Why You Aren’t Reading An Apprentice Recap

You may have noticed that while I continue to mention The Amazing Race at any opportunity I can manufacture to do so – like right now (how cool was that descent from the Macau Tower – and that's a commercial operation so that if you ever get to Macau you can have the thrill of jumping off a building without the sudden stop at the end just like the contestants on the show) – I haven't mentioned The Apprentice at all this season. There's a good reason for that: I haven't watched at all since about the fifth episode.

I do know why I stopped watching The Apprentice. It was, as you might expect, a combination of things. The transfer of the show from New York to Los Angeles was one thing. When you think of The Apprentice you think of Donald Trump and when you think of Donald Trump you think of New York (and maybe Atlantic City). But this time they weren't in the town so nice they named it twice, they were in Los Angeles, and I don't associate Trump with LaLa Land at all.

Another thing that the show did was to replace both of Trump's sidekicks. He had famously fired my lust object Caroline Kepcher (although she says she quit – either way it was quite abrupt) and started using his far less savvy (and far less attractive, but that's beside the point) spawn Ivanka as one of his "eyes and ears." Except Ivanka frequently wasn't there and was replaced variously by her brother Don Jr. (a chip off the old blockhead) and various winning candidates from previous seasons. Even worse was the decision not to have a second observer. Gone is Vice President and Senior Council George Ross, without replacement. Ivanka, or whoever was sitting in for her, would do all the observing and when it came time to advice Mr. Trump in the boardroom, the second chair would be filled by the project manager from the winning team. That gave the person the opportunity to kiss Trump's butt and undermine the opposition. I guess that's okay, but it still doesn't seem all that fair given that the winning project manager hasn't seen how the other team performed and doesn't bring the sort of business expertise to the table that a senior member of the Trump organization does.

Another major change was that winning Project Managers would continue in that role until their team was defeated. It sounds like a reward for being a successful PM, but there are several faults in the concept. The biggest of these is that if The Apprentice is nominally about seeing which candidate is suited to running a project for one of Trump's companies, it is fairly important to see how the candidates will perform in a leadership position. Having one person stay as Project Manager as long as there team wins means that fewer candidates on a team that wins repeatedly – as happened in this season – will have their leadership capabilities shown. In fact, of the final four candidates, one had been project manager three times and had a 2-1 record as PM, two had one loss as project managers (and that happened in the first two episodes), and one – Stefani Schaeffer – had no experience as a Project Manager at all – and she was the eventual winner! Meanwhile Heidi, the person with the greatest success as a Project Manager (three wins, one loss) didn't make it to the Final Four. Her record obviously doesn't make her the best candidate any more than Stefani's lack of a record meant that she is a poor leader. What it does mean is that we, and Trump, had more chance to see Heidi as a leader than we did Steffani, and how do you evaluate someone as a leader without seeing them lead?

Then of course there was the whole business of housing the candidates. Series creator Mark Burnett seems to have fallen in love with this business of luxury versus deprivation, although this "Haves vs. Have-nots" format was actually suggested by Trump himself. He used it in Survivor where Moto Beach had all the luxuries of home except maybe a TV, while Ravu Beach had a rusty machete and a leaky pot. Well maybe the pot didn't leak but the principle is the same. On The Apprentice luxury took the form of a rented Hollywood mansion complete with swimming pool, although significantly it was somewhat lower on the hill than the mansion that Trump and his entourage had rented. Deprivation was "Tent City", which was on the mansion grounds but separated by a hedge from all the good stuff. Truth be known, even the people on Moto Beach would have seen Tent City as a step up although only a slight step up. Tent City had a wash basin for food and clothes (although at least one of the teams didn't seem able to figure out how to wash their own dishes), a cook stove with utensils, and cots for everyone. The trouble is of course that this doesn't seem to really have anything to do with business. And as was most definitely the case in Survivor being a part of the team suffering deprivation – the Have-Nots – tended to perform poorly in subsequent tasks. In fact one of the candidates resigned because she couldn't handle the conditions that she was subjected to in Tent City – she hadn't signed up for that. Trump snarked at her about quitting.

On the whole this season of The Apprentice has been a massive disappointment, and the series ratings seem to indicate that. Last season's ratings, when the show aired on Monday night, were down over previous years but it still drew and average of 9.73 million viewers (and that figure doesn't included the season finale which drew 11.25 million but aired "after the official television season ended"). This season, airing on Sunday night, the first episode drew 4.3 million – less than half of the average rating for the previous season – and the second episode drew under 4 million (Wikipedia; these numbers are at some variance with the figures that Marc Berman of Media Week quotes – choose "Click here to chat" on The Programming Insider box to reach the forums and review previous Sunday ratings). Whatever the actual results the ratings have been anaemic and the move to the third hour of Sunday night at the beginning of March not only didn't improve them, it appears to have made them worse. This puts a lie to Trump's repeated claims about the show's popularity (certainly he makes no claims about the response of critics or awards, where the show has consistently been defeated by The Amazing Race). I'm not entirely sure where the blame for this belongs. Sir Alan Sugar, who is the "Trump" analog in the British version of The Apprentice, has some thoughts: "When you're on a winner, you stick to the winner. You polish it and enhance it and try to make it more interesting to the public. Keep it simple; don't fall to the temptation of changing things just for the sake of changing things. I've watched the American series and they've made the fatal error of trying to change things just for the sake of it and it backfired. What you're going to see here is tougher tasks, better people and a very clear picture for the viewer. We've polished a great product." I think that he's right, at least in part, with the "proof" that the show has gone astray by adding new gimmicks being made obvious with the depressed ratings. On the other hand, after everything that has been going on away from the show – most notoriously the feud with Rosie O'Donnell – the public might just be sick and tired of Donald Trump. Either way, NBC has a problem on their hands as they've apparently already renewed The Apprentice for a seventh season when other shows with ratings like these are not only not renewed but are frequently pulled from the line-up before they finish their season.

Short Takes - April 15, 2007

Short Takes is back after a week that I took off because I really wanted to write the Amazing Race piece, plus I had more running about to do than normal. I have little bit of a surprise coming for you in the next few days but I'll explain it when I finish it.

Don Imus: Okay, everyone has been talking about this one since it broke so I might as well include my one cent's worth – the proverbial penny for my thoughts. I've never seen Don Imus; his show is on one of those cable channels that I can get but couldn't be bothered to pay for because it just doesn't interest me. I've never heard his radio program because morning AM radio from the US doesn't penetrate this far into Canada and we have enough of our own morning bloviators that we don't need to import any from the Great Republic to the south. That said I do have an opinion (of course). I have seen a clip of what he said and taken by itself it's not that bad. In fact he doesn't start the sequence of events, it is the guy sitting with him (as I said I've never seen the show so I don't know if he's a sidekick or what) who uses the word "hos"; Imus only adds "nappy headed" to what the other guy said. And if it were just that incident he might have gotten away with it either with a reprimand or the suspension that he was initially given. The problem is that it wasn't an isolated incident, it was part of a pattern of statements and behaviour that show him to be bigoted and a mysoginist in both his public and private life. My blogging buddy Sam Johnson cites some examples of Imus's behaviour in one of his blog posts on the matter (Sam, If you'd title these things it would make it so much easier to pick out the one post I need – but no matter): "I've been in radio now for twenty three years and I've bumped into folks in the business who've told me stories about Imus and they way he treats folks off the air. No races in whole, but individuals. Allegedy, his treatment of fellow employees is horrible." But it's not just Sam and hearsay reports. Consider Keith Olbermann's reaction to a statement by Imus calling the MSNBC coverage of his firing "hypocritical and unethical":

This from a man who believed he and his on-air staff were entitled to make sexual, racial, ethnic, or homophobic jokes about anybody and everybody...

A man who reduced women staffers at MSNBC to tears, and conned one into coming on the air and saying embarrassing things about her co-workers, which led to her dismissal by the company.

A man whose ethics were so high, that, in the NBC case at least, the traditionally distant nature of corporate America had to listen to the better angels of its nature, when virtually all the employees of a network and an entire news division said 'we have understood that you haven't fired him the last 10,000 times, but you have to do it now.'

I don't know that "corporate America had to listen to the better angels of its nature." Apparently there was participation from about thirty NBC News employees (including Al Roker and Ron Allen) in a meeting with News President Steve Capus about how to resolve the situation. On the other hand I suspect that NBC was worried about advertisers pulling their business and advertisers were in turn worried about action from a really big constituency.

