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Featured, Industry News

Industry Update – CRTC: Mandatory Carriage vs. Channel Drift

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On April 23, 2013, the CRTC began a public hearing on “distribution orders under section 9(1)h) of the Broadcasting Act” – in other words, mandatory carriage orders. Mandatory carriage automatically adds a service to a cable/satellite/IPTV provider’s basic package, and – unless the service is distributed for free – requires distributors to pay that service a wholesale fee per customer. This is a privilege ten services currently enjoy. A new or existing service granted mandatory carriage is the CRTC equivalent of winning pole position in a horse race. It practically guarantees that service some form of subsidy.

New and/or unlaunched services applying for mandatory carriage, such as Starlight: The Canadian Movie Channel, ACCENTS, and FUSION, are forward-looking statements in search of stable funding. Starlight, in particular, has made some noise in the media about its commitment to Canadian film. Existing services, such as Sun News Network and Vision TV, see mandatory carriage as the way to secure their futures.

At the other end of the spectrum, there’s a Steve Ladurantaye Globe and Mail piece about four services — Blue Ant Media’s Travel + Escape, OUTtv Network Inc.’s OUTtv, Stornoway Communications’ ichannel, and ZoomerMedia’s ONE – asking the CRTC for licence amendments. To that end, the Independent Broadcast Group — the four previously mentioned broadcasters, plus APTN, Channel Zero, Ethnic Channels Group, TV5 Quebec, and ZoomerMedia — lobbies to protect the independent broadcasters’ interests.

ichannel, OUTtv, ONE, and Travel + Escape’s renewals are part of the same CRTC Broadcasting Notice of Consultation as the applications for mandatory distribution orders. To demonstrate what a new “basic” service could become in the future, I point to two current services on differing prosperity levels — OUTtv and Vision TV — as they have at least one thing in common.

OUTtv debuted as lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) service PrideVision, and struggled to attract viewers in its early days – it aired pornographic content in the late night hours, and lacked a West Coast feed. Shaw Communications, in particular, resisted PrideVision. Headline Media Group (later Score Media Inc.) sold the service in 2004, to a consortium led by broadcaster William Craig.

PrideVision, by then doing business as HARD on PrideVision, briefly aired porn between 9:00 PM and 6:00 AM. In 2005, HARD on PrideVision spun off into a separate service (now Playmen TV), making the “new” OUTtv a full-time, general-interest LGBT service. Today, OUTtv is almost fully owned by Shavick Entertainment (Re:Source Media owns 4.16%), and has 939,200 subscribers as of 2012. Arguably, it took a decade, two ownership changes, and the “spinoff” of a questionable program block for OUTtv to find its footing.

Vision TV began in 1988 as a multi-faith religious service, initially owned by a company that evolved into S-VOX Foundation. ZoomerMedia acquired the service in 2010. Under ZoomerMedia ownership, Vision TV is more of a general-interest service for older audiences. ZoomerMedia’s chief argument is that cable and satellite companies want to remove Vision TV from their basic tiers, in part due to Vision TV straying from its original mandate. In the event Vision TV is bumped off basic cable, ZoomerMedia will attempt to amend Vision TV’s licence.

Where OUTtv and Vision TV intersect is their desire to amend their licences, and reduce Canadian content levels. This is why I don’t see a future for Starlight, EqualiTV, Dolobox TV, or other unlaunched services vying for mandatory carriage. The history of Canadian specialty services suggest that a service will rebrand, and/or amend its broadcasting licence, at some point. Even well-established, profitable services like The Comedy Network want to reduce their Canadian content levels.

Canadian television is littered with services that failed – C Channel, WTSN, The Life Channel, Edge TV, Cool TV, X-Treme Sports, Fox Sports World Canada, etc. Other services have new storefronts – Drive-In Classics is now Sundance Channel, TV Land is now Comedy Gold, mentv/The Cave is now H2, and so on. Services might wrap themselves around noble goals – engaging youth, reviving the Canadian film industry’s fortunes, appealing to underserved minority groups. What matters is whether the services are managed well enough to survive on their original mandates, and whether channels will still be maintained, if their preferred source of funding doesn’t materialize.

In the end, I don’t think CRTC’s current mandatory carriage hearings will produce much of value. In 2013, there are too many examples of services that meant well, but gave in to the pressures of commercial broadcasting. I rarely see a CRTC licence amendment that increases Canadian content, or strengthens a service’s mandate – maybe AUX’s 2011 application to play more music videos, which the CRTC denied.

I neither want to see overfunded services that can’t sustain themselves, nor services using mandatory carriage orders as a substitute for venture capital. In the wake of CRTC’s second round of Bell-Astral hearings, there are more pressing matters in Canadian television.

