On April Fools Jokes

For a textbook example of how to set up and sell an April Fools' Day joke, see the series of posts from American-born Canadian screenwriter Dennis McGrath. He started slowly with a vague rumour about possible changes as Canwest-Global. Next he moved on to a more detailed rumour involving real places people and events but still eminently plausible. And then he sprang the trap, "revealing" a merger between Canwest-Global and CTV-Globemedia to become CTV Canglobe Media, reshuffling their programming assets to form the ultimate in demographic targeting. One network would be Global Dude, featuring programming oriented to a male audience, while CTV would retain the female oriented shows. The only sticking point was supposedly which network would get House. In addition to his website, Dennis also used other assets – notably his Twitter account – to tease the story.

A nice addition – apparently triggered by the April Fools' Day joke from another site was the story that the new company would also integrate the assets of Toronto based Naked News Broadcasting Network (NSFW of course), with the Global Dude news being done by nude anchors both male and female. (Actually this isn't a totally absurd idea; Naked News has a reputation for excellent news coverage in addition to the nudity. Based on past rulings from the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, the Naked News could easily be shown on broadcast stations – and was seen for a time on CITY-TV in Toronto – since the nudity is in a non-sexual context, although the duration of the nudity force it to be aired later than the 9 p.m. watershed.) I'm ashamed that I didn't think of it.

Of course, in keeping with Canadian traditions related to April Fools' Day Dennis did reveal that it was all a joke at Noon and used the opportunity to show readers how this applies to screenwriting:

• Basic plausibility allows you to slip in the ridiculous; just like a spoonful of sugar making the medicine go down.
  
• Let the rope out slowly.
  
• Details, details, details.
  
• There's always a spoiler.
  
• Reward your audience.
  

Dennis's series of posts are a beautiful example of how to subtly play with your audience, and why – really – you can't do a great April Fools' joke on the spur of the moment like I did with mine (I had been too busy labouring over the PTC thing to really work on this one). I bow in the presence of a master.

Because We’re Canadian And We Can

Canwest Global press release (not) – hold to 1, April:

Fooled by the size of the company's debt many analysts have expected the Global television network to retrench and to become even more of a bastion of American network shows than it already is, in spite of CRTC regulations. The opposite seems to be the case as Canwest today announced that starting next season the network will only broadcast Canadian programming.

The new policy was announced by the new director of media relations for Global TV, Avril Poisson:

"Global Television is just pleased as punch to announce our new programming plan which will be effective immediately. The slogan for our network's new policy is 'Because we're Canadian and we can.' This new slogan recognises the differences between Canadian broadcasting regulations and what goes on in the United States. This new policy presents a comprehensive redirection for the network and encompasses drama, reality-competition, and something called comedy which I'm not really familiar with.

"In the field of drama we recognise that our current business model is broken. In the past we have been focussed on the first run syndication market as a way to create Canadian content without actually spending our own money. Even if we were able to sell a piece of crap show for two years it represented Canadian content and we were able to run it for years after production wrapped up. However the first run syndication market is no longer what it was thanks to things like The CW and MyNetwork TV taking our market away. So we've decided to switch our focus to co-productions with American cable networks such as FX, Showtime, MTV, TNT, Spike and so on. In fact we'll be aiming our sales at just about every network that has ever been criticized by the Parents Television Council. The shows we are producing will be gritty and real and will of course include strong language and nudity. They should produce strong ratings as they are shows that American broadcast networks can't show but aren't a problem here because we're Canadian and we can!

"This part of our drama plan won't be available to the network for between six months and a year depending on the contracts we sign with the American nets which want to present all of the episodes before they go free to air, particularly in areas such as Windsor-Detroit and Vancouver-Seattle where our stations can be picked up with an antenna by poor people who don't have cable or satellite dishes. As a stopgap measure we will reaching back into the history of the network. Back when Canwest-Global was just CKND in Winnipeg we won many many Gemini Awards, and Nellies before that with small dramas that worked as an anthology show. Sure, they only aired during the summer when no one was actually watching TV but they were cheaper than dirt to make and earned us a lot of prestige while not actually having anyone in them you'd know. We're going to make a new series of these shows and may even be able to find a market for them in places where American culture isn't really available, like Cuba. because we're Canadian and we can.