Some people approach this action as a blow to Freedom of Speech. Sorry, but I'm not buying it. No one is abridging Imus's freedom to speak. He can say whatever he wants but NBC and CBS aren't going to pay him to do it. In general terms you have the right to say whatever you want and I have the right not to pay you to say it or allow you to say it on my property. And while the airwaves are "owned" by the public, which is what gives the FCC the right to license broadcasters and to regulate what is said on them, it is broadcasting companies like CBS Radio and NBC that control the means of using those airways. I seem to recall a saying to the effect that "the press is only truly free to the man who owns the press" (certainly Henry Ford and the Dearborn Independent were proof of that). Substitute radio station or cable TV network for press and you sum the Imus situation up entirely.

Nancy Grace and the Duke Rape Case: Just so you don't think I'm ganging up on Don Imus because he's a white male who made a racist and misogynistic remark about Black women, I'm going call for the firing of a woman for things that she has said about white men. I'd love to see Nancy Grace fired for things that she's said about the Duke Rape Case other court cases. In some ways she is more dangerous than Don Imus with her attitude that being charged with a crime – or even suspected of committing one – is tantamount to being guilty. In the Duke Rape Case she reversed her position on the importance of DNA evidence when the evidence didn't suit her position that the lacrosse players were guilty of rape. The kind of statements that Grace makes have the very real potential to taint the jury pool in cases that go to trial. In fact this is one reason why Canadian courts enforce a publication ban on evidence in court cases before evidence is presented to the jury in the criminal case and the other side has a chance to refute that evidence. I'm not really a fan of John Stewart as a news source but here's his take on Grace and the rape case.

Guess Who!?: That's right, it's your old pal Woody Woodpecker. According to animation expert Jerry Beck, Universal will be releasing a package of Woody Woodpecker cartoons that has my inner animation geek absolutely drooling in anticipation. It's not just Woody Woodpecker either. The package contains Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, some of the Lantz Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons (the character originated at Disney and the deal last year between ABC and NBC for Al Michaels returned the rights to the Disney Oswalds to the company but the ones don by Lantz remained at Universal), and a host of others including cartoons that the network wouldn't allow to be aired on the Woody Woodpecker TV show because they contained caricatures of black musicians which were deemed in 1957 to be racist stereotypes. There will also be six Behind the Scenes segments from the old Woody Woodpecker Show featuring Walter Lantz.

As a kid I was a huge fan of The Woody Woodpecker Show. In part it was the interaction between Woody and Walter and in part because there seemed to be an intimacy between Lantz and his viewers. Not to take anything away from Walt Disney's intros to the various incarnations of his shows, but he always seemed to be unapproachable, almost as if he were having you in for an interview; I suppose it was the office and the desk. Lantz always seemed more open and genial.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Last week – when I didn't do this article – the PTC's worst show of the week was Family Guy for being generally insensitive and for making doing double entendre jokes – in short the usual sort of stuff that Family Guy does. They were also having a sort of pre-emptive strike at Morgan Stanley since the statement from Connecticut Chapter Director Mary Simon Streep mentions no specific programming that the company sponsors.

This week the PTC decided to use the Don Imus incident as a springboard for their call for "cable choice" (a la carte cable to the rest of us). In a statement released on April 11 – ironically the day that Imus's show on MSNBC was cancelled – PTC Chairman Tim Winter stated "One of the most tragic ironies of this whole Imus incident is that those who have been most harmed by his insensitive remarks will be forced to underwrite his salary as soon as his two-week suspension is over. Outraged consumers should have the ability to 'unsubscribe' to MSNBC or other offensive cable networks without having to lose their cable subscription entirely. The Imus comments are only the latest symptom of a larger and more concerning problem. There has been a shocking volume of racist and anti-Semitic material guised as 'comedy' on advertiser-supported basic cable television. African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Jews have been specific targets in recent months. The PTC has noted the use of the 'n-word' over 140 times in the last two years, including 42 utterances of the n-word in one recent episode of South Park alone." Winter also called on civil rights groups to change their attitudes on "cable choice": "A number of civil rights groups have recently expressed opposition to cable choice. We hope that the Imus incident and these other instances of racially insensitive fare on basic cable will encourage a reconsideration of their position." Now I don't pretend to be an expert on such things but it seems to me that among the cable networks that would be hard hit by a move to "cable choice" would be stations like BET, Univision, and Telemundo; stations that direct their programming to minority communities but which benefit from being sold as part of a package rather than individually. After all, consumer outrage at programming isn't the only reason – or even the most popular reason – why consumers would consider unsubscribing from stations.

This time around the PTC's "Worst Show of the Week" is ABC's In Case Of Emergency. "ABC's new sitcom In Case of Emergency infected primetime television this week with crude sexual content and innuendo. Between Sherman dreaming of a threesome with himself, Joanna visiting a prostitute for a massage, and Jason being blackmailed into having sex with his secretary, the April 4^th episode filled nearly every minute of its time slot with inappropriate content." Then they go into details:

• In Sherman's fantasy, he sees two identical versions of himself preparing to engage him in a threesome.
  
• Joanna seeks treatment for her stiff neck from an unfamiliar massage parlor. Although it is blindingly obvious to the viewer, Joanna is naïve to the fact that the massage parlor is actually a front for a prostitution business. The owner of the venue makes it clear to Joanna's "masseuse" that girl-on-girl "massage" cost $50 more because it takes more time.
  
• Jason learns that he will be indicted by a grand jury unless someone can testify on his behalf. He realizes that the only person with whom he has a good reputation is his old secretary, who is also the only woman he knows with whom he hasn't had sex. The secretary agrees to testify, but only if he "rides her like a racehorse all night long."
  

The PTC statement sums up, saying: "This episode represents some of the worst content that prime-time television has to offer. Lacking any real creativity, pointless and promiscuous sexual content is dumped into American homes in the 9 o'clock hour. Furthermore, this particular episode once again exposes the ineffectiveness of the television ratings system to protect viewers from such content, as the show was only given a "TV-PG" rating." I am torn between wondering why the PTC hasn't noticed this show sooner – the first scene of the first episode features Harry (Jonathon Kellerman) going to a Korean massage parlor for a "hand job" only to discover that his "masseuse" was the valedictorian of his graduating class (Kelly Hu) – and wondering what exactly the PTC considers "real creativity" considering that most of the shows that it has featured as its "Best Show of the Week" have been reality shows, with American Idol being the current preferred choice. While I haven't been watching In Case Of Emergency regularly when I have I found it entertaining and a more enjoyable show than the somewhat similar The Class

Theme Song Quiz

I aced it of course!

The quiz comes from Mental Floss. There are 15 themes ranging from the ones that you'd be ashamed to miss to some relative obscurities. I only had trouble with two of them,and one was a show which I have never seen. It could have been a lot harder with some themes from more obscure shows. I mean who remembers the theme to, I don't know Nurses, which was part of a block with Empty Nest, and Golden Girls.

TV theme songs I Score: 100% (15 out of 15)

Lights Out, But For How Long

o there I was, making supper ('cause a guys got to eat, right) and catching the rerun of the first hour of the Bartlett re-election on The West Wing, and yet again picking up on some detail that I hadn't seen before or had seen before and forgot about for a while. And it's good, sort of like that favourite restaurant where you've been going to since you developed a palate that favoured something more than hamburger cranked out in some factory in Indiana and has the perfectly done steak that you order every time. Then I settle down to watch...well I started out to watch Bones before I discovered that it was being replaced – entirely inadequately – by 'Til Death. It's just as well because I forgot to set the VCR to tape Jericho or Friday Night Lights and I can't tape one and watch the other on the late feed. So I settled onto the finale of Friday Night Lights but it's obvious that I'm going to miss some of the nuances. But let me tell you folks, even missing some of the nuances, this show is like that new place that opens with a cuisine that you've rarely tried before and never seen done really well until now, and suddenly it's on the list with your old favourite. Or at least it is until it shuts down after a few weeks because only you and a few others went there while the rest of the world was stuffing Mickey D's products down their gullets. The comparison to The West Wing is deliberate; while Friday Night Lights just possibly might not be the best show on television, it is undoubtedly the best new show to survive to the end of this season but unlike The West Wing, because people were too busy with shows they were comfortable with and because their perception was that the show was "just" about sports or teen angst it may also become the best "one season" show of the decade. And that's a shame.

