Superbowl 3-D – What Will I Be Seeing?

Absolutely nothing! (In 3-D. At least as far as I can tell.)

This saga is all part of the vagaries of the Canadian broadcasting system. The first thing you need to know is that many years ago the Canadian networks made a deal with the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Comission (CRTC) that requires Canadian cable companies to substitute the local Canadian signal over any American signal of the same show provided that the Canadian and American shows start at the same time. So, for example, if CTV has CSI on Thursday at 8 p.m. Saskatoon time, and CBS has the same episode of CSI on Thursday at 8 p.m. Saskatoon time, the cable company has to put the CTV signal over the cable channel that we get CBS on. It has to be the same episode or the same sporting event and it has to start at the same time. This has caused some problems in the past when a sporting event has run long (as they inevitably do) and what I assume must be the computer at the cable company doesn't know about it. Shades of the "Heidi game" if that game you're watching is suddenly pulled off for a show you hate. This is known as "simultaneous substitution" or simsub. This way the ads that the networks sell get seen by everyone who watches a show – whether they like it or not (and we don't).

(And of course the Canadian networks aren't satisfied with simple simsubbing. From time to time the networks go before the CRTC and demand that they be allowed to substitute over shows regardless of whether or not they show a particular episode at the same time as the American networks. This say the networks will allow them to "program their own networks." The CRTC inevitably files these demands with the requests to allow the networks to count Canadian made infomercials as Canadian content in a circular filing cabinet, but I always get the sense that the networks go off from these meetings saying "one day my pretties." But back to the matter at hand.)

The biggest complaints about simsubbing come at Superbowl time, and speaking as one of those complaining I think we've got good cause. For years advertisers have literally spent millions on commercials for the Superbowl, and for that money they feel they need to do something that really stands out. I suppose that for the advertising community the Superbowl is like the last couple of weeks of December is for movie makers, the time when you put out the serious films that you desperately hope will be rewarded at the Oscars and the other award shows. The Superbowl is when you put together the commercials that you hope will get nominated for the Clios and the other advertising awards. And if you're Canadian there is a better than 50/50 chance that you won't see the multi-million dollar commercials, you'll see the run of the mill commercial from Leon's or something from The Great Canadian Oil Change or some local body shop. I'm trying to think of an analogy here that really works and having difficulty with it. I suppose it's like going to see a great musical on Broadway only to find out that tonight they're letting a high school production do the play.

In recent years – for me at least – there have been some developments that have allowed me to see the American feed of the Superbowl. For reasons that elude me, the broadcasters in Saskatoon never simsub the time sharing channels out of Spokane that I get as part of my basic digital cable. It doesn't happen, so for the past couple of years I've been able to watch the Superbowl with the American commercials. Now that we have the HD service we can also see the game in HD without simsubbing. Why? Well the CRTC has ruled that Canadian channels can't simsub over HD broadcasts until they are capable of providing a local HD signal, and Saskatoon and Regina are probably the last places that will be converted to HD by CBC, CTV and Global (CTV has only just decided to make CFCN in Calgary an HD station – CFRN in Edmonton is still not HD).

So in other words I will be able to see the American commercials during the game, including the 3-D commercials that Pepsi and Dreamworks will be doing for the Super Bowl. Pepsi is doing a commercial for their SoBe beverage line in 3-D, and Dreamworks will be doing an ad for their new movie Monsters vs. Aliens in 3-D. In addition on February 3^rd the NBC series Chuck will use the exact same technology to broadcast that show in 3-D. The commercials will of course be using 3-D glasses, not the red-blue type that are what one tends to think of when one thinks of 3-D, or the polarizing lenses which have been common for many years, but something called Real 3-D, which uses an red-orange/blue-purple combination of lenses. This of course means that you have to get those specific glasses to be able to watch the two commercials and the episode of Chuck. In the U.S. you can apparently pick them up in the supermarkets.

In Canada it's a different story. The Canadian rights holder for the Superbowl is CTV and CTV won't be showing the SoBe commercial or the Dreamworks trailer, so why should they distribute the glasses in Canada. There's no advantage in it for Pepsi (which owns SoBe) or for Dreamworks to distribute the glasses either. But what about that episode of Chuck? Well that episode of Chuck is part of the reason why the 3-D glasses promotion won't be running in Canada. You see, here in Canada Chuck doesn't run on CTV it runs on CITYTV. The CITYTV system (not a network) has stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary Edmonton and Vancouver. But people in those cities won't be able to get the glasses either. You see CITYTV won't be showing the 3-D episode of Chuck on February 3^rd. They've got a more important show to put on that Monday – The Bachelor. Chuck won't be back on CITYTV until March 9^th. Whether they'll offer the glasses then or not, or whether they'll even air the episode at all is absolutely unclear for the CITYTV system's website. Meanwhile those Canadians who will actually be able to see either the unsimsubbed Superbowl commercials or the episode of Chuck won't be seeing them in 3-D unless they can make a run to a stor across the border, can find them on eBay or Craigs List, or can figure out how to make a set of their own. Not that it matters to me of course; I've usually abandoned the Superbowl as a blow out by the time the half-time show starts, and I've never seen an episode of Chuck because I bowl on Mondays.

(Thanks to a tweet on Twitter from The TV Addict – aka Daniel – for turning me on to this. The TV Addict is a much more professional site than this one, and I'm only saying that because... well because it's true.)

We’ve Got That Rider Pride

Had a good trip out to the casino on Saturday; it was probably helped by finding a system for a machine that allowed me to treat it like my personal ATM. I picked up some things about playing Poker in a B&M room even though I wasn't playing myself. One of the things I picked up on is that Poker is like Yacht Racing – a lot more fun to either do or watch on TV than it is to watch in person. The most interesting hand I recall seeing was a hand where one guy went All In before the Flop for about 4500 and was called by a guy with something around 6000. The All In guy flipped over pocket Ks while the caller turned over K-10 off suit. I still can't figure that one out. The way I play sees All In before the Flop and unless I have a high pocket pair my cards are in the muck at a speed The Flash would find amazing, particularly that early in a tournament.

