fact if the content bothers their constituents. Questioned on CBC-TV this morning, Polley said, “Ultimately there are gaps in the thinking here.… Of course, over a dinner party this sounded good, but when we really look at it, it really does amount to censorship…and we will stop at nothing until these provisions are dropped.”

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15 laugh-free years in, The Royal Canadian Air Farce is mercifully pulled from CBC

In a memo from the Department of Waywayoverdue, the CBC announced today that it’s dumping the relentlessly unfunny Royal Canadian Air Farce. And, in typically Canadian fashion, it was all made to seem as if it wasn’t really ending so much as continuing:

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“This is my life”

Whether you’re Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat; no matter how high-minded your campaign; no matter how clever your tactics; whether you’re running for parliament, city council, president, senate, congress or dog catcher—in the end, there’s only one thing that matters in electoral politics: money. And getting it—even giving it—can be pretty unpleasant (just ask Eliot Spitzer’s dad or Tony Rezko).

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Hey, Toronto, why should we take Richard Florida’s word for it?

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A while back, my colleague Philip Preville and Toronto’s newly minted urban affairs media guru Richard Florida crossed swords over the perils and opportunities of civic boosterism in T.O. On the whole, they grudgingly agreed to disagree. Florida acknowledged that he was something of an optimist: “I have been wondering for some time now why people like Preville are so negative and insecure about what Jane Jacobs said is North America’s greatest city.” And Preville agreed that “being a negative kind of guy, I’d rather focus on problems and prod people toward solutions.” I raise all this because I spent part of the weekend traipsing around Philadelphia and came across a column by Florida in The Inquirer titled “Why Philadelphia’s economic future looks so bright.” It’s essentially a love letter to the city:

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On the complexity of Rob Ford

In his blog on the Rob Ford imbroglio today, Philip Preville hits a walk-off home run. Preville gets it exactly right. The entire blessed mess is sad, tedious and points to the need for the 24/7 news maw to step back occasionally and wonder silently at the horror that is our human lot.

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Nutbar Puritanism alive and well at the FCC, Stephen Harper’s cabinet table

“The issue of vulgar speech on the nation’s regulated airwaves, a flash point for decades, reached the Supreme Court again on Monday,” reported yesterday morning’s New York Times.

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CBC execs: low on reason, high on the hog

Yesterday’s Toronto Sun reported on its freedom of information requests that dug up the following on the expenditures of senior CBC executives:

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British invasion: Can The Guardian and the BBC win over American readers?

One of the hoarier shibboleths dug up by the fuss over the NAFTA leaks is the inevitable palaver over the asymmetrical relationship between “them” (Americans) and “us” (Canadians). We all know that song—they don’t pay enough attention to us, they take us for granted, and when they do pay attention, it’s only to patronize us and/or dismiss us (Gawker defines Canada as “the large mass of semi-arable land blocking Montana’s view of the Arctic”). We all know it’s much worse than that: they simply don’t think about us except to do and say all of the above.

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Tucker Carlson handed ass, pink slip

Well, that didn’t take long. Though it got buried under Eliot Spitzer’s wandering libido, MSNBC cancelled Tucker Carlson’s show, Tucker, yesterday. It’s unclear whether it had anything to do with his abysmal performance last Friday (see below) during which Tucker was handed his ass by a reporter from The Scotsman for defending the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy that protects established figures in the U.S. from genuine journalistic interrogation and accountability.

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Journalism 101: Tucker Carlson thinks he knows when the record is on

Surprisingly, electoral politics is not the most interesting thing about the hullabaloo surrounding Samantha Power’s resignation from the Obama campaign over her “off the record” comments describing Hillary Clinton as a “monster.” For Spectator, the real issue concerns the rights and responsibilities governing reporters and their subjects. In an interview on MSNBC last Friday, right-wing weenie Tucker Carlson confronted Scotsman reporter Gerri Peev on his now-cancelled show, asking her why she wouldn’t have honoured Ms. Power’s after-the-fact request that her remarks be treated as “off the record”:

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Obama, Clinton and Saturday Night Live in the hall of mirrors

Coverage of the American election is turning into a hall of mirrors. It’s created an infinite reflection of the media covering the media covering the media, ad infinitum. Take yesterday’s piece in The New York Times by Katherine Q. Seelye titled “News Coverage Changes, and So Does Tone of the Campaign.” Seelye reports that since a skit on Saturday Night Live taking the piss out of the press’ fawning coverage of Obama aired two weeks ago, scrutiny of Mr. Obama has increased:

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Avi Lewis: pompous, literal and working for Al Jazeera

Ever wonder what happened to CBC journalist and lefty icon Avi Lewis? Well, here’s the skinny: According to the National Post, Mr. Naomi Klein is settling into a new job as a talking head at the Arab news network Al Jazeera, working out of Washington.

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Bleeding the CBC is the government’s God-given right

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Filed under “P” for “pigs flying in formation; possibility of” is a CP wire story reporting that the Commons Heritage committee “is recommending the federal government commit ‘stable, multi-year funding’ to the CBC.” What? And take away the God-given right of every federal government since the Mulroney era to cut the national broadcaster’s year-over-year budget, thereby forcing it to put on “populist” T&A claptrap like MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives?

Forget it.

• CBC should receive stable, multi-year funding: report [Globe and Mail]
• MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives [CBC]

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Dateline NBC crosses the line

If the excruciatingly worthy 10-page pullout section in yesterday’s Globe describing in gruesome detail the most uneventful federal budget in human memory (oh, all right, Canadian memory) left you with the uneasy feeling that journalism was less vacuous, vicious and underhanded than you might have thought, then may I recommend a little story on page C6 of yesterday’s New York Times. In it, the writer Alan Feuer describes a $105-million lawsuit pitting the family of a deceased alleged pedophile against NBC.

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Jeanne Beker busts out at the Oscars

A couple of sidebar observations on the Canadian Oscar coverage Sunday night:

In her interview with Barbara Walters, Ellen Page pointed out the difference between what is understated and fundamentally decent and what is crass and fundamentally gauche. And while Ms. Page rendered unto Caesar (we all gotta make a living), she proved you don’t necessarily have to wax his laurel while you’re at it.

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Welcome to Spectator

A little over half an hour into Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane takes control of the moribund New York Inquirer and fires the editor. On completing his fourth draft of the front page of his maiden edition, Kane turns to his soulmate and dramatic critic Jedediah Leland and reads to him a prospective declaration of principles for the paper: “I’ll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them…with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings.”

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