The Friday Night Lights finale – three weeks before the start of May sweeps; not that good of a sign – brought the Dillon Panther's season to its conclusion. There was football of course, with the usual last minute heroics by Matt and Smash and Tim Riggins. But if football was all that the show had going for it I wouldn't be enthusiastic about it. And there was teen angst – Lyla Garrity dealing with here parent's impending divorce, Julie Taylor worried about being separated from her first real boyfriend (Matt) because her father is intent on taking a college coaching job, and poor Landry doomed hope of get into Tyra's pants during their trip to the big game in Dallas. But if teen angst were all that the show had to offer, it wouldn't make the show special. The show brings more. In a lot of ways it is about relationships, but even though the central relationship is Coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami, the relationships we're talking about aren't just male-female. Eric is under constant pressure to perform miracles as coach – he has to recover from the loss of his starting quarterback and groom a kid who by rights is a year or two away from being ready for the pressure of leading the team. He has to deal with the team's boosters led by Buddy Garrity and which basically includes the entire town of Dillon Texas. Everyone's a critic and everyone has a suggestion, and yet the whole thing is done in intimate detail. The stories are personal but at the same time the viewer is aware that these people – players, coaches and their families – are under a microscope from people who aren't going to cut them any slack because of their personal crises.

Friday Night Lights has excelled with casting and in making the relationships seem like they'd be real. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Eric and Tami Taylor have an amazing chemistry that makes them work as a married couple. Zach Gilford, who plays Matt Saracen, is a perfect choice as a kid who is suddenly thrust into the spotlight and is coping with what must seem to a kid in his position to be the weight of the world – a beloved grandmother who is slipping into senility, a father who is less distant when he's off with his military unit in Iraq than when he's at home, and the expectations of an entire town. It's no wonder that he latches on to Coach Taylor and his family as surrogates. In the season finale, when Matt discovers that Coach has decided to take the job at a college, he more than any other member of the team feels personally betrayed. It is a nice bit of acting made even more impressive by the fact that the sense of betrayal isn't expressed in words so much as it is in Matt's actions and expression. And then there's Jesse Plemons as Landry Clarke. The character is an outsider when it comes to the team who gains what access he does because of his friendship with Matt (and the fact that he has a car and Matt doesn't). It's a sign of something that the show's creators chose to name the character, who has the slightest relationship to football, "Landry" after the legendary coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Landry is, in many ways, comic relief. He is something of a mediocrity with a good heart and ambitions far above anything he can hope to achieve now and possibly ever. In the finale it is illustrated by his expectations that he will get a romantic weekend with Tyra which is smashed when he find that she's taking along her mother and sister. Yet his good heartedness makes him stop to take Matt's grandmother with them, and then to persuade Tyra to let them give a stranded Lyla a ride to the game. The thing to note is that while these are performances that stand out, the other actors turn in performances that are just as good. It is a great cast and the writers give them great material to work with.

The season finale neatly brought the show's first year to a close, to the point where it would not be entirely disappointing if it were also the show's series finale. The team goes to the Texas State Championship Game – there's a scene in Texas Stadium as the team enters that is reminiscent of the scene in Hoosiers where the Hickory team enters the Butler Fieldhouse. They win the championship, which also sees them defeating Ray "Voodoo" Tatum who services as quarterback had briefly been bought for the team by Buddy Garrity. Eric's decision to leave the Dillon Panthers becomes public in a way that he isn't able to control. Tami Taylor is surprised to discover that she and her husband are finally going to have a second child but while this is enough to get Eric to reconsider his decision because of his devotion to family, Tami insists that he follows his dream while she and their daughter stay in Dillon. The episode ends as the season began, with callers to a local radio show expressing their doubts about the coach, this time about his lack of "heart" for leaving the team. If the show were to end this, combined with the team winning the championship would provide closure for the story. And yet because of Tami's pregnancy the writers have left open the possibility that Eric will choose family and Dillon over football and the job offer in Austin.

There's some reason for hope among Friday Night Lights fans. NBC has ordered six more scripts, and NBC President Kevin Reilly has indicated that renewal is likely. The Peabody Award and the recognition from the American Film Institute probably haven't hurt either. Still there's absolutely no guarantee that these scripts will air or even be shot – it may be that the network just wants to see where the producers intend to take the show before deciding on renewal. Reilly's suggestion that the show's renewal is a strong possibility has to be tempered with the knowledge that the show has never been a strong ratings performer even though it attracts a strong and affluent fan base. The worst that could happen is not that the show would be cancelled; the worst thing that could happen is that the show would be renewed but with so many "suggestions" for "improvements" that we wouldn't recognise it. I don't want this show to end up like Boomtown, killed by those determined to save it. This show doesn't deserve that particular fate worse than death.

Where Has The Adventure Gone?

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time at all, you know that I love The Amazing Race with a passion that is strong and true. Not only do I think that the show is the gold standard which every other reality-competition has to measure up to but I also think that it is better than a lot of other, scripted, shows on television. I'll take The Amazing Race over all of NBC's Sunday line-up – in fact I've only seen two or three episodes of this season's Apprentice and I don't feel like I've missed anything - and 75% of Fox's Sunday too. What I'm about to say isn't going to change my opinion of the show but I think it has to be said. This season of The Amazing Race has turned into adventure travel without the adventure.

The current "All Star" season has been an interesting one as far as personalities and conflicts between personalities is concerned. The producers – Bert van Munster and his wife Elise Doganieri have used an interesting definition of "All Stars". Instead of trying to recruit the first or second place teams from each of the previous seasons (except the sucky Family Edition of course but only because it featured four person teams) or fan favourite teams, they decided to recruit tams with the strongest or most memorable personalities. It meant that some teams that were really popular with the fans were left out – Al & John, The Clowns (Season 4; in fact there was no one from that season or Season 6), B.J. and Tyler, The Hippies (winners of Season 9) – were left out while teams like Joe & Bill (Team Guido from Season 1) and Terri & Ian (Season 3) were included. None of this explains Jon Vito & Jill (Season 3) but that's beside the point. Bert and Elise got exactly what they wanted; strong personalities who are frequently at odds with each other. And it's not just with other teams. There's the usual conflicts between people who are supposed to be close friends or significant others. People who had been bums in their seasons at least partially rehabilitated their images – I'm thinking here of The Guidos and Terri & Ian – while one team (and really one person on that team) has become an object of vilification for the fans. Yes, I'm talking about Charla & Mirna ... mostly Mirna.

The thing is that The Amazing Race is supposed to bring the whole package; personalities, challenges and exotic locales and in most seasons (with the usual exception of the Family Edition) it does. What puts the show that slight bit above Survivor (and light years ahead of Big Brother or The Apprentice) is that the locale changes. The beaches in Fiji are exotic for a time but after a while that quality is lost because they become too familiar. So far in this season of The Amazing Race we've seen the mountains of Ecuador, the wild south of Chile and Argentina, rural Mozambique and the island of Zanzibar in Africa, Poland (including a brief but memorable tribute at the concentration camp at Auschwitz), and most recently Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. So this season has the personalities and it has the locales. Moreover the producers seem to have listened to the fans and made a conscious effort to eliminate the major bottlenecks that saw teams building up a huge lead only to see every other team catch up with them because a business or an attraction was closed until the morning. We've seen some examples – the busses from Warsaw to Auschwitz was a major one – but there have been more problems at the airports than there have been as a result of the way the producers have set things up.

What I think it's lacking is the exciting adventure challenges. About the most adventurous thing the teams have faced this year was a bit of white water rafting (the other option in that detour was climbing a rock wall), while the challenging food component so far has been eating two feet of Kielbasa. Not that some of the challenges haven't been interesting – using specially trained giant rats to find (deactivated) land mines in Mozambique was fascinating – but they aren't exactly adventurous. Other tasks this season have included sorting mail, tuning a piano, shooting an X-Ray, determining a location based on letters found in a boardroom, painting a sign board, and putting polish on people's fingernails. Not a bungee cord or a zip line in sight yet. This past weekend they chose between biting cookies (to find one cookie with a liquorice centre out of 600 boxes for each team that tried it) and applying wax and die to a piece of fabric using the Batik process, then in the Roadblock collecting a pile of old newspapers eight hands high from what looked to be a fairly affluent neighbourhood. It all seems rather mundane.