Ah, but that's not what I'm talking about this time around. Sunday is the Grey Cup which is the Canadian Football League's answer to the Super Bowl except, you know, not really. The Super Bowl is about hype, multi-million dollar commercials and ticket prices that have people mortgaging their children to attend; the Grey Cup is about regional rivalries, grassroots fandom, affordable tickets, parades and great parties. Except in Toronto, which is sadly because that's where the Grey Cup is being held this year. Ask the average Torontonian about the big game and they'll talk about the NFL, and if you ask them about the Grey Cup they'll look at you like you're insane. There's no Grey Cup Parade this year because no one in Toronto knows that the Grey Cup is still being played.

In Saskatchewan we know. If you're born anywhere in Saskatchewan from Estevan in the south to Fond du Lac in the north you are infected at birth with a disease that – during football season – turns your blood as green as Spock's. The 'Riders are the provincial passion our only professional sports team. We live and die with the Roughriders. They haven't made it easy for us either. The 1966 team was the first time in my life that the team won the Grey Cup. I was also the first time in my grandfather's lifetime that they won the Grey Cup and he was born in 1916. Okay it isn't exactly a span of frustration like what the Chicago Cubs have put their fans through, but in some ways it was more frustrating. The 'Riders of the '60s and '70s were always so close and only got the cigar once. The 'Rider players of those teams were my idols. There was George Reed (who ran for more yards in his career than Jim Brown but never got any recognition for it because he was playing in Canada rather than "real" football) Ron Lancaster, "Gluey" Hughie Campbell, and Ron Atchison. Then came a long drought and near bankruptcy for the club before the amazing 1989 Grey Cup win, the team of Roger Aldag, Jeff Fairholms, Ray Elgard, "Robokicker" Dave Ridgway, and of course QB Kent Austin.

It's hard to underestimate the importance of the Roughriders to Saskatchewan. They're a binding force, and not just for people who live here. Saskatchewan ex-pats fill stadiums around the league when the Green & White are playing. Let's just say that my brother was not alone in BC Place stadium when he saw the 'Riders beat the BC Lions. And it's not just Saskatchewan people either. The Roughriders are Canada's team in the same way that the Green Bay Packers are really America's Team (Dallas Cowboys notwithstanding). People in Canada (outside of Toronto that is) have two teams, their own and the 'Riders. In fact, on the day of the 1989 Grey Cup I heard the Roughrider victory mentioned on a Brigham Young University basketball broadcast. The play-by-play announcer was originally from Lethbridge Alberta, and had been a 'Rider fan ever since.

Actually the comparison with the Green Bay Packers is appropriate. Both are community owned teams, both are the smallest cities in their respective leagues. Both have nation-wide fan bases and do very well in merchandising. Both teams have fans sporting "odd" headgear; in Green Bay it's "Cheeseheads" and in Saskatchewan it is (and I swear this is absolutely true) hollowed out watermelons shaped into helmets. The big difference is the history. When the Packers were founded in 1919, the then Regina Roughriders (then known as the Regina Rugby Club) had been around for nine years.

Today's Grey Cup game should be one of the best. For the first time ever the Saskatchewan Roughriders will be facing their oldest rivals, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The Riders and the Bombers play each other every year in the Labour Day Classic in Regina, and then again the next weekend in Winnipeg. There's a lot of good natured give and take between the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, including a statement by former Winnipeg placekicker Troy Westwood who said that people from Regina were "a bunch of banjo-pickin' inbreds" before a 2003 playoff game; he later amended his statement saying, "the vast majority of the people in Saskatchewan have no idea how to play the banjo."The rivalry is intense but this is the first time they'll face each other in the Grey Cup. When the Ottawa team was folded the Blue Bombers were moved into the eastern conference of the now eight team league to balance things out. Beating Montreal in the Eastern Division Semi-Final and Toronto in the Eastern Final Winnipeg advanced to face the Roughriders, who beat Calgary and BC. The Roughriders are an 11 point favourite in the game, in part because Winnipeg quarterback Kevin Glenn broke his arm in the Eastern Final. Glenn will be replaced by rookie quarterback Ryan Dinwiddie who has only played in a limited number of games this season. If the Roughriders win today, Kent Austin will become the first Coach in the CFL to win the Grey Cup to also win the trophy as a quarterback for the same team. And all I can say is

Go Riders Go!!!!!!!!!!

Short Takes – May 20, 2007

I skipped this last week mostly because the network upfronts were coming up and a lot of the previous week's news was "leaks" about shows that were going to be cancelled or renewed. And in fact virtually all of the news last week was about shows that were renewed or cancelled. If nothing else it should make for a short post – maybe.

George Lopez cancelled: And boy is he pissed. Once he learned that George Lopez was cancelled he made a statement implying racism in the decision process. Most media outlets printed Lopez's rant in a censored form. It's presented here as he said it:

I get kicked out for a fucking caveman and shows that I out-performed because I'm not owned by ABC? So a fucking Chicano can't be on TV but a fucking caveman can? And a Chicano with an audience already? You know when you get in this that shows do not last forever, but this was an important show and to go unceremoniously like this hurts. One hundred seventy people lost their jobs. TV just became really, really white again.

