I’d give you Mark Sutcliffe but I find the CFRA announcers all come across as angry men - I can listen for a few day but then I’m just exhausted. It’s a weird experience.
I prefer dispassionate, rational, unbiased interviewers who are knowledgeable of the subject matter, keep it in perspective, include all sides of the issues, put all sides to critical analysis, and neither let the interviewees get away with non-answer answers nor primarily use the show to promote the interviewer’s opinion. CBC radio news and current affairs programs tend to be very good with this, whereas I find private broadcasters – particularly phone-in show hosts – tend to be less so – often far less so. I’m not interested in listening to interviews that that are little more than amplifications of the interviewer’s opinion (the TV analogy being the insightful Steve Paiken v. the ranting Ford Nation/Nancy Grace). I prefer shows that are directed to the “Hmm . . . that’s something I need to learn more about,” than the “Fuck yeh” crowd. It’s not surprising, then, that when I visit a large market city and am surfing the radio dial, I usually end up on CBC.
My impression was that “Murdoch Mysteries” was very commercially popular.
I think I need to clarify what I was trying to say; if you have the skillsets then a job in the oil patch can afford you the ability to work in Cold Lake/Bonnyville/Conklin or Ft Mac while still living elsewhere. Of course that will require you to live in camp, often two weeks on/two weeks off and depending on where you plan on going, a 3 hr drive to Edmonton on one of the most dangerous highways in Canada to fly home, whereever that may be. The oil co.s often pay the flight but not the drive. That two weeks away is 12 hr days and your family life is on hold. If that’s something you can deal with, the money is great! If you are fortunate enough to have a job where you can drive or be bussed to work every day, then some companies will provide you with a co. vehicle as part of your duties and some pay you for your travel time; some don’t. The patch pays so well because they realize just how difficult keeping highly skilled individuals in such an environment can be.
While I commiserate with your day drive Leaffan, does your job require you to be in near constant exposure to H2S, potentially explosive atmospheres and large bits of equipment that can ,at the very least, maim you? Most of the above mentioned jobs require you to work in an environment that is hazardous, noisy, outdoors, with long hours far away from home. Of course, if you are management the story is somewhat different. I’m only trying to point out that for most people, that money is good, but don’t think it’s easy money by any stretch.
And Little Mosque on the Prairie did quite well, and went either went into syndication or will be syndicated in France, Switzerland, francophone African countries, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, United Arab Emirates, Finland and Turkey. United States of America, Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Venezuela . . . .
In short, it was/is a commercial success, but nothing stellar.
There elephants in two corners of the room that assertions of letting the market decide tend to avoid.
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Utter crap can be commercially successful, e.g. trash TV in the form of reality television (Honey Boo Boo) and talk shows (Jerry Springer). Hands up by those who want your tax dollars used to produce this sort of shit?
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Shows that are very expensive to produce (Friends at $10 million per episode, Game of Thrones at $6 mil., Lost at $4 mil., as opposed to Little Mosque on the Prairie at $0.5 mil.) need to make it in the USA market to be commercially successful. Hands up by those to want your tax dollars spent to produce hugely expensive shows on the gamble that they will break into the American market and become commercially successful?
Those two problems leave the CBC in the middle with scripted shows that more often than not are meh.
I’m an Ontario divorce lawyer, so I love the patch, but sadly for all the wrong reasons, for it blows marriages apart. The money is a huge lure (e.g. a second class stationary engineer in Ft. Mc making the same as an Ontario doctor), but it often comes at one hell of a family cost.
Does it have to be an either/or proposition?
Maybe the reason US entertainment is loved worldwide is because it involves both: it plays to the lowest common denominator (“Honey Boo Boo” and “Jerry Springer”) and the highest common denominator (PBS presents “A Night With the Boston Pops”). In between, it offers, “Friends,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and “CSI: Wherever.”
What it does not do is to tell where it comes from. We know that Jerry Springer comes from the US, as does “CSI: Miami.” We know that the Boston Pops are from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. We know that “Big Bang Theory” is the story of a bunch of nerds in Pasadena, California, USA. The producers, writers, and so on don’t need to remind us that this story or performance takes place in Boston, Miami, or Pasadena. And so, we can get on with the story.
It seems to me that Canadian productions have an overwhelming need to remind viewers that it is a Canadian production. In every Canadian comedy or drama production, there are superfluous references to the Maple Leafs, the Canadiens, Yonge Street, Robson Street, Peggy’s Cove, and Portage and Main, and the RCMP (or OPP, SdQ, or RNC as appropriate). All are guilty of this “Canada-down-the-throat,” approach; even “Little Mosque,” but also the very popular “Corner Gas.” I’d suggest that this “we need to prove we’re Canadian” approach detracts from the entertainment we’re trying to provide.