Then again maybe it is we fans who are somewhat jaded in our expectations. Then too, we've really seen more teams eliminated this season because of travel snafus than challenges. In several episodes it seems as if as much time was spent showing teams trying to get tickets for their next flight as they were doing the episode's challenges. Consider the following:

• Terri & Ian eliminated because they couldn't get from Maputo, Mozambique to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania on the same day as every other team except Joe & Bill. The direct flight to Dar Es Salaam was full, they weren't able to get on standby for the first flight out of Johannesburg South Africa that three other teams booked in Dar Es Salaam, weren't even considered for standby for a second flight out of Johannesburg, which went to a team that thought they had seats from the first flight an were actually taken out of their seats on that flight.
  
• Joe & Bill marked for elimination because the flight from Zanzibar that the producers provided for teams as a back-up in case they couldn't find anything better arrived 10 minutes late and they were unable to make their connection to a flight to Amsterdam. They and Eric & Danielle arrived in Warsaw after several other teams started the next stage of the race.
  
• Uchenna & Joyce, who finished the previous leg tied for first, were eliminated (and effectively disappeared from the episode after the first ten minutes) when they missed a connection in Frankfurt, Germany. According to Uchenna & Joyce the computer printer that produced tickets at the airport in Krakow broke down, leaving them without a printed boarding pass for the flight from Frankfurt to Kuala Lumpur. The desk crew in Krakow thought they'd be fine without it but by the time the mess was sorted out in Frankfurt, the flight to Kuala Lumpur had boarded. Uchenna & Joyce arrived at their destination ten and a half hours after the other teams.
  

I am not going to say that this season of The Amazing Race hasn't been enjoyable because quite clearly it has. In my book it is still the favourite to win the Outstanding Reality Competition series at this year's Emmys. The problem – if you choose to call it that – is that in all too many cases the drama has been created by the clash of personalities, and frequently the clash of everyone against Mirna rather than the adventurous quality of the tasks they've had to do in their Detours and Roadblocks. And while the removal of the numerous bottleneck points has been something of a release, the repeated incidents of high anxiety at the airports – which may be a side effect of the elimination of the bottlenecks – hasn't been that helpful. We want scenes of the teams bungee jumping and rappelling down buildings not standing around in airports dealing with counter clerks. And that's what has taken a lot of the adventure out of this show about adventure travel.

Short Takes – April 4, 2007

I got a little delayed in writing this. The plan had been to get it out on Sunday but circumstances – in the form of a long nap and a two hour Amazing Race conspired against me. Then there's the situation with my printer – there are no Vista drivers for my Deskjet 3820 and the driver that HP suggests using doesn't do a damned thing. I wouldn't mind waiting because I like the printer (and I don't want to buy a new printer) and don't really use one that much now that I'm no longer a bowling league secretary but it's Income Tax time in Canada I've got to print out a couple of returns I'll just have to reactivate the old Windows 98 machine to take care of things. Still there were a couple of things I wanted to put out there and then something new popped up today.

There's a great new show...that just got cancelled: It used to be that TV series ran for 13 weeks and were either renewed for a further 13 or were replaced at mid-season with another show that ran 13 weeks, no matter what. Those days are gone forever of course. A show that lasts as long as 13 weeks is practically guaranteed to run the full year just because the networks don't have anything better to replace them with. Shows like Lost and Jericho go on hiatus for several weeks (supposedly because they "don't repeat well") and the network weasels end up wondering why the ratings on the shows slip when they do come back. And news shows debut either to replace shows that failed – in the eyes of the network weasels – or to stand in for the shows that "don't repeat well." These shows aren't midseason replacements so much as they are Spackle, designed to fill the holes in the network schedules. This season there have been many holes – big, gaping, cavernous holes. In virtually every case – at least when it comes to sitcoms and dramas – these Spackle shows haven't stuck around long enough to even be noticed. The networks schedules are in tatters and I don't know if they know what to do about it.

Take the most recent round of Spackle falling off the schedule. It started last week when The Great American Dream Vote featuring Donny Osmond was cancelled by ABC after two episodes aired – one on Tuesday opposite American Idol and the other the next day. The premise – where the audience voted for which contestant got to have his life-long dream fulfilled (no dreams about world peace need apply) – was pretty lame, so no great loss really, but it did set the stage for the next round of cancellations. In what Variety described as "Black Monday" the networks set out to do some housecleaning. At Fox, production of David E. Kelly's Wedding Bells was halted after seven episodes had been produced and four had aired. Sources were unclear as to whether the remaining three episodes would air in the show's Friday night time slot – Variety suggested that it would not return following a pre-emption on April 6 for the movie White Chicks. At the same time ABC returned 6 Degrees to the indefinite hiatus list after two airings on Friday nights. It will be replaced by repeats of the reality show Wife Swap. ABC had previously placed its highly touted Knights of Prosperity on indefinite hiatus, replaced by reruns of According To Jim.
NBC will be putting Monday night's Black Donnellys on hiatus following the eighth of 13 episodes ordered which will air on April 16 – if the network doesn't pull it sooner. The show will be replaced by the reality-practical joke series Wedding Crashers which had originally been scheduled to air on Sundays. Finally The CW has cancelled 7^th Heaven – again – effective at the end of the season, and has set a debut date for its new mystery drama Hidden Palms starting Wednesday May 30. One Tree Hill, which went onto hiatus on February 21, will return with the final three episodes of its season on Wednesday May 2.

It seems fairly obvious that the current model for network television, focussed around airing new episodes during specific sweeps periods, is broken, particularly if your network is running shows that don't perform well in repeats. One of the reasons why, in my review of The Black Donnellys, I questioned whether NBC was the right place for this show was the habit of network executives to pull shows of the schedule at the slightest sign of ratings weakness. A cable network, such as FX or Showtime would probably have let the cancelled shows run for the full number of episodes that had been ordered before considering whether or not to renew. A show like The Great American Dream Vote might even have become a mainstay of a network like Fox Reality. It may be that Fox showed the way to a new model of Network TV with the way it has chosen to handle 24 which debuted in January and will run its twenty-four episodes uninterrupted by reruns or hiatuses. There are reports that ABC will consider running Lost like that next season, with a January debut and a straight run of new episodes. Maybe that's the way most shows should be done, straight through without reruns and then having real midseason replacements. It may not be the best idea in the world but given the mess that the broadcast networks are dealing with this season I can't see it being the worst alternative.

Somethin's botherin' me: Remember the PTC poll on the V-Chip that I reported in the previous instalment of Short Takes. There was something about them that seemed off about them and now, thanks to the Progress and Freedom Foundation blog I think I know what it was. As you will recall, The PTC stated that they had paid to have three questions inserted into two "omnibus telephone surveys of adults nationwide, conducted by Zogby International," one in September 2006 and the other in March 2007. So here's the problem according to the PFF blog: an omnibus poll will sample households which don't have children, don't have televisions with V-Chips, or both. According to the US Census Bureau, 68% of American homes don't have children and therefore don't have any interest in the use of the V-Chip or other devices to restrict TV viewership. Even if the survey restricted the people who answered the questions related to the V-Chip to the 32% of homes that have children in them the results are still questionable since you don't have the same representative sample size – in polling the smaller the sample size the less representative the results.

Perhaps the most insulting thing about the PTC and their activities is the way they disrespect parents. The organization seems to think that they have to act as America's "media nanny" or else children will be exposed to all the horrors of unrestricted television. They fail to recognise that to parents children are individuals whose maturity isn't designated simply by the date on their birth certificate. The question that the PTC asked in the Zogby survey didn't ask whether the family had its own "household media consumption rules." The PFF blog pointed out that "a 2003 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 'Almost all parents say they have some type of rules about their children's use of media.' And a 2006 Kaiser survey of families with infants and preschoolers revealed that 85 percent of those parents who let their children watch TV at that age have rules about what their child can and cannot watch. 63 percent of those parents say they enforce those rules all of the time. About the same percentage of parents said they had similar rules for video game and computer usage." But of course in their Zogby Poll questions the PTC had an agenda: to prove that the V-Chip doesn't work, that the networks that promote the use of the V-Chip are acting in bad faith, and that the nation needs the PTC and similar organizations to "protect" it from the evils of television programs not matter what time they air, "for the sake of the children."