I'd be angry if my show had been cancelled for Cavemen too, because quite frankly the show looks like crap. On the other hand Lopez is overlooking a lot of things in his rant. George Lopez (the show) has had the second longest run of any series featuring a Hispanic-American lead – number one was I Love Lucy. While the show had an audience, it's also true that the show's ratings have declined over the past season. For the week of April 23-29, two new episodes of George Lopez finished behind shows like Crossing Jordan, Close to Home, Jericho, Real Wedding Crashers, Raines, and Identity, all of which were cancelled. The only ABC series that performed worse (in a new episode, not a repeat) and was renewed was Notes From the Underbelly (though it did out performing some NBC shows that were retained including Scrubs and 30 Rock). This was not just a one-time event either. The fact is that other networks cancelled shows that were performing better on a regular basis than episodes of George Lopez. The show wasn't performing as well as it had in the past. And then you can add in the fact that the show is produced by Warner Brothers rather than ABC or its corporate parent Disney which means that increased costs for the network could not be offset by later revenues from syndication and suddenly the reasons for the cancellation of George Lopez becomes clear – declining audience combined with increased costs. Dare I mention that the TV business is a business not a charity, and George Lopez saying that his show is "an important show" does not necessarily make it so. To imply that race had anything to do with the ending of the show is absurd – it would have been renewed for sure if it had performed better in the ratings.

Don't mess with the NFL: Picked up this little note from the Toronto Star's TV website. ABC was supposedly doing a pilot for an American version of the BBC series Footballers Wives to be called (in a fit of imaginative thinking) Football Wives. It wasn't picked up and according to the Star (which some of you may know was supposedly the real model for the Metropolis Daily Planet) the reason was that the NFL objected to the subject matter of the show. For those of you who don't know Footballer's Wives had storylines that included infidelity, drunk driving, drug use, attempted murder of a team owner, more than one other murder, rapes, and lesbianism. Needless to say the NFL doesn't like this sort of storyline (maybe they touch too close to home given the sort of things that some NFL players have been involved with over the past few years). And of course ABC is owned by Disney which also owns 80% of ESPN which broadcasts Monday Night Football. Presumably this means that if you're ABC (and just about any of the other broadcast networks including The CW, half of which is owned by CBS) you don't want to antagonise the NFL.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: With upfronts come more call on the part of the PTC to advertisers to use the assistance provided by the PTC in making good advertising decisions; to "consider how the programming you support with your ad dollars will affect children – even if children are not part of your target demographic." I'm going to include some excerpts from PTC President Tim Winter's Open Letter to Advertisers here. The whole thing can be found by clicking the link.

"Advertising dollars make possible wholesome, uplifting programs, but they also make possible programs that pollute young minds and encourage children to engage in dangerous and risky behavior." And later in the letter: "Unfortunately, our research has also shown that the broadcast networks do not rate their own programs accurately because they are financially motivated not to do so. The networks then push the sole responsibility onto parents to monitor what they're (sic) children are watching. But the sole responsibility cannot rest on parents. When you as a sponsor commit your company's advertising dollars to a broadcast program, you automatically commit to sponsoring the program's content, for better or worse. You are thereby committed to helping to keep the public airwaves safe for our children." The letter ends with the following statement: "Millions of families will be watching to see what values you support. The innocence of our children rests with you."

Now you'll excuse me for a moment but I am amazed by one statement in this: "the sole responsibility [for monitoring what their children are watching] cannot rest on parents." These are social conservatives – the sort of people who scream bloody murder at even the vaguest suggestion that any sort of sex education – except for abstinence until marriage of course – be taught in the schools not just to their kids but to any child. According to them sex education is the responsibility of the parents alone. And yet the responsibility for monitoring what children watch on TV "cannot rest on parents," and advertisers must assume some of it – with the guidance of the Parents Television Council of course? Surely parents know their children and their relative maturity better than any organization, because they know their children as individuals rather than as a collective faceless mass.

As I said, I missed last week because of upfronts which means that I didn't get to tell you about the PTC's attack on Ugly Betty as worst show of the week for "intensely suggestive dialogue and sexual themes" and lacking "descriptors to warn viewers of the smarmy content to be found on the program." I won't go into details except to remind readers that Ugly Betty was one of the shows whose development was supported by the Script Development Fund of the Family Friendly Programming Forum of the Association of National Advertisers, a group that puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to supporting family friendly shows, something that the PTC and groups like it have never done.

This time around the worst show of the week is the April 29 episode of American Dad. This time around they really seem to be embracing not just a social conservative agenda but a downright moralistic religious one in their reasoning. In the opening paragraph they state "Anyone who values the sanctity of marriage, and the act of sexual intercourse as the most intimate and significant act possible between two individuals, would be truly repulsed by this story. The episode conveyed the message that sex without love and commitment is harmless, and quickly earned our pick for Worst of the Week." They then summarize the plot which focuses on the character Francine's revelation to her husband of her pre-marital sexual experiences (she has a rosebush in her "sex garden" for every man she's been with) which appals her husband Stan as does her stance that "sex without love is just a physical action with no emotional consequences." To prove it, she urges Stan to have sex with another woman and even gives him a divorce to make him feel good about it. The PTC finds the show's conclusion unacceptable even though it disproves Francine's point: "The program's unconvincing conclusion attempts to show Francine's error but fails miserably. The clear not-so-comical message communicated in the episode is that the sex before marriage is meaningless and carries no emotional or physical consequences." The evaluation of the episode ends up stating, "the viewer gets a glimpse into the 'creative' minds of indifferent and disturbed individuals who are under the delusion that such a storyline constitutes 'satire.' It is honestly quite frightening and unfortunate that Fox employs writers who can with a clear conscience conceive of producing content so destructive to children and teens."

Short Takes - April 15, 2006

- Coming this summer All Star Big Brother and you get to choose: Apparently nobody sent Mrs. Moonves the memo that said that Survivor All Stars stank because there will be an All Star Big Brother this summer. Fans will get to choose the contestants from a pool of 20 previous houseguests. I actually have a group of dysfunctional individuals who I would like to see in the Big Brother shack. They include Kaysar from last season (who was run out of the house not once but twice, the second time immediately after the great American Public voted him back in with the cry of "This is our game not America's game"); one legged Eddie McGee, winner of the first season, Tonya from season 3 (who organised the infamous "peanut butter bikini affair"), "Evil" Doctor Will, the winner of Season 2, Jack the FBI guy, his in-house bed buddy Erika, and Allison the slut from Season 4 (and Amazing Race 5), from and of course Chicken George from Season 1. I'm willing to bet that more than half of those people won't even be asked.