"Producing reality-competition shows are a new area for us, but from what we've observed this is an amazing growth area and we're really surprised that no Canadian producer has done anything with it. We will be licensing a couple of ideas from several producers including a Canadian Big Brother, which will be more free-wheeling, profane and sexy (that means swearing and nudity won't be censored), and a Canadian Last Comic Standing which will feature jokes that can't be used on an American show, because we're Canadian and we can. Still most of our reality-competition shows will be original to our network. We've observed that many American reality-competitions are thinly imitations of other shows that are just different enough that no one can sue. So we will be making The Great Canadian Race – a show where competitors go across Canada, from Ottawa to Lake Nipigon and from Point Pellee to Kirkland Lake (what do you mean there's more to Canada than that – that's crazy talk); The Intern in which competitors live in a Toronto loft and have internships with Global Toronto with the winner getting a job at one of our stations away from Toronto – we'll see them at work and at play. Since people like dancing shows we have Anyone Can Dance in which ordinary people instead of celebrities compete with professional partners. There's Strip Poker After Dark which is pretty much self-explanatory. And there are many more that we're not ready to talk about, but they'll be smart (well smart for reality-competition shows – these things are relative) and sexy (meaning lots of naked flesh) which is allowed because we're Canadian and we can.

"In terms of comedy, well umm, well uh, well to be honest with you we've never really done much comedy. We've got Howie Do It of course which we do because we can sell it to NBC and maybe they'll let us do Deal Or No Deal Canada again. I sincerely apologize to my American friends but that's what happens when you make a deal with the devil...or Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman which is much the same thing. As for sitcoms, well I suppose we can steal some ideas from somewhere, but I don't suppose they'll be successful, because we're Canadian and we can't. Well at least not the people Global can afford to hire.

"So there you have Global's master plan for restoring financial viability to the network. If this doesn't work we have a few other ideas. We're looking at CRTC regulations and there may be a loophole that will allow us to fill the line-up with British and French shows because they're considered Canadian. If that doesn't work we can always sell our entire network to some sucker entrepreneur while we keep the profitable specialty cable services, because we're Canadian and we can!

"One thing is sure: this isn't not a joke."

The Campaign For Real Cheese – The Truth

Okay, as you've probably guessed after a day of seeing it, the shift by this blog to becoming the official organ of The Campaign For Real Cheese was in fact a hyper elaborate April Fools' Day joke. HAHA!

It's a little more than that of course. Everything I wrote in the article is actually how I feel about processed cheese. It is an anathema that is barely edible whether wrapped or unwrapped. Using real cheese as opposed to processed cheese slices when topping a burger or making a grilled cheese sandwich is something that I've take to doing, and you can really taste the difference. Real cheese is pretty much better for everything.

However at its heart, The Campaign For Real Cheese is a bit of an allegory for what has become of broadcast TV with the seeming power of groups like the Parents Television Council and the fear that these groups instill in advertisers and networks. The PTC would like to see a homogenization of television so that everything is suitable for the least discerning tastes – children. Now I'm not knocking family programming. In fact I want to see more shows on the major networks that families can sit down and watch together. But let's be realistic and understand that these programs can't be the only choice that we get. A perpetual diet of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader or Extreme Makeover Home Edition (two PTC favourites) is no more in the best interest of the viewer than a perpetual diet of Desperate Housewives or Criminal Minds. The big difference is that groups like the PTC want a perpetual diet of shows like Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader and Extreme Makeover Home Edition, while none of the broadcast networks is advocating that every show be Desperate Housewives or Criminal Minds. They realise that their viewing audience has different tastes, and the networks are in the business of appealing to those tastes by developing a blend of shows on any given night that appeals to desirable audiences.