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Not much new to report on the PTC front except for the Worst Show of the Week. This time around it is the March 23 episode of Crossing Jordan. The episode dealt with a teenage girl who was found already buried in someone else's grave. It turns out that she's not as sweet and innocent as everybody thinks – she's running her own teen porn site for pedophiles and as it turns out she and her two best friends are prostituting themselves, meeting some of their online clientele for sex in return for money. It's the whole plotline that the PTC objects to: "The fact that some young girls sell their bodies on the internet is an unfortunate reality. While most people do not condone such behavior, they are forced to accept that it happens. But the fact that something is a reality in the darkest corners of life does not make it suitable for prime-time entertainment. As their idea of public entertainment, the writers of Crossing Jordan chose to present a teenage girl degrading herself by parading her body in a pornographic manner on the internet – and NBC chose to air it at 9 o'clock in the evening. These choices are irresponsible and deeply disturbing..."

Okay, let's delve into this a bit. What the PTC is saying is that the episode of Crossing Jordan is bad not because it titillated but because it deals with a subject that the PTC finds objectionable. Instead of presenting the issue in a dramatic manner it should just be hidden away like a dirty little secret. The "unfortunate reality" shouldn't be confronted because – well I'm not really sure of the PTC's "because". Maybe TV shows are supposed to ignore it because people "are forced to accept that it happens." Again, I'm not sure what the PTC's point is except that the episode shouldn't have been made because they think the subject matter should be a dirty little secret that everyone knows about but can't do anything about. Frankly I find their attitude irresponsible and deeply disturbing.

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!

Culture Wins One Over Commerce

So let me explain something. I'm not a musical person. I couldn't tell the difference between Nellie Furtado and Nellie McClung. Okay, that's wrong. I can tell you the differences between Nellie Furtado and Nellie McClung, but only because I know a little about Nellie McClung. When it comes to Nellie Furtado I'm a blank slate. So you can tell that the Juno Awards – Canada's answer to the Grammys and named for Pierre Juneau who as head of the CRTC introduced stringent Canadian Content regulations for TV and Radio – don't exactly turn my world upside down even though they're in my home town of Saskatoon. In fact if I got on my bike and used a short cut I know about I could reach TCU Place – formerly Saskatchewan Place – temporary home of the Junos and normally home of the mighty, mighty (pitiful) Saskatoon Blades in about 20 minutes. But I wouldn't because quite frankly I could care less. I mean right now I'm listening to CBC's Radio 2 right now and they don't play the sort of thing that gets honoured at awards shows, at least not on the TV broadcast. Face it, when was the last time you saw the Grammy for best Classical Album awarded during the television broadcast? Yeah that's right, never.

But I am all about the TV and that's where the Junos suddenly became interesting. You see the Junos were scheduled to start at 7 p.m. on Sunday night. That's 7 p.m. Saskatoon time, which is Central Standard Time which really means it's Mountain Daylight Time (but just try explaining that to people around here). The problem is that we as Canadians live in a country that spans five and a half time zones, and if you'll recall the list of the most popular shows I ran last Monday, most Canadians watch The Amazing Race on Sundays. That includes me, as I`m sure you all know by now.

So the folks at CTV faced a conundrum: do they show the Junos live and move The Amazing Race out of its normal timeslot in most of the country, or run The Amazing Race at its usual time which coincides with the time that CBS shows it in the United States and cable systems across Canada (except of course for Saskatchewan which is too odd and unimportant for them to adjust the schedule so that US shows are seen at the same time that the American stations in Detroit show them). Really it was a no-brainer – they decided to do the right thing... and tape delay the Junos in most of the country, including Saskatchewan.

Apparently there was outrage. I`m not entirely sure from whom but there was outrage felt. When I first found out about this decision, I contacted Diane Kristine, who not only does the fine blog Unified Theory of Nothing Much but also created the website TV Eh! What`s Up in Canadian TV. Her reaction was admittedly a bit more musically interested than mine but still similar. Essentially she felt that the Juno show would receive better ratings with The Amazing Race as a lead in than going head to head with the American feed of the show. She did preface her statement with a "sadly", which I probably wouldn't have done. Actually I do know where a lot of the outrage came from – the Canadian music industry. According to a statement from CTV and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, there was an "overwhelming feedback" from artists, managers and record labels. "They were feeling that . . . it really looked as though we were treating Canadian music in a way that made it look like second-class citizens," said CARAS chairman Stephen Stohn. "We reacted immediately to that and said, 'No, the important thing is: Canadian music comes number 1.' " Both CARAS and CTV had initially agreed to scheduling the Junos after The Amazing Race, which usually draws an audience of over 2 million viewers, as a way to increase viewership of the awards show. It's not without precedent – two years ago the Junos were tape delayed because it conflicted with Desperate Housewives. Initially the Junos were to air live in the Atlantic provinces (at 10 p.m.) and Alberta (at 7 p.m. – they get their American channels from Spokane in the Pacific time zone) and by tape delay in the rest of Canada including Saskatoon. The current plan has the show starting at 5 p.m. CST rather than as originally scheduled at 7 p.m. and airing live in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta. It will still be tape delayed in Manitoba and British Columbia, and will be reaired in Saskatchewan at 9 p.m.

Writer Denis McGrath who is a staunch defender of Canadian TV production was very much opposed to CTV's decision. In a post on his blog Dead Things ON Sticks he wrote "that pesky culture vs. commerce thing keeps rearing its ugly head, too, all because of the peculiarity of broadcasting in Canada: private broadcasters make their money by aping and piggybacking on U.S. nets, NOT by developing and broadcasting their own programs." He follows this up with an interesting observation "I've said this before, but it bears repeating: the very same arguments made against continuing subsidies and support for the domestic TV industry were made against Cancon in music. Yet Cancon rules for radio allowed the Canadian industry to mature, grow, and eventually become popular; popular enough that a Canadian private network would face a difficult choice between two properties.... If Canadian TV hasn't reached a popularity point with audiences yet that rivals the Junos, it's a problem of implementation – NOT basic philosophy." Frankly I think he's right to a point, although music – and a home-grown self-sufficient music industry – is a lot easier and less expensive to develop than television shows or a home-grown and self sufficient television industry. But that's a subject for another day. Suffice it to say that the current model, which not only allows Canadian stations and networks to buy American product but encourages them to do so through the mechanism of simultaneous substitution (which puts the Canadian signal – and advertising – over the top of the same American signal on cable systems) is not one that will encourage quality Canadian production or the development of a domestic industry. That's a crutch that private radio never had and may explain why the Canadian Content regulations for radio spawned a viable and vibrant recording industry in Canada.

Short Takes – March 25, 2007

Okay, I made the transition to the New Blogger and for the most part it was painless. All I had to do was create a new Google account and even that wasn't overly painful. Who knew? Apparently not the people who set up this transition process in the first place but that, of course, is a whole other story. Changes are coming; you may have noticed the addition of labels below the posts – and because I'm an anal sort I'll eventually get every post (over 500 of them) appropriately labelled – and then there's the long desired (by me) redefinition of my template. But that's for the future.

ABC renews shows for next year: I think this makes them the first network to do so. Among the shows renewed are new series Men in Trees, Ugly Betty, and Brothers & Sisters, and returning series Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Dancing With The Stars, The Bachelor, Boston Legal, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Significantly there is no word about Six Degrees (one of those rare shows that has returned from an early relegation to the status of "indefinite hiatus", but which has had a significant retooling by the network), nor is there any mention of the network's conventional comedy series including According to Jim and George Lopez as well as new shows Knights of Prosperity and In Case of Emergency.

Ratings show Canadians love US shows: In my last post I mentioned that of the Canadian broadcast networks CBC was the one I was most likely to watch because I chose to watch the other networks' offerings on the original American network. Here are the top 10 shows on Canadian TV courtesy of the BBM – essentially Canada's answer to the Nielsen Ratings:

1. American Idol (Tuesday) - CTV
   
2. Grey's Anatomy - CTV
   
3. American Idol (Wednesday) - CTV
   
4. Corner Gas - CTV
   
5. CSI: Miami - CTV
   
6. Amazing Race All Stars - CTV
   
7. Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? - Global
   
8. Criminal Minds - CTV
   
9. Hockey Night In Canada – Game 1 - CBC
   
10. CTV Evening News - CTV
    

Of the ten shows, only three are made in Canada – Corner Gas, Hockey Night In Canada, and CTV Evening News – and only Corner Gas is a scripted, non-news program. And we can see which network bought the most popular American programming.