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Featured, Industry News

If a Mad Men fell in the Canadian TV forest, would it make a sound?

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slings_and_arrows-image

In ancient Twitter times, maybe a year ago, a discussion popped up: where’s Canada’s Mad Men? Why can’t we produce something so excellent, so embraced by critics and audience?

My answer: we have. We had it before Mad Men. But we have to scale down our thinking from Hollywood levels.

Slings & Arrows was an intelligent, fun, carefully crafted series, and a critical favourite. I posit there is no show better, Canadian or American or Mexican. Girls is no cleverer or funnier or well-loved than Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays. Durham County, Intelligence, Call Me Fitz, Less Than Kind – we have shows that in another country, with a larger population base, and not as overshadowed by the Hollywood machine — in a country with a healthy TV industry and more diverse media — these shows might have received the same kind of attention as a Homeland in the US or a Luther in the UK.

A crucial element to sustain these critical darlings, however, is buzz. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Girls, all have tiny audiences compared to a network hit — even an NBC hit — yet command a much greater percentage of critical and social media attention than an NCIS.

The problem: Canada’s population base is 10 times less than the US. Canada’s TV critic community is even tinier per capita. Canadians consume American media, including television criticism, while our critics are time-sharing their attention with American shows. Homegrown TV is crowded out of every thought-space.

It’s easy to say Canadian media should write more about Canadian shows, but it starts to become a no-profit endeavor very quickly, and the Canadian media are struggling with that well enough now. They check in with the hits, and their favourites, but there’s little checking in beyond once a season, never mind the kind of obsessive episodic analysis that’s become a staple for American critics.

My direct comparative experience is out of date now, but when you get over a thousand people clicking on an article about House and over a dozen clicking on an article about Intelligence, you have to have a certain will – one not driven by chasing ads – to persist in writing about a low-rated but thoughtful Canadian series.

Audiences aren’t talking much either, because a cult audience in Canada is a microcult spread over 10,000,000 km2. There are pockets of chatter on social media, and if a particular show is in your bubble you’re bound to see talk of it, but there’s little spreading to the greater water cooler out in the wild.

We notice loudly when the Canadian TV industry produces more mediocrity. Let’s listen for the excellence falling among us too. Because in Canada, we have to listen very carefully to hear it.

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Awards, Featured, Flashpoint

Flashpoint’s Mark Ellis & Stephanie Morgenstern on Winning the WGC Showrunner Award

Flashpoint
On Monday, the Writers Guild of Canada held their annual awards ceremony and handed the prestigious Showrunner Award to Flashpoint creators Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern.

What does winning the Showrunner Award mean to you, coming off the heels of Flashpoint’s final season?

Five years of working on a show you love, that’s like five giant scoops of ice cream.  Having the luxury of ending a show on your own creative terms, that’s like getting whipped cream on top.  Seeing so many colleagues rewarded with nominations and awards for the bar-raising work they did on the show – work that made the rest of us look great just by association – that’s covering the whole thing in sprinkles.  And we couldn’t imagine a sweeter cherry on top than this very unexpected award … the most prestigious thing a TV writer can hope for.

When you started Flashpoint, did you ever think the series would get to the level it did, and find the audience reach that it ended up with?
Not at all.  Especially as the show was originally a two-hour MOW about a sniper dealing with the traumatic aftermath of his first kill … a very different project than the 75-hour episodic series it turned into.

From the beginning, we aspired to the white-knuckle suspense of 24 and the succulent, saturated production values of CSI Miami – which we explicitly referenced when we first pitched our ideas to CTV.  But the transformation from the slightly darker original premise into a more commercial “action procedural”‘ happened fast and smoothly, once CTV reconsidered it as a series.  That groundwork was laid in intense creative collaboration with EPs Anne Marie La Traverse and Bill Mustos, as well as our original executives from CTV – and when CBS joined up early in the process, they obviously brought a lot to the table as well, based on their strong track record in sustaining procedurals over many years.  What emerged from this was a formula that we hoped would welcome new viewers every week with a self-contained story, while rewarding the more committed fans with “loyalty points” – those story moments that add up to the more complex, slow-burn, (ideally) addictive character arcs where you have to keep coming back to find out what happens next.

We had ambitious hopes of course, but from where we stood, the level of success the show eventually hit wasn’t even on the landscape of realistic possibility at that time.  Especially for a show so firmly resolved not to pretend to be American.  But these were (and are) changing times in TV.  And the mountains that our EPs moved to make it happen, the way they pushed for the highest standards from every technical and artistic department, and the awesome, visionary talent of our signature director David Frazee launched the show with a level of polish and unapologetic swagger we didn’t often see then on homegrown shows.  US and international audiences aside, what we’re proudest of is that Canadians watched it in serious numbers, and (from what we hear from the fans) that they felt it was theirs.