Television, freed from the constraints that would be imposed by groups like the PTC that want all TV to be "child safe" has the potential to provide a variety of "flavours" in programming terms. We're seeing that in the realm of cable TV where stations exist to service niches in the market. The point being of course that few, if any, viewers restrict their choices to a single one of these channels. They select an item here and another there to watch not unlike choosing food at a buffet. Broadcast TV – to carry this restaurant analogy further than it probably deserves to be carried – has to try to provide a menu that satisfies all tastes. They broadcast; they have the ability and the desire/need to reach everyone, or at least to service a far wider spectrum of people than a cable network needs to in order to be successful.

Anyway, that's this year's attempt at an April Fools' joke out of the way. Though I kind of did like that orange page colour....

The Campaign For REAL Cheese

After considerable thought and soul searching, I have come to the decision to devote this blog to my current obsession, the Campaign for Real Cheese.

I have long been aware of the need for an effort to be made to defend the use of real cheese in cooking against the eternal enemy – Processed Cheese Slices – however it was brought forcibly to my attention during my mother's recent recuperation from surgery. On Superbowl Sunday, after visiting my mother in the hospital we went to the lounge of a neighbourhood restaurant to catch a few minutes of the game and get a bite to eat. I wasn't overly hungry so I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. It came topped with cheese – or so the menu said. In fact it came with a processed cheese slice, and one that hadn't melted either. The sandwich was damned near inedible and although the processed cheese slice – or as I like to refer to it, the cheese flavoured piece of plastic (CFP) – wasn't entirely to blame, it was a contributing factor. All of which galvanised my resolve that something must be done.

Real Cheese (right) and a "processed Cheese slice."
Which would you rather eat?

CFP has become ubiquitous. Order a cheeseburger and it invariably comes with a piece of CFP. A grilled cheese sandwich? CFB. A sub? CFP. And I wouldn't be surprised if those stuffed chicken breasts and veal cutlets that are allegedly Chicken Dianna or Veal Cordon Bleu aren't made with CFP. And it's not just good old reliable Cheddar anymore. They now make CFP in Monterey Jack, Mozzarella, and Swiss. Can Havarti and (my personal favourite) Avril Poisson be safe for long? I wouldn't bet on it. The only thing protecting Brie and Camembert is that they're runny cheeses, but just you wait, the CFP people are working on that too; I'm certain of it.

Cheese Flavoured Plastic, wrapped and unwrapped.
Can you tell the difference?

But does it make a difference you ask? The answer of course is an emphatic YES! There are notes and highlights in a piece of real cheese that cannot be captured in an over homogenized bit of CFP. Cut a slice of real Cheddar and unwrap some CFP and try them side by side. No comparison, right? That's because the manufacturing process that is responsible for CFP aims at stamping out a product that is consistent and uniform in taste. The first slice of CFP of the year will have the same taste as the last, and that taste must be "inoffensive" with inoffensive presumably being determined by survey groups and people who write letters to manufacturers.

But it is heating the cheese that really shows off the difference. Try it out. Make a grilled cheese sandwich with a piece of CFP. It tastes the same as unheated CFP except that if you're lucky the CFP has melted (if you're not you get my Super Sunday chicken sandwich). Now grate some Cheddar and make a grilled cheese sandwich with Real Cheese. A totally different aroma and flavour emerges. The heating releases the Lirpa and Sloof within the cheese. There's a tang to Real Cheese that doesn't exist with CFP. And it enhances the flavour of meat as well. One of my favourite pubs serves (or served since my brother informs me that they seem to have a new cook who isn't as good as the one whose work I enjoyed in the past) a cheeseburger made with Cheddar sliced from a block. The juices of the beef combined with the cheese in an way that enhances the flavour of both. And don't even get me started on chicken with real Mozzarella.