- NBC's new 900 pound canary; what will the other networks do?: There are already rumours that ABC is running scared about the prospect of Sunday Night Football on NBC. According to the rumour printed in The New York Post the "alphabet network" (as "scribes" are wont to call ABC perhaps because it increases their word count) is considering moving either Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives - or both - to Monday nights. For the article the Post interviewed Marc Berman of Mediaweek who said, "I can't imagine ABC would move 'Housewives' because it's anchoring Sunday nights and is already working at 9 p.m., so why move it? "They could move 'Grey's Anatomy' to Mondays at 9 since they don't have football there anymore and they need to build that night ... and set up a long-term schedule." Berman also suggested that either show would not be moving to Thursdays because "Thursday would be dead-in-the-water for them." I mention this because John Doyle from Canada's national newspaper, the Globe & Mail, mentioned on Thursday (as part of a piece on the return of Commander-in-Chief to the lineup and the rough ride that show has had after its debut with huge ratings - not a mention of the fact that it isn't very good being as part of the problem of course) writes "And don't expect Commander-in-Chief to return to Thursday nights next season. The prevailing rumour is that ABC wants to move Grey's Anatomy into the time slot in order to compete with ER and crush it." (This article isn't available online unless you're willing to pay the Globe & Mail $14.95 a month - I'm not.) Of course the viewers might have a little something to say about this - while the ratings for Commander-in-Chief's Thursday debut were the lowest the show has had, it improved over its lead-in American Inventor and finished second beating a repeat of ER but not a new episode of Without a Trace.

I think that ABC would be dumb to move either or both shows from their Sunday night line up. These are shows that skew heavily to the young female demographic which will be going opposite the male skewing football. Monday might work but that's already a tough night with CBS's Monday comedies and CSI: Miami which people - for reasons not entirely known or understood by me - seem to like. Still this speculation has me thinking about what the other networks might do up against NBC's gorilla. I don't see CBS making any radical changes - their made for TV movies have been a staple there for decades. Nor do I expect Fox to do anything with their animation/comedy block at least until something goes wrong. The network I think has the most potential to try to shake things up - if they want to and are able to - might be The CW. What if they were to move WWE Smackdown from Friday to Sunday. They don't have anything in the Sunday time slot anyway with the imminent departure of Charmed so why not move a show that's popular with the younger end of the male 18-49 demographic in there and try to take a bite out of the football audience? I'm not offering this as rumour or speculation except as something I might do if I were an evil network weasel.

- Fight the good fight: The four major networks have announced that they will appeal the fines levied against ABC, CBS and Fox - NBC is filing as an intervener in the other cases since the FCC didn't fine them.The major thing in this battle isn't that the networks are appealing the decision it is that they are each joined in the case by their affiliate organizations and by the Hearst-Argyle Television group which owns affiliates of five of the six current broadcast networks. The appeal is aimed at overturning a 2004 decision which found that tightened up indecency regulations tot he point where the use of certain expletives - regardless of the situation - would be deemed profane and obscene. In a statement the appellants claimed "In filing these court appeals we are seeking to overturn the FCC decisions that the broadcast of fleeting, isolated - and in some cases unintentional - words rendered these programs indecent." This appeal does not touch on the recent FCC decision against the CBS show Without A Trace or the former WB show The Surreal Life 2. Naturally PTC head kahuna Brent Bozell has something to say about this: " "It's beyond preposterous that the networks would even propose that airing the 'f-word' and 's-word' on television is not indecent. The networks' principles have now been unmasked for everyone to see. Their actions today are indecent in and of themselves."

- I think I'm going to start calling Brent Bozell "Barney": It seems that the fearless leader of the Parents Television Council has opted to mobilize his legions against MTV for committing blasphemy. The object of his righteous wrath is a show called Popetown which depicts the Pope as, in the words of the PTC "an uncontrollable, infantile character who pogo-sticks around a Vatican populated by corrupt, money-grabbing cardinals," and in one scene has Jesus (a statue I assume) coming down off the cross to watch TV because, as he says, "It's better than hanging around." Bozell writes, “When foreigners see shows like this, they are getting the worst of the very worst of American culture. No wonder so many hold us in contempt." Of course this is totally different from the protests over the cartoons of Mohammed: "This is yet another example of how some in Hollywood are spitting on religious figures and showing their contempt for people of faith. The cartoons about Mohammed may have been in bad taste but they were political satire. This is worse. This is ridicule for the sake of ridicule. And not coincidentally they’re doing this during Easter week, the holiest week in the Christian year.” Setting aside the fact that ridiculing the leader of a great world religious sect is probably not as major a thing as depicting the founder of one of the great world religion as a suicide bomber, it's absurd to say that the latter is legitimate political satire while the former is - as the headline for Bozell's statement puts it - blasphemy. Besides which I don't see anything in the PTC's raison d'etre that has anything to do with protecting religion from blasphemy or ridicule, let alone one specific religion (Christianity - remember Bozell said that the Mohammed cartoons were just political satire not blasphemy; presumably anyone who disagreed was just overly sensitive).

But here's the kicker and the bit that gets Bozell the "Barney" monicker. You won't be seeing Popetown on MTV unless you live in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. It isn't airing in the United States. It isn't even an American show - it was created in Britain (where the BBC received so many protests that they refused to air it) by a company called "Channel X", and was first seen on New Zealand's C4 network which is owned by the Canadian company Canwest. Apparently either Bozell and the PTC think that they should be spreading their revolution for broadcast decency - as interpreted by the PTC of course - around the world, or in the grand tradition of Barney Fife Bozell wants to "nip it in the bud" before it gets a chance to infect America. "You gotta nip it!"