What was the biggest challenge that you faced as showrunners in making this series?

When the pressure hits – and pressure is pretty much a constant on a speeding train like a TV show – it can feel overwhelming.  There’s so much time-sensitive business to stay on top of.  The toughest thing to remember, even in the darkest times – when you’re sure this is the episode that’s going to break you, when you literally don’t know how you’re going to keep breathing – is that it’s just a show.  It’s just TV.

Your blank computer screen may not fill fast enough, you could fail to find a brilliant yet diplomatic compromise between all the creative voices needing to be heard, you could disappoint everyone and never work again.  But there are human beings out there who risk a heck of a lot more every day than a missed deadline, some who are busy facing life-threatening danger in fact, not in fiction.  So you get over yourself and get back to work.

We learned the best way to do that is to step back, breathe deeply, and remember why you love what you do.  Re-read your original pitch document, the one that was so full of passion and ambition.  Remember that your dream to have a shot at making a show actually came true.  The risk of a long-running show is that in the chaos and storm of its practical demands, you forget why you began, the fire you once had to push this boulder up the hill.  In our own case, every time we reconnected with the real people from our fictional world, every time we dipped back into research, the inspiration came back stronger than ever, which made the struggle feel manageable and (ultimately) worthwhile.

Tell us about the experience of being honored in front of your friends and peers at the WGC Awards.

We were very, very moved hearing Larry’s heartfelt introduction, and Denis McGrath’s fiery followup.  It meant the world to us to be embraced this warmly by the community – especially given that we’re relative newcomers who’ve been blessed with a nearly obscene amount of good fortune.

We’ve heard that you may have a new series in development – is that correct, and if so what can you tell us about that?

We actually have two – one with CBC, one with CTV, both dramas – and we wish we could tell you more but we’re going to have to wait…

If you could step in to a “guest showrunning” position, past or present, on any Canadian show, which one would it be and why? 

There are definitely shows whose writing rooms we’d have loved to hang out in and observe from the inside – not as “guest showrunners,” more for the great company, and to watch and learn.  Like The Eleventh Hour for the dazzling convergence of talent in the room.  Bomb Girls for the great female-fuelled stories set in a fascinating time.  Slings and Arrows because of its smart and subversive take on classical theatre, a world we’ve both known from up close as actors.  Among the shows in the works right now … the rooms of Orphan Black and Played have some Flashpoint alums on their staff and both sound like a lot of fun.

In the meantime, we’ve been many reading scripts from emerging TV writers and we’re struck and inspired by what a huge wave of great material is coming down the pipes …

What are you watching these days? 

We try to keep up with all our Canadian shows.  Orphan Black is audacious and exciting.  Our daughter likes Modern Family, Stephen Fry’s QI and The Office, so we watch those shows with her.  LovingHomeland, Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead.  Also … a ton of spy-themed films, docs and series.
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Featured, Orphan Black

Interview: Jordan Gavaris on Orphan Black’s feline Felix

ORPHAN BLACK Episode 103

 

Jordan Gavaris, named one of Playback Magazine’s Top 10 To Watch in 2010, is being watched a whole lot in Space’s new hit Orphan Black, which was the highest-rated original series debut in the channel’s history. TV, eh?’s Martha Marcin talked to him about his inspiration for the character of Felix and his astounding costar Tatiana Maslany.

Martha Marcin: When I watch Orphan Black, I actually forget that I’m watching a scifi series. That element is really subtle and in the back ground, do you agree?

Jordan Gavaris: It is, we call it the “gateway scifi show”. It’s scifi for anyone who thinks that they don’t like scifi. I think it does a lot of what the more iconic scifi shows do, by blending social fears into the storyline. Right now I think that the big one we are all having is the identity crisis. Who am I? Who are you to me? What does it all mean? And with the advent of technology we can be anybody we want to be. There is an anonymity behind the computer screen, and I think it’s getting more difficult as the years go by to be a genuine human being. I think (cocreators) John (Fawcett) and Graeme (Manson) have done a really nice job of blending those issues into the script.

Yes I did notice, even though it is still early in the show that there is an underlying theme of identity running through it? The identity of Sarah as one of, apparently many, clones. Will Felix be wrestling with his identity going forward as well?

Yes, Felix and Sarah are both orphans, so they are inherently outsiders, but Sarah all of a sudden stumbles onto this lineage and these familial bonds that she has, this connection to something bigger that herself. Now, in spite of the fact that it is a very strange connection, it is family in a sense, there’s someone that she has a tie to, and Felix still doesn’t have anybody. So the further she becomes invested in this mystery, trying to figure out who she is, and where she comes from, the further she gets away from him, and I think that frightens him a little bit. So he does grapple with his identity in that sense.