The Campaign for Real Cheese realises that CFP is more convenient and consistent than Real Cheese, that it reduces costs for restaurants, and avoids complaints from a handful of people who don't like the complexity tastes that real cheese brings to the table. These people are the real danger. They want a product that is so bland and nondescript that it is palatable for the least educated tastes. What they fail to recognise is that by reducing flavour to the level that is acceptable to a portion of the population they are treating everyone as if they have the same uneducated palate. Uniformity and homogeneity aren't desirable, rather they are the enemy of quality. The Campaign for Real Cheese wants a world in which the consumer can order a cheeseburger with real cheese on it or, if someone absolutely insists on having one, a cheeseburger topped with CFP.

Today’s Topical Post

It's Juno weekend in the temporary home of the Junos. You'd be amazed at the sort of thing that happens surrounding these sorts of events and the people that you meet. In fact, the other day I ran into a guy I went to high school with. He's a big man with one of the smaller labels. We got to talking and it turned out that he needed a guy to become the travelling manager for a couple of his acts while they were on tour and he offered me the job. I told him that I didn't drive a car let alone a bus but he assured me that they needed someone who could work with the talent and keep things running smoothly. I agreed to take the job – well with the money and fringe benefits they were offering how could I not accept. This won't interfere with my blogging as I was promised a company laptop.

I'll be working with two acts. The first is called Lirpa Sloof. They're a Scandinavian fusion band (in this case that means that there are members from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland) made up of three women, two men and a castrated cat, that performs the complete works of Abba in the original Swedish but with a reggae beat. They also do a lot of things backwards. For example the drummer sits facing away from the audience. This is because he can't perform if he can actually see an audience in front of him. Of course if you saw him you'd realize that he was doing the audience a real favour. They're still working on a way to play their guitars backwards which is a lot harder than you might think. One of the band's big numbers is doing Waterloo in Swedish backwards – they call it Oolretaw and oddly enough it's not bad.

The other act I'll be working with is a young chanteuse from Quebec named Avril Poisson. She may be the real problem. Not only does she have the nasty habit of wanting to get naked at the most inconvenient times – usually when she's on stage, although we're trying to restrict her nudist tendencies to the bus – but there's the whole language issue. There are some people who want Avril to anglicize her given name while the tour is in small town Alberta – in other words to make her first name April. Fools in Alberta might try to disrupt her shows if they know she's from Quebec, or at least that's what the corporate types in Toronto think. Personally I think the fact that she only sings in French – and the Joual slang dialect at that – might be a bit of a tip off. Of course none of that will matter if she starts taking off her clothes on stage. And besides, she's already working under a stage name; her real name is Poisson d'Avril (her parents indulged in way too many recreational pharmaceuticals before she was born).

Wish me luck – I'll probably need it!

Short Takes - April 1, 2006

I've decided to start referring to the times that shows air on the US and Canadian broadcast networks as being in the "first", "second" or "third" hours of prime time. It's easier than saying (or typing) 8 Eastern and Pacific, 7 Central and Mountain. As we saw with the Without A Trace situation the "third hour" varies from region to region and in the United States at least it does matter. Complicating things even more for me is that Saskatchewan does not join the rest of North America in the switch to Daylight Savings Time this weekend. The world shifts around us which means that times for everything but networks served by local stations. In other words to "8 Eastern and Pacific, 7 Central and Mountain" you can add "and 6 in Saskatchewan.

- Prison Break to change name for Season 2: Well duh. I mean you can't keep calling it Prison Break after they break out of prison unless of course they escape from one prison right into another. No word on a new name but I suppose they'll have to include something that will remind viewers that this is the show with plot holes you can drive an Abrams tank through but people loved in its first season anyway.