A Tale Of Two Continents

A few days ago I mentioned that there was something that the CBC was doing in their Winter Olympic coverage that I wasn't entirely comfortable or happy with. It was something I thought I needed to think about and having thought about it I'm still neither comfortable nor happy about it but at least I have some small modicum of understanding about why they did it.

So what did the "Mother Corporation" do to spark such ambivalence in me? They've propagated a fraud. Well not really, it's more like an open secret but they've haven' exactly been bursting down any doors to tell anyone about it. Of the three main hosts of CBC's Olympic coverage - the people who toss it to the various event locations - only one is actually in Italy. Ron MacLean is anchoring the afternoon coverage (evening in Turin or Torino) from the network's base camp at Palasport Olimpico, the main Ice Hockey venue for the games (the Olympics calls the game Ice Hockey to differentiate it from the game that the rest of the world calls Hockey and North Americans and other northern peoples call Field Hockey - there are a lot more of them than us). Morning host Terry Leibel and primetime host Brian Williams are working out of the Canadian Broadcasting Centre at 250 Front Street Toronto. (Williams was in Torino for the Opening Ceremonies along with Peter Mansbridge, anchor of The National but returned to Toronto from Torino in time to host his primetime show the next day.)

The publicly stated reasons for handling the coverage in this manner is cost. According to an article in the Toronto Star the move will save approximately $1 Million. A significant portion of this saving is in the number of people who aren't in Torino. Under normal circumstances - that is to say the way the CBC has covered the Games since Albertville when they got the rights back - the Corporation would send a team of about 255 people to Torino for about three weeks. That means housing them in hotels in the Olympic city with its overinflated room prices, not to mention bringing equipment and building a broadcast facility for the event. Instead the network is running its coverage out of their own main facility where 150 technical staff handles the feed from Italy. That's staff who go home at nights and sleep in their own beds - at no cost to the CBC.

There are other advantages as well. When the coverage needs as special analyst - say Kurt Browning or Brian Stemmle - for the prime time portion of the broadcast when everything is on tape and has been seen before they're available as needed without having to fly them to Italy for the duration. Don Cherry can come in from Mississauga to spend ten minutes talking to Brian Williams about the hockey game and let's face it, anything that keeps Mr. Crankypants from causing an international incident is a bonus. That statement (about Cherry causing an international incident) was facetious but it brings up another point; what if there is a major breaking story - like the Atlanta bombing - at the Olympic site or in Turin? According to Executive Producer Terry Ludwick "In some ways, it will be easier to anchor and marshal all our resources there. We can have world reaction, local reaction, we can jump around and we'll be plugged into the Canadian angle, too."

As far as the actual coverage goes, it's hard to tell the difference between Toronto and Torino. Proof of that is that Terry Leibel's morning shift in Toronto runs directly into Ron MacLean's afternoon coverage from Palasport Olimpico. It doesn't hurt that both anchors are operating in front of a rather bland background that gives no hint as to where they actually are. This in itself is a change for the CBC. As late as the 2000 Olympics in Sydney (and possibly in Salt Lake City although I don't have any clear images of that) the CBC shunned the International Broadcast Centres for purpose built studios that they found on their own. In Sydney they built a studio on the roof of a school which overlooked Sydney Harbour and provided a great backdrop which gave visual cues as to the time of day. This didn't occur during the Athens Olympics and while it isn't stated I suspect that post September, 11 2001 security concerns have caused organizing committees to want to keep broadcasters either at the IBC or in a secure facility like Palasport Olimpico.

The decision to operate out of Toronto has curtailed to a great extent one CBC tradition - interviewing Canadian medal winners in studio during prime time coverage, but according to Ludwick this would have been a problem anyway. Many of the Olympic venues are up to two hours away so interviews on the day of the event would have to be conducted by satellite hookups anyway. In such a circumstance it doesn't matter if the show is being done out of Canada or Italy. Other broadcasters are taking notice. According to Dave Mazza, NBC's senior vice-president of engineering, "The CBC has done a great job with this. It's much more affordable. With rising rights fees, everybody's looking to cut costs without sacrificing the quality of coverage." For their part NBC is trying this in a small manner by having the commentary team for their curling coverage in the United States rather than Italy.

While cost is a factor, the fact is that these Olympics represent something of a financial windfall for the CBC. It's estimated that these will be the most profitable games for the CBC ever, thanks in part to the amount that CTV spent to get the coverage rights to the 2010 Winter Olympics (in Vancouver) and the 2012 Summer Olympics (in London). According to another Toronto Star report
"there's a theory that advertisers figure prices will be so high when CTV takes over in 2010 that this could be their last shot at the Olympic rings." The quote ad buyer Eli Paper: "They (the CTV-Rogers consortium) spent copious amounts of money getting those Olympics and I don't expect they'll want to pick up the bill." They'll expect the advertisers to pay the bill. People may be thinking this is the last Winter Olympics for some time I can reasonably get into." Even though viewership for the evening show are down by about 45% from the levels they were at for Salt Lake City, ratings for the afternoon coverage are up 36% from 2002 (and both are comparable with ratings for the 2004 Athens Olympics). The reasons for the difference should be obvious - finals for events in Salt Lake City occurred during prime time while the prime time show this year is made up entirely of highlights and recaps of the day's events.

