TV, eh?

From the Toronto Sun:

• Leafs put blame on CBC shows
  “CBC spokesperson Katie Heath-Eves said yesterday that all shows are ultimately renewed or dropped based on performance and there would be Canadian produced shows to eventually replace MVP and others.” Read more.

From the Barrie Examiner:

• CBC excuse a lame one
  “In the first place, would the CBC really be foolish enough to count on revenue from the Leafs making the playoffs? Toronto hasn’t played a playoff game since 2004. What about ratings? Despite MVP attracting what’s being called ‘an unprecedented new youth-skewed audience’, that audience just wasn’t big enough. About 349,000 viewers tuned in during its January debut, which isn’t great. And it’s been look out below since then.” Read more.

From Bill Harris of Sun Media:

• CBC batting .500: Sophie, The Border are big hits but jPod and MVP strike out
  ” Two-for-four. That’s a great average in baseball, and decent in TV, too. But as far as the CBC’s marquee January launches are concerned, the hits weren’t necessarily the expected hits, and the strikeouts weren’t necessarily the expected strikeouts.” Read more.

From Lee-Anne Goodman of the Canadian Press:

• Leafs to blame for cancelled shows?
  “The producer of “MVP” says she was recently warned by CBC programming director Kirstine Layfield that if the Leafs failed to make the Stanley Cup playoffs this year, the public broadcaster’s arts and entertainment division would take a $10 million hit that would put some of the network’s much-heralded new shows at risk.” Read more.

From Alex Strachan of Canwest Media breaks down the demographics of CBC’s year:

• Crunching CBC’s numbers: the how and why behind CBC’s fall renewals
  “Layfield has her work cut out for her. And she’s actually doing a lot with very little. While culture snobs decry LCD (lowest common denominator) fare like MVP, The Border and The Week the Women Went, the fact is that CBC is trying to become relevant to a mass audience, and not just intellectuals, lefties and culture snobs.” Read more.

From John Doyle of the Globe and Mail:

• CBC axes Hockey Wives, jPod
  “However, the cancellation of Intelligence, which concluded its second season last November, is likely to be the most bitter disappointment for viewers. About a Vancouver drug baron named Jimmy Reardon and his intricate relationship with the CSIS, the show drew about 350,000 viewers each episode, but it was widely praised for its complexity and compelling intrigue. Made by Haddock Entertainment, which also made the Da Vinci’s Inquest series, it has been sold to several dozen countries and is under consideration for a remake as a U.S.-set series for the Fox network.” Read more.

From Victoria Ahearn of the Canadian Press:

• CBC dropping ‘MVP,’ Intelligence’ and ‘JPod’ for next season
  “Despite heavy promotion and critical praise, the Canadian shows “MVP,” “Intelligence” and “JPod” aren’t being renewed by CBC-TV for next season, the public broadcaster said Friday.” Read more.

From BBM Canada, Rick Mercer Report at #17 (1.025 million), Little Mosque on the Prairie at #18 (1.022 million):

• Top programs – Total Canada

Bill Brioux of TV Feeds My Family recaps the CBC media release about renewals, but also adds some ratings info from this week:

• MVP, jPod Out, Border, Sophie In for ’08-09: MVP (386,000), Sophie (389,000), jPod (312,000), from last week: Little Mosque on the Prairie (881,000). Read more.

From Alex Strachan of Canwest News Service (who didn’t get the memo the show has been cancelled before writing this):

• jPod hits its techie stride
  “Funny and smart, jPod was always going to be an odd fit for CBC-TV. MacLennan and Coupland adapted jPod from Coupland’s cult bestseller, a funny, stylized take on relationships and “modes of being,” shot through the prism of youthful energy and starry-eyed idealism. With its cast of hipsters and its techie vibe, jPod must seem like something from another planet to CBC’s core audience of older viewers, who are more used to lame reality-TV social experiments like The Week the Women Went and heavy-handed period pieces like The Englishman’s Boy.” Read more.

From Marke Andrews of the Vancouver Sun:

• Just cancelled: CBC’s jPod
  “The one-hour show, set at a huge video-game corporation, has struggled to find an audience. It debuted on CBC-TV on Tuesday nights but, after disappointing ratings, was moved to Fridays — traditionally a terrible night to draw an audience. Moving from Friday to Tuesday was the hockey series MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives. About 150 jPod cast and crew members are out of a job.” Read more.

jPod Podsters (counter clock-wise) Steph Song as Bree, David Kopp as Ethan Jarleswski, Emilie Ullerup as Kaitlin, Ben Ayres as Cowboy, Torrance Coombs as John Doe.

From Bill Brioux at TV Feeds my Family:

• Numbers Other Than C-10: The Border (590,000), The Week the Women Went (627,000), Degrassi (520,000), The Englishman’s Boy Part I (805,000). Brioux also lists dates for season finales of CBC shows.