Guidance and common sense: Patricia Harrison, the Republican appointed president of the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, recently made some wide ranging statements about the organization she heads. The principal thrust of her speech at a Media Institute lunch was primarily about seeking guidance from journalism schools to "define journalistic objectivity and balance on public broadcasting." According to Harrison, "public media consumers already believe noncommercial TV is nonpartisan and unbiased."

Harrison had opinions about other aspects of public broadcasting. She stated that she was shocked when the FCC fined a non-commercial station for airing profanities when it showed the Martin Scorsese Blues documentary. According to Harrison, "common sense could dictate that there is a world of difference between the casual, gratuitous profanity in a run-of-the-mill sitcom as opposed to its contextual use in a documentary like The Blues." She also worried about the effect that this sort of "censorship before the fact" will have a chilling effect on other stations and producers. She's a bit behind the times on this one. We know from the private sector that is has exactly that sort of effect. The decision by a large number of commercial stations not to air the movie because of profanity despite the fact that it had aired previously and had not been subject to FCC action is exactly the sort of chilling effect that Harrison is talking about. It is an action that says that it is better to be safe than sorry and it has become more pervasive in these days of increased FCC fines and advocacy groups mounting massive mailing campaigns with pre-printed form letters of complaint for people who are "outraged" even if they never saw the show in question.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Well they're still hating on the same episode of The Black Donellys as they were last week. And they are continuing their assault on the V-Chip. In an address to the Association of National Advertisers' Forum on March 20, as reported in Advertising Age, PTC President Tim Winter alleged that 80% of the V-Chip ratings assigned to shows were wrong as determined by a study undertaken by the PTC. According to Winter, this represented "fraud by many of the broadcasters and the networks. ... They rate [the programs] inaccurately and that way the V-chip doesn't block the programming. You're duped. Families are duped. And if the rating system is wrong, the V-chip can't work." However, it seems to me that a study by the PTC on the V-Chip is on the lines of a self-fulfilling prophecy; the ratings are determined to be wrong by the PTC but it is in the interest of the PTC for the ratings to be wrong. If all you see a statement that "80% of the V-Chip ratings assigned to shows are wrong" aren't you being duped if you aren't told that the organization that is making that statement is vehemently opposed to the very idea of the V-Chip?

Who hates the PTC this week?: As a matter of fact it's the very organization that Tim Winter was addressing, the Association of National Advertisers. Winter repeated the usual PTC line; the V-Chip doesn't work, that there needs to be a la carte pricing for cable so people aren't forced to subsidise shows that have graphic content, and that the PTC wants to work with advertisers so that they don't fund "evil" shows. Among Winter's statements: "I believe there is a cartel … a fraud that the cable industry … has perpetrated on consumers," and "Our goal is to have collaborative efforts to help you reach your demographic market. We want you to win. We want to do it a way that hopefully does not encourage or sponsor graphic anti-family programming."

Winter was in enemy territory on this one though as reported by Variety's Multi Channel News. Dan Jaffe, the ANA's executive vice president of government relations stated that "What we have always said is that we don't want to have censorship in this society, where some group becomes a surrogate parent, for a surrogate person to decide what should come into the home. Parents should have that power." At least one delegate suggested that companies who are targeted by PTC letter and email campaigns should be able to sue for restraint of trade. One attendee wanted his money back because he felt that the forum was a waste of time: "This conversation is ridiculous as an advertiser. You have a television. You have a remote control. Turn it off tell your daughter to leave the room." In a poll taken during the ANA panel, a significant minority – 41% – felt threatened by advocacy groups like the PTC, but not one felt that advocacy groups like the PTC should be given the responsibility of shielding children from what they watch on TV.

Winters reportedly appreciated the difference in opinion but "I think it's unfortunate that it has to be so venomous." Perhaps he should ask himself and his group who made it so venomous - I don't think it was the advertisers. Certainly through its Family Friendly Programming Forum and the Forum's Script Development Fund, the ANA has done more that is positive in terms of getting family friendly programming on the air than anyone at the PTC ever has.

My Top 15 TV Channels – At The Moment

The guys over at TVSquad.com have taken note of a report from the New York Daily News (one of the great newspapers in my opinion) which says that while the average American household gets over 100 TV channels (104.92 to be precise) thanks to cable and/or satellite, most of them only watch about 15 of them on any sort of regular basis. Which is interesting and may explain the cable industry's reluctance – to say the least – to the idea of a la carte pricing, but that's a whole different story. The Daily News article doesn't give any listing of which 15 channels are the most popular amongst the viewers surveyed. I suspect that it would reveal that the mass of religious channels collectively are on the list of fewer people than any one of the shopping channels which are in turn dwarfed as a group by the stations that serve up that diet of violent and sexual content that the PTC rails against.

As I never get tired of reminding you gentle readers, I am Canadian. This means that most of my pop culture is American but the delivery mechanism is usually from Canadian channels. Some of them are tied to an American partner, like HGTV or Food Network Canada, while others are independent and only linked to American channels by buying their product. The History Channel in Canada is one really big example. All it shares with the History Channel in the USA is the name. The point is that while there are apparent similarities between any list that I can produce and an American viewer's list, there are big differences. And as I implied in the title for this post what stations are on my top 15 list can change – often quite quickly. Right now for example I`m beginning to become interested in the W Network (formerly The Women`s Network) in part because they`re showing The Closer.

Before I reveal my list, I should present a few statistics. My cable service provider is Shaw Cable and I subscribe to their digital cable package. I have access to 157 channels – not counting listings channels, text channels, Pay Per View channels, and HD channels – of which I take 89. This includes time shifting stations for ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and PBS as well as three CW stations (now that Shaw gives us the Chicago feed of WGN rather than the national feed). And my top 15 channels (in approximate order of popularity) are:

1. CBS
   
2. NBC
   
3. ABC
   
4. FOX
   
5. TSN (sports)
   
6. Sportsnet
   
7. Space: The Imagination Station (science fiction)
   
8. The History Channel
   
9. G4-TechTV
   
10. BBC Canada
    
11. Canadian Learning Television
    
12. Food Network
    
13. CBC
    
14. The Score (sports)
    
15. The Weather Network
    

There's only one Canadian broadcast station on that list – the CBC – and there's a good reason for that. CTV and Global, the two private networks available in this area, are primarily in the business of rebroadcasting American shows and normally I tune to the US stations to see those programs. And the Canadian stations know that which is why they schedule most of their American shows at the same time as they air in the US market and simultaneously substitute (simsub or as most people prefer simulcast) their signal over what is coming from the American source. There are no all-news channels on that list since I tend to browse for that sort of thing. If there were the list would have CBC Newsworld and BBC World far ahead of CNN and Headline News (particularly since Headline News abandoned its original premise and has become the Glenn Beck-Nancy Grace Network). And despite three CW feeds there's really only one show that I watch on that network, Smallville.

So those are my 15 networks. What are yours?

The New Computer Is Here!

It arrived Friday, just after noon, which is odd since I got a phone call the day before from Dell that it had been shipped. Of course that was a week after the Dell website told me that it had been shipped. I'm confessed that I'm very excited but I'm sure that will wear off. No trouble setting it up except for getting the speakers to work – turns out I forgot to plug them in. You're going to have to indulge me on this for a minute or two and then I promise not to write anything more about it – yeah right.

Instant observations:

• This thing is fast. On the computer that I was using since my old E Machine died I would sometimes type faster than the computer was ready to accept characters. Not happening here. In performance terms the difference is like between a Ferrari and a Lada or a Trabant.
  
• The other big thing that I've noticed is just how quiet this machine is compared with every other computer that I've owned, with the possible exception of my first computer, an XT clone. Compared this with either the E Machine or the PII that I've been using is like the difference between a hybrid cars, like a Prius, and a 747.
  
• As far as Vista goes, I haven't had any problems with it. There are some nice gimmicks, but I don't know that it is a huge jump up from XP. If I didn't need a new computer I wouldn't have upgraded (not that the E Machine would have been up for it) but since I did have to get a new machine I am glad that I waited for Vista.
  