What was your first thought when you were introduced to Felix’s character? What did you think of the character of Felix. Inspirations?

Well my initial inspiration was, believe it or not, a feline. He was sexualized, he was quite irreverent if not bitchy, he was only nice half the time, he is very dominant but in a graceful way, he’s very territorial, quite impetuous. Then I started trying to move like a cat; they enter a room and they look at everything like they own it, and that’s what gives Felix his presence, that oomph on the screen. It’s me playing a cat.

What was really important and what came naturally was the relationship between Felix and Sarah. I have two older sisters myself, and I was able to project all these feeling onto Tatiana (Maslany) because she is so open, and so lovely that it came naturally. Those were my real inspiration points.

This is a very complex and wonderfully convoluted story we have here. How do you keep things straight? Are you privy to all the twists and turns before you shoot an ep?

Oh my word, it’s hard! There are times when Tatiana will come out, and … it’ s so embarrassing! When she is playing the clones there is a clear delineation, but occasionally we will deal with characters becoming other characters, and it does get confusing. You have to stop yourself and ask her, “Which one are you again?” Trying to keep the story lines straight is a task, but the writing is so good that you don’t have to look very far. And I was impressed at how fast paced and sleek and stylish the first few episodes were, and how much information is thrown at the audience, and you keep up, you get it all, It’s a testament to John and Graham and the creative team…and the audience as well. We are obviously attracting a very smart group of people.

Absolutely, there is a huge amount of information, there is a lot going on, and I was never confused and always entertained. That is a huge testament to the writing and the show in general.

That’s so great to hear.

I don’t normally talk about costars but I have to in this case: Tatiana Maslany is amazing. OMG!

Oh yes, I know!

The way she keeps all those different clones mannerisms and accents. I think in the 3rd episode she played 4 different clones, including Sarah who’s pretending to be a 2 more clones on top of that. I was blown away because I kept forgetting it was the same actress…even when there were 3 clones on the screen together, at the same time. Each with distinct mannerisms, accents, bearing.

I’m not sure what you read about the casting process but John and Graham knew if they were going to move forward with the show it was going to take a very special actress to be able to do this. Because when you are in a situation where the actor is very good, but is only good at playing shades of themselves, and doesn’t have the same breadth or range, then you’re in a situation where you basically get a glamourized CW show. And this show is so much more than that.

When they found Tatiana and I tested against her, it was magic. I walked into the room, and I had read that scene a hundred times, and I had gone over it and over it, and I walked in and she was standing there with a bourbon in her hand (it wasn’t really bourbon) and she was Sarah and I was Felix, and it was this lovely moment where everything sort of fell into place and we connected and it sweeps you away. I owe the part to her as well because my test was good because of her. She is one of the most extraordinary women I have ever met and one of the most extraordinary actors I have ever met. She is just an extraordinary human being.

You can totally feel the chemistry the two of you have together on screen, it draws you in and it feels totally effortless.

It was crazy. I sort of like to pretend we were brother and sister in a past life, or something. Or maybe we were married. Who knows? (Laugh). We had something, there was an almost supernatural connection. And you pray for those moments, because that generally is what sells the relationship on screen.

You touched on how the writers and producers needed to have a strong actress to portray Sarah because the entire show hinges on her. It reminded me of Dollhouse, did you ever watch it?

Yes, I’m a huge Joss Whedon fan.

Me too! I love his work, but I have to say it was the lead that just that was not able to pull off multiple different characters that she had to.

I know, and Ringer was much the same as much as I love Sarah Michelle Geller, and I think she is extraordinarily talented actress with a lot of charisma, but I just don’t think…You know, as I said it could have easily turned into a CW version of a clone show, but instead what we got was a riveting piece of drama, a character study really, a character driven piece just because of the way that Tatiana approached all these women.

Is her head exploding by the end of a shoot?

(Laugh) Oh I get the odd message from her, “Oh I’m going to crawl under the kitchen table,” or “I’m all over the map,” but I have pretty much the same ones. Before the premiere I said I was hiding in a bathtub somewhere.

I’m a bit of a TV junkie, and looking at the characters we play, I was nervous because they are not the nicest people in the world, they are sort of the anti-hero. And I made some bold character choices, some very big ones, and I was nervous that it wasn’t going to come across, that people might be put off. So I was having minor coronaries at three in the morning and I would send her little text messages and she would be doing the same.

Orphan Black airs Saturdays on Space.

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