I recall “Night Heat.” It was a cop show, set in an unnamed city, featuring two detectives from Mid-South precinct: Giambone and O’Brien. They were the focus of newspaper reporter Kirkwood, who reported their stories in the local paper. The series–which was filmed in Toronto and had Canadian actors–was picked up by CBS in the United States.
But not once did the series refer to Toronto, the Maple Leafs, Yonge Street, French-speakers, Parliament, or Ottawa. It told typical police stories of muggings, robberies, murders, and so on. The setting might well be Anywhere, USA; or Anywhere, Canada. Or (except for the accents and the driving on the right), Anywhere, UK and Anywhere, Australia. And it was a good, entertaining police drama.
Maybe we can provide quality entertainment to the world, if we stop feeling that we need to put a Canadian spin on it. David Cronenberg is an internationally-acclaimed Canadian film director, but I don’t see where his films ram Canadianism down a viewer’s throat. The same for Atom Egoyan and Norman Jewison.
Maybe what we need to do is produce crap for the masses, and produce highbrow stuff for the longhairs, and not forget the middle. The CBC should not be telling us what to think–that’s what dictatorships do–but it should be challenging us, making us think, and entertaining us at the same time. And if that entertainment is nothing more than making us laugh or cry without reminding us we’re Canadian–well, so be it.
Holy crap, we have a guy out shooting RCMP officers in Moncton just a few blocks away from my house. I guess the city is on a bit of a lock down.
And children’s cartoons. I think it’s interesting how Canadian content rules have ended up being a big success for home renovation shows and children’s cartoons (and perhaps not much else).
I haven’t heard of “Night Heat”, but there are a lot of cases where asking a Canadian TV show not to look Canadian is like asking a gay guy not to flaunt it. Sooner or later you either end up mentioning your boyfriend, or you’ve got to plan around ever saying anything to let on your identity.
Two of the best dramas (IMO) I’ve seen that were produced in Canada were North of 60 and Street Legal. For the former, the setting was explicitly Canadian, featuring the relationships between native and non-native residents in a small northern community. You could have tried to anonymize that, but it would have taken all the realism out of it. The real dynamics of aboriginals and non-aboriginals, the isolation of the north, the opening up of communities as resource development goes on, and the distant authorities in Yellowknife and Ottawa, are much more interesting than ‘generic rural town has characters’. It’s a drama that tells a story about how people live together in a real society - our society - and it’s a story about ourselves that is worth telling. I think that’s the kind of thing CBC should do, because I doubt anyone else will.
Street Legal, for its part, was more like a US courtroom drama, but featured political and social issues of interest to Canada (much as Law and Order does in the US). It dealt with criminal and civil law as practiced and implemented in Canada, the role of the courts in light of the (then still fairly new) Charter, and even municipal politics of Toronto (arguments over what kind of development should be allowed on the Toronto Islands). That could have been anonymized into a generic legal drama, but it would have been less interesting, I think, and certainly wouldn’t have had the value of exposing a generation of Canadian TV viewers to Canadian legal principles. (The student teacher who filled in for my injured Grade 12 law teacher could sure have done with that, quoting to us as he did things he’d heard on Law and Order that didn’t apply in Canada).
So maybe every cop show is the same (though certainly Due South showed that they could be different, and even commercially-viable), but there’s plenty of programming that would suffer if it was deliberately written to obscure its Canadian identity. I think there is really a value to telling stories that explain ourselves to ourselves - just as there’s a value to having our own literature. Maybe those Canadian-identified productions can be commercially successful abroad, just as US-identified ones often are internationally, but whether they are or not, I’m willing to support that kind of arts production.
Little Mosque, I’ll grant, is an example where the blandness and genericness of its characters, combined with the topical theme of ‘integrating immigrants’ and ‘undertanding Islam’ make it sellable. I’m not sure how much they reference local details (I haven’t really watched it).
WTF Moncton?
My neighbourhood is locked down and school cancelled. A nervous night. Here is hoping they catch the bastard soon.
Front page Breaking News on CNN. Not what I ever would have imagined for Moncton.
Apparently Oromocto was locked down too - how is everyone?
I hope they catch this freak soon. The pics on the news make it look like he executed two of the guys in their cars. Wow, just wow.
Being in lockdown is boring as hell. They’ve cancelled school for tomorrow so I’m letting my daughter stay up and watch bad movies (it’s been an all day Buddies movie marathon. Snow Buddies, Santa Buddies, eight year old have horrible taste in movies.) Hopefully the lockdown is lifted tomorrow as today was grocery day and the cupboard is getting bare.
Well, I guess I’m glad CNN now has another shooting to focus on.
He’s been arrested:
One of the dead RCMP has been identified: Const. David Ross, married, father of 19 month old child, with another on the way.
Sad, sad, news.
My thought and prayers go out to Moncton and the families and friends of the victims.