• I'm also enjoying using Office 2007. The ribbon bar looks like it could take some getting used to but it seems reasonably intuitive. One thing I like is the ability to write blog entries and post them directly to Blogger with no intermediary.
  
• The one problem so far is really outmoded technology on my part – not only does the machine not have a floppy drive (by my choice – they actually do offer one) but there`s no parallel port for my printer. I can`t get to the back of the printer right now but hopefully it has a USB port or I`ll have to figure something else out.
  

All in all I`m very happy. We`ll have to see how long that feeling lasts.

Update: No problem with the computer, but when I tried logging into Blogger I had a problem, namely that I can't log into Blogger! At least not the version that I use, and I can't change to the new one, so I have to post this using Word and hope that it posts properly. In the immortal words of Chester A. Riley (who was played on TV by both William Bendix – who created the role on radio – and Jackie Gleason) "What a revoltin' development!"

Update to the Update: Problem resolved. I don't know how but it's fixed!

The Dead Do Tell Tales

Like Allison Dubois, Detective Michael Raines sees dead people. But at least he knows he’s nuts.

A few years ago television took a dip into the supernatural or the otherworldly. Maybe it started with Touched By An Angel or even earlier with Highway To Heaven. The trend continued with Joan of Arcadia where Amber Tamblyn’s character talked with God although God tended to take on different faces from episode to episode. Things turned a bit more secular with Ghost Whisperer starring Jennifer Love Hewitt where an antique dealer helps the spirits of the dead “cross over”, Medium where Patricia Arquette gets psychic visions. Then there was the short-lived Tru Calling where Eliza Dushku tried to prevent the deaths of people she encountered in her job at the morgue. Famously, when Les Moonves cancelled Joan Of Arcadia he made a comment about ghosts being more relevant to younger audiences than God.

The thing that sets these shows apart is belief. Patricia Arquette’s character Allison Dubois (based on a real-life psychic of the same name) believes in her visions in the same way that Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character (who has some qualities in common with “medium” James van Pragh) believes in her ghosts or Joan of Arcadia believed in her discussions with God. A lot of people would look at these characters and their beliefs and claim that they are crazy. Indeed I am aware of people who won’t watch Medium because of the connection with the real life Allison Dubois because of what they believe is her insanity. Personally I fund such an attitude unfortunate since it isn’t a bad show even with the premise. Raines is a show that takes the premise in a different direction.

Michael Raines is psychologically troubled, following the shooting of his former partner during an encounter with a drug dealer. He seems to have been under psychiatric care and we know that his Captain (played by Matt Craven) is concerned enough that when he hears that Raines has been talking to himself he worries that Michael might not be capable of doing the job. When Raines goes to the apartment of murder victim Sandy Boudreau he encounters a woman who is a dead ringer for the young woman. Dead is the operative word – she is Sandy Boudreau, or at least Michael’s vision of her. He has hallucinations about her but the hallucinations are based on what he knows about her at the time and what he sees changes. He discovers in the course of his investigation that Sandy wasn’t just a college student but was in fact a high-class escort and this changes her somewhat. When it seems that she is involved in a blackmail scheme, his vision of Sandy briefly changes into a version of Kathleen Turner in Body Heat – complete with cigarette – and just as quickly turns back when Raines calls her on it.

The mystery in the pilot episode of Raines was relatively straightforward with the usual sort of twists and turns that one finds in this sort of detective show. The first person arrested for the crime quite obviously didn’t do it, and while the victim’s ex-boyfriend initially seems to be an obvious suspect he is also cleared, although he provides an important clue in solving the mystery. What makes this show tick is Raines himself and his ability to identify with the victim and give them a personality based on what he knows about them. As his ex-partner Charlie (played in the pilot by Malik Yoba and in later episodes by Luis Guzman) reminds him, with Raines it’s all about the victims. (There’s a revelation about Charlie at the end of the episode that I won’t reveal here but which should have been patently obvious to anyone with half a brain.)

The supporting cast of Raines is reasonably good although in truth they haven’t been given too much to do so far. Besides Matt Craven, the cast includes Nicole Sullivan as civilian employee Carolyn Crumley, and Dov Davidoff and Linda Park as a couple of uniformed cops. On the whole though the supporting characters didn’t have that much to do in the pilot episode. It was all about Raines, which means that Jeff Goldblum is front and center for virtually the entire episode. Goldblum is an actor that I have always enjoyed going back to his first series, 1980’s Tenspeed and Brown Shoe with Ben Vereen. Goldblum isn’t breaking new ground here in terms of expanding his range; he is playing his standard brilliant but eccentric character which he does very well. He’s a good fit for the character and that’s a good thing considering how much of the show revolves around him. I can’t say that there aren’t others who could play this role and do a very good job with it, but there are none that could do it better than Jeff Goldblum.

Writer and producer Graham Yost has given us a show that isn’t overly challenging in the way that his previous effort Boomtown was. Raines is a fun show and if one were to offer comparisons – as TV critics inevitably do – it would be to a show like Monk or Psych rather than to heavier, more serious fare like the Law & Order franchise, or even to a show like Crossing Jordan. In fact the comparison with Monk may be the most accurate of all in that both Adrian Monk and Michael Raines are psychologically damaged goods, due in part at least to a traumatic and violent experience in their recent past. What I liked about the show and what impressed me most about it is the way it took the fascination with the paranormal and reversed it. Michael Raines doesn’t believe that he’s seeing real ghosts or that he has somehow been gifted with some sort of great power. He knows that he is psychologically troubled but he also comes to realise that his hallucinations and delusions are his way of organizing his thoughts about the cases that he is dealing with. I like this show well enough to recommend it for what it is, a light entertainment with a first rate actor and one which takes a different, more rational, approach to this whole business of communing with the dead. NBC cut their order for Raines from thirteen to seven episodes but I for one wouldn’t mind seeing more.

Short Takes - March 12, 2007

A short one this time around. I've got a list of reasons for not writing much, mainly things I did today. We had a lot of snow over the winter and it is starting to melt. Which is good. On the other hand if the snow is packed around your basement windows then when it melts the water on the outside can very easily end up on the inside - of my basement. That's a bad thing. I also had to dig some channels to get melting water away from the part of my garage where most of my brother's stuff is stored, and also open the storm drain which the city so kindly covered with about four feet of snow. And then after that I assembled a flat pack desk for my mother. The door on the desk wouldn't open properly so screw it. So basically not much time to aggregate news about TV today.

Sitcom Wars: From my friend Teletoby over at Inner Toob comes word of a March Madness style survey from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville to "Pick the greatest character in Television history!" At least that's what they say at the top of the survey although what they actually mean is the greatest sitcom character. And actually it is the greatest American sitcom character - no foreigners need apply. (Toby actually apologized to me for the lack of international representation but when it comes to Canada pickings are slim; Red Green and his nephew Harold, and Brent Leroy from Corner Gas leap to mind but there isn't much else - no one associated with Pardon My French or The Trouble With Tracy would ever be confused with great sitcom characters). Actually the big scandal isn't the lack of international representation but who isn't on the list. Only 64 characters were on the list but over 300 were considered and I'm still trying to figure out how you miss some of these people. Among the absent are:

• Dr. Johnny Fever, WKRP in Cincinnati
• Granny Moses (listed as Granny Clampett by the paper, but she was a Jed's mother-in-law), The Beverly Hillbillies
• Oscar Madison, The Odd Couple
• Maynard G. Krebs, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis
• Chandler Bing, Friends
• Fran Fein, The Nanny
• Niles the Butler, The Nanny
• Wilhelm Klink, Hogan's Heroes
• Bert Campbell, Soap
• Jessica Tait, Soap
  

and a host of others. The newspaper has it's reasons but frankly some of them seem kind of weak. But anyway go there and make your voice heard, and I'll respect you ... even if you do prefer Norm Peterson to Sergeant Schultz.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: And the winner is CSI:Miami. The episode in question is the February 26 episode, described by the PTC as "a horrific display of sexual violence, murder, and political scandal." The episode is difficult to explain but apparently the PTC disliked the fact that one of the victims was a stripper/prostitute who was accidentally killed giving a blowjob (not of course the word the PTC used) to a guy who was sitting on her chest. Things are further complicated by the deliberate murder of the prostitute's bodyguard. Or maybe it was that Horatio discovers that - horror of horrors - a politician was patronizing the same service that provided prostitute who was killed. The PTC says that "Graphic dramatizations of strippers, murder and the dead bodies that result, earn C.S.I. Miami our pick for Worst of the Week." This is followed by the concluding statement "Graphic murders and prostitutes being raped are simply not appropriate for family entertainment. Such themes should be troubling to all who are exposed them, yet shows like this champion the effort to make them appear normal and even acceptable." Sorry but even for the PTC this is weak. For one thing I'm not entirely sure what they're objecting to. For heavens sake this is a cop show and more over it is a cop show that airs in the third hour not in the first or second. There wasn't that much about the episode that was particularly graphic. Let's face it, the PTC is grasping at straws in calling this their worst of the week and not doing a very good job of holding onto them.