I have a problem with all of this. I can see the cost savings after the CBC strike of last summer and at a time when the new Conservative government is bound to want to remake the CBC in an image more in line with its ideas about the public broadcaster (some of the more conservative elements of the Conservative Party would like to shut down the place or at least turn anything that makes money - like Hockey Night In Canada - over to private broadcasters). On the other hand I'm reminded of a commercial from a few years back. In it a widely travelled corporate executive was showing off pictures of his travels to someone who turns out to be the company's IT nerd. The nerd tells him that with installation of this new software (Lotus Notes I think it was) he'll never have to go on the road again. The problem I saw immediately in that commercial (and why I was convinced that the software would be a bust if sold on that basis) is that just because the technology works doesn't mean it will be effective. In the case of the software, clients like to work face to face with human beings. In the case of the Olympic coverage having the hosts on the ground in Italy gives the event a certain amount of importance while not detracting from the newsworthiness. I'm not saying that the coverage is bad - for the most part I rank it higher than the NBC coverage - but not having Leibel and Williams there in some hard to describe way lessens the event by not immersing them in the atmosphere of the thing. Somehow it just seems wrong.

Compare and Contrast - The Olympic Opening Ceremony

I am - quite proudly - an Olympics Wonk. I like 'em; I love 'em; Can't get enough of 'em! And as any North American Olympics Wonk worth their salarium (a Latin joke for Italia) knows, the coverage of the Olympics that NBC offers is nothing short of awful. Those in the know either come to Canada or a border area for the duration, get a Canadian satellite dish or find a sports bar which has a Canadian dish rather than watch the mess that NBC makes of the Olympic Games.

It's a matter of philosophy. CBC, and before them the private broadcaster CTV take the attitude that the Olympics are a live event and the technology exists to allow the Games to be broadcast live, therefore it makes sense to treat the event as a news story and present them live. NBC takes the attitude that - particularly for their broadcast network - the Olympics are a ratings bonanza and should be held over until prime time except on the weekends. Besides the affiliates probably wouldn't stand for the network taking over the time they save for news and syndicated court shows. As a ratings bonanza the feeling is that there's a need to focus on - and in all honesty promote - American athletes for the most part to the exclusion of all others. They seem to believe that Americans only want to see Americans and preferably Americans winning.

While I won't be blogging extensively about the Olympics - that isn't the purpose of this blog after all, and besides it might impinge on my ability to watch the Olympics - I do think that the way that the Opening Ceremonies were covered are in some ways illustrative of the differences in attitude towards covering the Games. So on Friday I subjected myself to both the CBC and the NBC coverage. There were similarities in the details but the similarities only served to illustrate the differences, if that makes sense.

The live CBC coverage started at Noon CST although the ceremonies themselves didn't begin for an hour after that. CBC spent that time familiarizing viewers with the area around Turin and the Olympic venues, as well as discussing Olympics related news - specifically the Gretzky betting story and the impact that might have on Canadian athletes (the Canadian Olympic Committee were saying that it would be no problem but the sports people indicated that athletes were saying it might) They also discussed the COC's "On The Podium" program, the objective of which was to use scientific training programs to get more Canadian athletes into contention before the 2010 games in Vancouver. The NBC taped coverage also had an hour of non-Ceremony material but it was focussed on three high profile American athletes and the performances of four American downhill skiers, three of them competing for two open positions on the US Team. The interviews with the three athletes seemed to be primarily designed to promote them as probable medalists. It was a recurring theme.

CBC's coverage of the Opening Ceremonies was hosted by CBC Sports anchor Brian Williams and Peter Mansbridge who is the anchor of The National, while NBC's coverage was led by Bob Costas with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams as co-host. Much was made about the American Williams going to Turin rather than Katy Couric but I for one wasn't unhappy with the development; when I've bothered to watch the NBC coverage in the past, Couric has always seemed to be imitating a brook and babbling. Certainly that wasn't a problem with Williams. While the Canadian Williams and Mansbridge worked well together (they've been doing this since at least Seoul), at NBC it often seemed as if Costas was carrying the burden of commentary all by himself. The American Williams was probably at his most vocal during the entry of the athletes but often his commentary wasn't on topic about sports but dealt with whatever world or domestic crisis he could link the country to.

I want to deal with the content of the broadcast but the way that the networks dealt with content was largely predicated on the way they handled the entry of the nations. On CBC the mandate was clear; they would not interrupt the March of Nations with commercials and indeed decided to use an inset so that they could show the Canadian team marching around the stadium while also showing the teams that followed as they entered. As well, since the CBC was presenting the Opening Ceremonies live they weren't worried about length. The network rather optimistically scheduled the complete package for three hours (including the hour before the actual ceremonies) while what the actually got was closer to four hours total. NBC had scheduled the opening ceremonies for a seemingly more realistic four hours but it was a "hard" four hours - that is they couldn't go beyond that limit. If NBC had the same commercial load as the CBC it would be enough time, but of course they had the commercials during the March of the Nations that CBC didn't, and US networks are allowed to have more minutes of commercials per hour than Canadian networks which they used. The net result was a number of pretty brutal cuts to the ceremonies, most of them to the "artistic" portion of the program. A huge cut occurred after the entry of the athletes - there was between ten and fifteen minutes dropped immediately after the entry of the athletes with only the "tableau" representing Botticcelli's Birth Of Venus left in and another section representing the Italian artistic movement known as as Futurism. There were a number of other, smaller instances.

Having noted the number of cuts that NBC made to the Opening Ceremonies, there's still the question of how they were presented. Mercifully - and perhaps due to the absence of Couric - Costas and the American Williams didn't talk as much as NBC commentators have in the past. They tended to let the events speak for themselves, sometimes too much so although on occasion they did give more information than Mansbridge and the Canadian Williams did. And yet I felt more comfortable with the Canadian commentary team, perhaps because I wasn't expecting them to jump in with comments that I didn't need. Whatever it was the CBC commentary gave me the information that I needed in a relaxed but professional manner. Their silences even seemed more professional somehow.