- CBS moving The Amazing Race to Wednesday's first hour: About bloody time if you ask me. The Amazing Race was ticking along quite happily in its Tuesday second hour time slot even with the execrable Family Edition. Then CBS panicked over American Idol - not without reason since they probably remember when Idol killed The West Wing in the ratings and did such significant damage to Amazing Race 2 that the network didn't trust it and put a revived version of Star Search in the slot and delayed the third edition of The Amazing Race until late spring. That nearly killed the show right there and for two season it became a summer replacement. This time around CBS has also had a "promising" new show called The Unit. They put that up against American Idol - and not coincidentally right after the military themed NCIS - and moved The Amazing Race to the third hour where it's only up against Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Boston Legal, and oh yes loses a lot of viewers who watch the show with their kids because seeing other parts of the world is educational. The new time will put it up against Deal Or No Deal, Bones, George Lopez and Freddie. If nothing else should tell us whether America wants mindless (Deal Or No Deal and the ABC comedies) or intelligent (The Amazing Race and Bones) shows. The problem at CBS is that their bench is way too deep and shows like Courting Alex and Out Of Practice (both of which had been drawing good ratings on Mondays) get put on hiatus and then shifted to Wednesday to replace two shows which had been doing adequately but weren't loved by CBS executives and were cancelled. Other network execs wish they had the problems CBS does.

- Commander-in-Chief moves to Thursday's third hour: I don't think it'll save the show, but it's an interesting move on ABC's part to try to compete against ER and Without A Trace with a drama rather than their tried and true newsmagazine Primetime. I expect Commander-in-Chief to wither on the vine in the new time slot but the big question should be whether this is the end of ABC's "other" newsmagazine or just a break.

- Dick Wolf must be happy: It looks like In Justice is toast. First Jason O'Mara, who plays investigator Charles Conti signed to do a pilot for ABC called Drift about an insomniac detective, and now word comes that Kyle MacLachlan who played lawyer David Swain will be a recurring character for a while on Desperate Housewives playing yet another poor deluded fool man who falls for Susan Meyer. I'll miss the show - even though I had a tendency to miss the show - if only as an antidote to contemporary TV's seeming addiction to the idea that cops and prosecutors are perfect beings who never make a mistake while defense attorneys are worse slime than the people they defend. This is a view championed by Nancy Grace in real life and by Dick Wolf in fiction and one that I'm not at all comfortable with. I can't help wondering if ABC is making a mistake by apparently dumping In Justice and burning off Commander-in-Chief on Thursday nights. Why not burn off Commander-in-Chief on Fridays and try In Justice in the third hour of Thursday?

- Is this some kind of a joke?: Fans of the original CSI may have noticed that William Petersen wasn't in last Thursday's episode. Rumour has it that Petersen has shot his last show. According to reports Petersen will be joining the cast of the next Star Trek film which will be a prequel to the original series set aboard the original Starship Enterprise under her first Captain. Indeed Petersen will be playing the lead role as Captain Robert April. Fools think that the first Captain of the Enterprise was Christopher Pike who was played in the series pilot by Jeffrey Hunter. However they forget the animated series which included an episode featuring April. Fools - including many officials at Paramount - doubt whether the animated series fit into the "official" Star Trek canon, but in the day no less an authority than Gene Roddenberry stated that it was.

My New Dedication

I am well aware that you, gentle readers, are probably getting sick and tired of my fixation with Doctor Who. Therefore I am sure that you will be pleased to hear that I have decided to rededicate this blog to the single objective of reviving the greatest program ever to appear on television: The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. told the adventures of a young espionage agent named April Dancer and starred Noel Harrison (son of Rex) as Mark Slate, while the always delectable Stephanie Powers played the ever so yummy April. Fools ran the networks then as now and the series was cancelled after a mere 29 episodes were made. Many considered the show to be a failure and point to the fact that only two of the writers were willing to post their names in the credits. This is of course nonsense. In truth the writers of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. were amongst the greatest literary figures of the 20th Century but simply were unwilling to admit that they wrote for television, such was the stigma that the medium was under at the time. It is said that an episode of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. was the first and only time that Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer ever worked together. A number of film directors also worked on the series, but of necessity used pseudonyms to protect their reputations. Careful detective work and handwriting comparisons have proven positively that Stanley Kubrick and John Frankenheimer each directed multiple episodes.

My personal preference would be to have Charisma Carpenter cast as April. Fools joke that she is not a strong enough actress to step into the shoes of the great Stephanie Powers. Freddie Prinze Jr. would be ideal as her partner, with Brian Blessed as Alexander Waverly, their boss.