New computer watch: Expected delivery date is March 19 (seven days!) but my mother's friend Mary (the one who persuaded me to buy a Dell) figures I should get it by the end of the week. Which means I have some files to transfer before it gets here.

Dudes I'm Gettin' a Dell

I just ordered my new computer from Dell. It's a Dimension E351 with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ processor, 2 Gigs of memory, NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE with TurboCache video card, 250 Gig hard drive, a 2.1 Speaker system, DVD ROM and DVD +/- RW drives, Vista Premium, Office Home Student edition. Oh yeah, and a three year subscription to McAfee Security Center. No monitor - I have a very good low mileage CRT. It's probably not the best system I could have set up for my needs, but it's a damn sight better than what I'm currently using and a lot better than my old (and now dead) E Machine.

The whole ordering process was quite frankly a nightmare. Any time I clicked on a link for information it opened a pop-up and then the whole thing refused to let me go any further with a handy "page not found" error message. Had me half-way to ripping out my hair even if I can't afford to lose any more.

By the way (to steer this peripherally back to TV for a moment) have you noticed that Dell computers are increasingly more visible on TV shows? As everyone knows, the Mac used to dominate on TV shows. The heroes would use a gleaming white Mac while the Evil Bad Guys - and this extended down to their well intentioned but misguided dupes - would be toiling away on a generic beige PC box. Increasingly you are seeing more and more Dells - or at least Dell monitors with that big DELL logo discretely embossed on the back - being used by the heroes of various TV shows. That's not why I bought one of course.

Feel free to forward words of congratulation, condolence, or advice. Offers of financial aid wouldn't be rejected either.

Is This The Medium For This Message?

Monday night I wasn't feeling well. Actually I was feeling like crap, spelled with and "s" and a "t", so with great reluctance I decided not to go bowling. So what do you do when you're too sick to really do much of anything. Well being a good child of TV it decided to veg out in front of the Tube and be entertained. Well strictly speaking I fell asleep in front of the TV and woke up part way through Heroes. I did however watch the second episode of The Black Donnellys.

Maybe it's because I wasn't feeling good or maybe just because I hadn't seen the first episode, but the truth is I wasn't impressed. The series focuses on the four Donnelly brothers - Jimmy, Kevin, Sean and Tommy - and Jenny Reilly, who is described as being "attached at the hip." The story is told by "Joey Ice Cream" an associate of the Donnellys who, while he isn't a major character in the show may be one of the most interesting parts of the concept. The Donnelly brothers are, to use an extremely appropriate British expression, "bent." Even Tommy Donnelly (Jonathon Tucker), the family's only honest man, is really only honest in relative to his brothers. Tommy believes he owes a debt to his brother Jimmy (Tom Guiry) who was crippled in a childhood accident that Tommy caused and which led Jimmy into drug addiction. Things are set in motion when Jimmy kidnaps and then kills Louis, his brother Kevin's (Billy Lush) bookie. The trouble is that Louis is the nephew of Sal the head of the local Italian mob. The Italians pay a ransom Things escalated further out of control when youngest brother Sean was nearly beaten to death by the local Italian mob, and the deal that Huey, local Irish mob fixer negotiates means that Jimmy will be killed. Tommy came up with a "brilliant" plan that included killing both the Italian and Irish bosses, and getting his brother Jimmy arrested so that he can get rehab for his drug problem.

That much I figured out about the first episode from watching the second. For me the second episode was a problem. It involves cleaning up the mess that the events of the previous day had left. Tommy Kevin had to replace the clothes they were wearing when they killed Sal Huey which meant some shoplifting (aluminum foil - who knew!) but the biggest mess was the body of Louis the Bookie which Jimmy "hid" in the dumpster behind the bar he owns. The need a place to dump the body and it's sort of a dark comedy of errors (the Jersey swamp where Kevin suggests dumping it has been turned into a shopping mall) but at least half of the episode's 57 minutes (with commercials) is given over to getting rid of the body. I thought it was a bit too much. But then I was sick at the time so maybe my patience with the episode was less than it could have been.

I mentioned earlier that one of the most interesting concepts in the show might be the use of "Joey Ice Cream" as the narrator. Joey, played by Kevin Nobbs, is telling the story of the Donnelly Brothers while he is in jail - to two cops in the first episode, to his lawyer in the second. While there are other shows that use narrators to tell their stories, they are for the most part both omniscient and trustworthy. Mary Alice Young (and in the most recent episode Rex Van De Kamp) on Desperate Housewives and Meredith on Grey's Anatomy come to mind. "Joey Ice Cream" isn't trustworthy which leads us to question whether he's actually omniscient. We know that he inserts himself into the story to elevate his status. At various times he tells us that the Donnelly's don't make a move without him, but we know that he inserts himself into scenes where he wasn't originally present. On at least two occasions in the second episode when his lawyer asks how he knows certain things he says that he was there, which comes as a surprise to the characters in the story he's narrating. Which of course leads to a question of trust. If we can't believe that Joey witnessed these events how can we be sure that they actually happened or that they happened in exactly the way that Joey says they did. How much of the story that Joey is telling is real and how much of it is fiction?

The Black Donnellys has a lot of the things that a show needs to have to succeed. The performance from Tucker and Lush, who were the two main characters that we saw were quite strong, and many of the lesser characters were well acted as well. Of particular interest was Kate Mulgrew as the flinty matriarch of the Donnelly family. She didn't have many lines but her actions - as when she adjusted Kevin's jacket to hide a blood stain indicated that she knew her boys had done something bad but she was standing behind them without question. The writing was also quite good in that for the most part we believe in the characters and the character who we are least able to accept is the one who by definition we aren't supposed to find acceptable, "Joey Ice Cream."

Still, on the whole the thing doesn't work, at least not on network television. And it's not as if the show's creator, Paul Haggis, doesn't know how to do network TV. Before he wrote Crash and entered a creative relationship with Clint Eastwood that created things like Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima he did a lot of TV including thirtysomething, Family Law, Due South, and even Facts of Life. He's even credited with creating Walker, Texas Ranger. But The Black Donnellys doesn't work. For one thing it's continuity-heavy in a television environment that right now at least doesn't have much patience with continuity-heavy television. For another thing I'm not entirely certain that the show works well with the commercial interruptions that are a requisite of TV's "big tent". The biggest thing though is that for me at least there was always the feeling that "real" small time Irish hoods - and their Italian counterparts for that matter - would be using language that is far stronger than what the FCC will allow to assault the pristine ears, let alone show scenes of sex and (in particular for a show like this) violence that a network executive wouldn't allow on the air even if the FCC didn't exist. I think that The Black Donnellys would be earning far more acclaim (not to mention higher ratings) if it were allow to show what these people would be like on one of the higher end cable stations. Because as it stands I don't think the show works and most of the problems could be solved if the show weren't restricted by laws and network presidents.

But then again I had a raging headache that got progressively worse on Monday night, so what do I know?

I Return From Hiatus - Unlike A Lot Of TV Shows

Wow!

I really didn't intend to go that long without posting or without hoisting the old Campbell's soup can, the internationally recognised symbol of an extended period of not posting. Thing is that we've been so focused on getting the last of Greg's stuff out of his old house and transferring the property to the new owners that it took up most of the time when I'd be doing the stuff I'd normally do, like writing (or even reading) and playing Poker online. I started a couple of posts but just haven't had time to wrap them up.

Fortunately the new owner of my brother's place took possession on Thursday - actually we gave him the keys on Wednesday so my brother - who had already moved to the Vancouver area at the start of February which was why our mother and I had had to deal with so much of the property situation - can get on with his life (or more likely worry about other stuff) and I can get back to doing the stuff I enjoy. At least I can after I rest up for a couple of days.