Looking ahead, it's worth noting that CBC will be offering approximately eight and a half hours of live Olympics coverage every day, from 6:30 a.m. CST to 4 p.m. in addition to seven and a half hours of taped recaps between 6 and 11 p.m. and 12 and 2:30 a.m. By contrast NBC is offering three hours of week night prime time coverage (7 to 10 p.m.) and two and a half hours of late night coverage (Midnight to 2:30 a.m.), all on tape. This is in addition to whatever they have on their cable only networks, USA, CNBC and MSNBC (although only USA seems to be offering live Olympic coverage). It shouldn't be that hard to figure out what the preferred network for the Olympic Wonk is.

The Big Trade

One of the big sports news events of the past few days has been Al Michaels leaving ABC to join NBC and their Sunday Night Football team. Now the details of the deal are emerging. Michaels was traded by ABC and ESPN's parent company Walt Disney to NBC-Universal for five rings, four rounds of golf and a lucky rabbit (not just a foot but the whole two-dimentsional bunny).

Of course there's more to the story than that - there always is. In this case the five rings are the rights to greater access to Olympics highlights through 2012 as well as other NBC sports properties, while NBC gets greater acces to ABC-ESPN highlights. The four rounds of golf are the cable TV rights for the next four Ryder Cup matches which lasts until 2014.

However the big part of the deal is the lucky rabbit. Walt Disney's first great animation creation with his partner Ub Iwerks was a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, created in 1927. In 1928 Oswald was esentially stolen from Disney by his distributer, Charles Mintz - it turned out that Disney never actually owned the rights to the character. When Disney refused to take a cut in advances for the Oswald cartoons, Mintz revealed that not only did he own the character, he had hired away all but two of Disney's animators (this led to Disney and Iwerks creating this mouse character and experimenting with sound). This crew included Friz Freleng, Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising. Mintz himself lost control of Oswald - it turned out that the character was really owned by Universal which created its own cartoon shop headed by Walter Lantz. Lantz would create 140 Oswald cartoons between 1929 and 1938 (and the rabbit would make his last appearance on screen as late as 1951). In the Vivendi-Universal reorganization the rights to Oswald fell to the NBC-Universal unit, although it was an obscure part of the deal at least to NBC Sports boss Dick Ebersol. According to Ebersol "The odd thing was, on their list they wanted the rights to 'Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.' And I had no idea what that was. So I called George [Bodenheimer - ESPN and operating under instructions from Disney boss Bob Iger] back after I got the paper and I said, 'George come on, what's 'Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?' And he told me this incredible story that Walt's (Disney) first really big production as a cartoonist for the cinema had been 'Oswald the Lucky Rabbit,' before Mickey... Walt lost those rights, those rights fell into the hands of Universal Pictures sometime in the late '40's (sic), and in recent years Disney had made several efforts to get those rights back from us. For family reasons they would like to very much have all of Walt's stuff restored to Disney...Al certainly brought, even though not cash, he brought much more value than Herm Edwards did to the Jets in terms of a 4th round draft pick." Perhaps, but between possible DVD releases and mechandising (Oswald is very popular in the Japanese market) I don't think Disney is crying too heavily into their beer.

Somethin's Happenin' Here

What it is ain't exactly clear.

Well actually it is (at least I think so), but first I suppose I should tell you what's happening that's enough to get me to post about it.

It's January 4 and in most years we are enduring what some people - originally Buffy and Angel fans I think, at least the first time I saw the term was in newsgroups for those two shows - call (cue reverb) Rerun Hell! that period when shows you have become very fond of and which have survived the winnowing (I like that word - it means separating the grain from the chaff) process of Nielsen and November Sweeps take a not particularly well deserved break so that they'll have enough episodes left to show during February and May Sweeps. But take a look at tonight's lineup on the six US networks. ABC has the season debut of Dancing With The Stars; NBC has new episodes of Will & Grace, ER the newly transplanted My Name Is Earl and The Office, and the debut of Four Kings; CBS has new episodes of CSI and Without A Trace; and Fox has a Rob Schneider movie The Hot Chick (which oddly enough is most an improvement over their normal lineup. Only UPN and The WB are airing reruns (well CBS has an older CSI in the Survivor time slot, but that's another story) and in the case of The WB one of the reruns is of their summer series Beauty And The Geek which is a week-long marathon before the show comes back for a second season next Thursday. The trend continues with relatively few exceptions (in one case NBC has The Golden Globes and Fox has two hours of 24 - CBS decided that would be a good Monday to run previously seen episodes) until at least January 17, which is as far as Zap2It goes. In that time you have the debuts of over ten new series including Emily's Reasons Why Not, Love Monkey, Courting Alex, Crumbs, and The Book Of Daniel, as well as the return of a number of series which have either been held back like Scrubs and Jake in Progress, or were intended for a special run, like Dancing With The Stars and 24. This is not normal. In most cases new shows would be held for February sweeps or after sweeps. Just as an example, last year Blind Justice debuted in March. So what is happening here?

The answer is that there's a 2000 lb. gorilla in the room - the kind that not only sits where it wants but doesn't apologise when it breaks stuff. Take a look at this calendar:
The dates with red backgrounds represent the gorilla - the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. Seventeen days out of the February sweeps period when - short of repeating "Nipplegate" but letting people know it's going to happen first - NBC will win every night. Why? Because even if they think that Curling is something done to women in a hair salon and Skiing is done behind a high powered boat - and more importantly even though NBC offers coverage that can be charitably described as "crap" - Americans will watch the Winter Olympics in prime time (because of course NBC doesn't show the games live even when they're in the United States) in droves to cheer for the Red, White, and Blue.

What's a network without the Olympics to do with such a gorilla? My guess is that with a few exceptions - like 24 they'll get out of the way. I think this is why they're setting up limited run series like Beauty And The Geek, Skating With The Celebrities and Dancing With The Stars to reach a climax during those week and throwing out a few new shows, hoping they'll either build an audience and be relatively safe after the Olympics or (more likely in most cases) will crash and burn so that they can be finished off during the Games. For their regular series I think that February will see a lot of the repeats that January normally does. However the networks without the Olympics can't let NBC benefit from a post-Olympics bounce - thanks to show promotion during the Games - so they seem to have decided to run new shows in January And of course to compete NBC has to run new episodes of their shows opposite the other networks new episodes or else their ratings are hurt. At least that's how I see it

It's all a complex, fascinating, maddening game.