From Marta Alonso of Vayatele (it’s in Spanish, so it either says JPod is coming to Spain in March, or tells you how to get to the library):

• jPod llegará a España en marzo
  “Apenas dos meses y medio después de su estreno en la televisión canadiense, la serie de Douglas Coupland se podrá ver en las plataformas de televisión por cable y ADSL, a través del canal Buzz.” Translation: Just 2 1/2 months after premiering on Canadian television, the Douglas Coupland series will be seen on cable and ADSL through the Buzz channel. Read more (lea más).

From Rob Salem of the Toronto Star:

• Hot Box, TV worth talking about
  “A recent survey says that awareness is at an all-time high for the new, more viewer-friendly CBC prime-time lineup. One in three people polled late last month by The Canadian Press and Harris-Decima had actually heard of The Border, jPod, MVP and Sophie. Mind you, that’s heard of – not actually watched. Indeed, the most seen of all the new shows, The Border, came in at only 10 per cent. And that’s also heard of as opposed to liked. While jPod got the most positive reviews of the bunch, it also got the most negative responses. Could this be more quintessentially Canadian? … 9 p.m. Let’s try to up those viewership numbers (see above) for The Border on CBC, shall we?” Read more.

From Lee-Anne Goodman of the Canadian Press:

• Canadians taking notice of CBC shows
  “As of Jan. 28th, one in three people polled had heard about four of the CBC’s heavily promoted winter shows: “The Border,” “JPod,” “Sophie” and “MVP.” All of the shows launched in early January.” Read more.

Bill Brioux at TV Feeds My Family has last week’s ratings for many shows (click the links below for more than are mentioned in the blurbs):

• Global Doesn’t Have a Prairie
  “Wednesday’s CBC numbers: Little Mosque 776,000, new ABC Family pickup Sophie 545,000, fifth estate 671,000.” Read more.
• MVP Held Off Score Sheet
  “In its new day and date premiere, the sexy prime time soap about the “secret lives of hockey wives” netted only 249,000 viewers. That’s almost exactly what it was getting on Fridays before CBC flipped it with lower rated rookie jPod.” Read more.
• Cross Border Election Win
  “The bad news for The Border is that it sank to its lowest audience level ever Monday night, an estimated 567,000 viewers–down nearly 200,000 viewers from the Monday before. It was also the week the viewers went away from The Week The Women Went, with the CBC reality series down to 548,000 viewers.” Read more.

From Alex Strachan of Canwest News Service:

• Reality shows that suck reap the benefit of strike
  “jPod, the homegrown drama that tries so very, very hard to show that a TV show about Gen Yers surfing the net can be every bit as compelling as, well, surfing the net, moves to a new night. In tonight’s outing, doofus dad Jim (Alan Thicke) tries to make it onto White Ghost, a Hong Kong TV show that shows North Americans doing dumb things — like, say, competing on 1 vs. 100. 9 p.m., CBC.” Read more.

From Barrett Hooper of Now Toronto:

• Stifling a CanCon yawn
  “The great migration of Canadian content to American networks never materialized. Only three shows – three! – earned export deals. CBS has agreed to carry 13 episodes of Flashpoint, a CTV-produced cop drama set in Toronto and starring Hugh Dillon.” Read more.

From Vinay Menon of the Toronto Star:

• Hot Box: Television to talk about
  “9 p.m.: Behold the Desperate Time Slot Shuffle as jPod gets kicked into the Friday night hinterland and the pucks-and-abs MVP, co-starring Dillon Casey as rookie Trevor Lemonde, skates into Tuesday, starting tonight (CBC).” Read more.

Bill Harris of the Toronto Star analyses the CBC schedule change:

• MVP, jPod skedded for a changeup
  “Obviously, the fact that this move was deemed necessary isn’t great news for either show. Anything that the CBC runs on Tuesday has to deal with stiff competition from American Idol on CTV and House on Global. And nothing tends to do well on Fridays, regardless of the show or the network.” Read more.

From a media release:

SCHEDULE CHANGE: CBC-TV’s MVP NOW AIRING ON TUESDAYS; jPod ON FRIDAYS

Beginning February 5, viewers can watch CBC Television’s sizzling new dramatic series MVP, “The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives” on Tuesday nights at 9:00 p.m. Effective February 8, jPod will air on Friday nights at 9:00 p.m. replacing MVP.

For more information on CBC Television’s MVP and jPod, visit www.cbc.ca/MVP and www.cbc.ca/jPod.

jPod Podsters (counter clock-wise) Steph Song as Bree, David Kopp as Ethan Jarleswski, Emilie Ullerup as Kaitlin, Ben Ayres as Cowboy, Torrance Coombs as John Doe.

From Jim Henshaw at the Legion of Decency:

• The Winning Skid
  “But for some reason, our Canadian nets have ignored the overwhelming creative drift toward changing the paradigms and trotted out a selection of knock-offs of shows everybody’s seen and done before — in some cases, long before — and like those eager kids who put on a show in somebody’s barn over the summer, they seem quite proud of themselves for doing little more than not forgetting their lines or bumping into the furniture.” Read more.