Remembrance Of Games Past

Tonight Canadians got to hear their "second" national anthem - the Hockey Night In Canada theme - for the first time in over a year. There was a great deal fo concern that even with the NHL strike being solved, the CBC lockout would delay the return of Hockey for those viewers who don't have cable or satellite services. The resolution of the lockout last week and an effort on the part of both sides meant that Canadians would hear the "dulcet" tones of Ron McLean, Don Cherry, and the rest of the Hockey Night In Canada crew. Somehow it was fitting that the first game on CBC for most of the country was the Montreal Canadiens against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

This rambling entry is a bit of a remembrance for me. As the name of this blog states, I am a child of television and if you're a Canadian, television always meant Hockey Night In Canada. Canadians didn't - and don't - have any trouble deciding what to watch on Saturday nights; it's always been hockey. I was a kid in the time of the misnamed "Original Six" (they can trace their status as "original" to 1926 when the Red Wings, Rangers and Blackhawls were formed and their status as six to 1942 when the New York Americans folded and weren't reinstated after the war), and a particular time of the Original Six. Between 1956 when I was born and 1968, only three teams won the Stanley Cup: the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Montreal Canadiens, and the Chicago Blackhawks ... and the Blackhawks only won once, in 1961. As often as not it was the Leafs playing the Canadiens for the Cup. It was only suitable since they were literally the only original teams in the league, going back to its formation in 1917.

When I was a kid certain things were certainties. The Rangers and the Bruins stank (sorry little brother but it's true - from 1959 to 1967 then never finished higher than fifth in a six team league and more often than not fifth was something they could only dream about), and the Blackhawks and Red Wings usually weren't quite good enough to beat a Canadian team. We knew that if either the Leafs or Canadiens were playing the Russians who kept beating our amateurs at the Olympics, they'd wipe the ice with them. Canadians always saw either the Leafs or the Canadiens on TV. The games from Montreal were featured Frank Selke Jr. and Danny Gallivan as announcers while the Toronto games were announced by the legendary Foster Hewitt - and later his son Bill Hewitt - with Ward Cornell. Hewitt was probably the greatest announcer in the game, perhaps of all time. He was the first man to broadcast an NHL game on radio (there were a couple of other men who announced games on radio, notably Regina's Peter Parker who broadcast the first complete professional game in 1923 eight days before Hewitt) and was a staple of CBC's radio broadcasts. We almost never saw a complete game. The broadcasts would start about ten minutes into the game, the owners having the belief that people wouldn't come to the games if they could see it for free on TV, which is sort of hard to believe with the black & white TVs of the day. If the game was from Toronto Foster Hewitt would greet us with his classic introduction: "Good evening Canada and hockey fans in the United States" and he'd give the score, if there was one, as part of a summary of the action so far. Selke and Gallivan did something similar from Montreal although they didn't have an introductory line like Hewitt. The first half of the game was sponsored by Imperial Oil-Esso, whose commercials featured actor Murray Westgate as a smiling station attendant, while the second half belonged to Ford Motors. At the end of the game was the Three Star selection, a tradition going back to radio days and a new gasoline from Imperial-Esso called Three Star Gas.

If you were an anglo-Canadian kid of my age you had to have a favourite team, and it was usually either the Leafs or the Canadiens plus whatever team the local hero played for (around here it was Detroit because that's where Gordie Howe played). Kids in Quebec - English or French - had it easy; their team was the Canadiens. Period. Roch Carrier's modern classic The Hockey Sweater explains it perfectly. Kids I knew were usually split. I was a Leafs fan while my cousin Gary - to this day - swears by the Montreal Canadiens. Still we saw the Leafs and Canadiens enough that we knew the players, more than we knew the players on the other teams. Toronto was coached by Punch Imlach, had Johnny Bower in goal, Tim Horton on defence, and players like Red Kelly (who was so popular that he was elected to Parliament twice while he was an active player), George "the Chief" Armstrong, Davey Keon, and Eddie Shack. The coach at Montreal was Hector "Toe" Blake, with Lorne "Gump" Worsley in goal, and players like Henri "The Pocket Rocket" Richard (his big brother was Maurice "The Rocket" Richard who retired in 1960 and I honestly don't remember seeing), Jean Belliveau, Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion, Jacque Laperrierre, and Yvan Cournoyer.

My NHL ended in 1968. That was the year of the so-called "first expansion" - which was of course nothing of the sort. There were six new teams in places like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, places which - if we'd been at all interested in the history of the league - we would have learned had had NHL teams before. There were also teams in Los Angeles and Oakland that had been hotbeds of the old Western League but were only major league cities because they had owners with deep pockets (Oakland was owned by Charlie Finley at one point), and Minnesota. The first expansion didn't hurt quality too much but the more the league grew the weaker the product on the ice became. Montreal kept winning the Cup although not nearly are regularly, but the Leafs would only make the playoffs once in the next 25 years. The team's owner Harold Ballard alienated a great many fans with the way he ran the club (just one example: during renovations to Maple Leaf Gardens he ordered the destruction of "The Gondola", the press box that Foster Hewitt had broadcast from despite the fact that the Hockey Hall of Fame wanted to preserve it; when asked, Ballard said that if Hewitt wanted it he should have bought it). The draft, free agency and player salaries meant that money ruled and players went to the teams that could pay. I became a Winnipeg Jets fan because a friend of mine played there until the business side of the League became too important and the team was relocated to Phoenix. I don't watch much hockey anymore and I don't have a team, but tonight's game between Montreal and Toronto brought back the memories.

By the way, Montreal won a barn-burner 5-4. Who knows, I might become interested again.