Andrea Martin in "Working The Engels"

ON SCREEN:

WORKING THE ENGELS
Global -- Wednesdays


On Set With "The Engels"

Andrea Martin Is Playing Things
For Laughs Again

By Eric Kohanik

It doesn't happen as often anymore. Every once in a while, though, people still come up and tell Andrea Martin they're surprised she isn't actually a Canadian.

“It used to happen a lot more,” the 67-year-old Martin concedes. “I have a house in Toronto. And my kids were born here. And my career started here, really. I guess I'm a 'landed immigrant.' I consider myself to be a 'North American.' I feel privileged to have worked all over North America.”

Born in Maine, Martin has been surrounded by Canadians for years. She got her big break in Toronto in a 1972 stage production of Godspell that featured such Canadians as Eugene Levy, Victor Garber, Martin Short and Paul Shaffer. After that, she worked with the likes of Dave Thomas and John Candy in the Toronto chapter of Second City. That, in turn, led to a sketch-comedy series called SCTV: Second City Television, where Martin's roster of characters most notably included the indomitable Edith Prickley.

It's been almost 40 years since SCTV first hit TV screens. And Martin admits she often looks back fondly. As for a possible SCTV reunion, Martin waves off the idea.

“It was a special time,” she reflects. “We are all very protective of what we accomplished then.”

Martin has assembled many credits since those days – on TV, in movies and on stage. She is now back on TV in Working The Engels, a comedy series for Global that was also picked up in the U.S. by NBC.

The chance to do TV again was something Martin had been thinking about for a while. “I had spent a lot of time on Broadway doing Pippin,” she says. Her work as the title character's grandmother, Berthe, in the revival of the play won a Tony Award last year for best performance by a featured actress in a musical.

“Before that, I had done my one-woman show on stage,” Martin continues. “Doing all of that for such a long time was exhausting, so I was looking for something different. But I wasn't sure how long I would be able to be in Toronto. Then, this came along and it all worked out.”

Working The Engels is a broad comedy that casts Martin as Celia “Ceil” Engel, the matriarch of a family left in the lurch when Ceil's husband dies and leaves his law firm without a leader. Fortunately for Ceil, her youngest daughter, Jenna (Kacey Rohl), is qualified to run the practice. Unfortunately for Jenna, Ceil insists on working there, too. So do Jenna's pill-popping sister (Azura Skye) and her bad-boy brother (Benjamin Arthur).  

For Rohl, whose credits include mostly dramatic roles in such series as Hannibal and The Killing, the chance to tackle something comedic was a dream. “There aren't a lot of comedy productions in Vancouver,” the 22-year-old B.C. actress says. As for working with Martin, Rohl beams: “I've been like a sponge. I've learned so much.”

Meanwhile, Martin has lots of praise for her co-stars. “The chemistry was there instantly,” she says.

On this particular day, the show is near the half-way point in its 12-episode production schedule. Martin and Skye have been blocking out a hip-hop routine for an episode, improvising something different for every take. In the director's chair, trying to piece it all together, is none other than Jason Priestley.

Working The Engels also has an impressive guest roster in front of the camera for its debut season. Among the pack: Short, Levy, Jayne Eastwood, Colin Mochrie, Jennifer Irwin and Wendy Crewson.

Having familiar friends come back to work with her is something special for Martin.

It also makes her feel like things have come full circle.

“I feel almost like I've gone back to the beginning of my career,” Martin smiles. “We used to shoot SCTV at Global; this is for Global. I used to drive myself to the studio then; I drive myself to the studio now. Not much has changed in 40 years.”

Working The Engels – Global – Wednesdays 

(First published in Channel Guide Magazine -- April 2014.)

Bomb Girls: Facing The Enemy

ON SCREEN:

BOMB GIRLS: FACING THE ENEMY
Global - March 27


The Final Chapter

Those Feisty "Bomb Girls" Wrap Up 
Their Saga With A TV Movie

By Eric Kohanik

The setting is a mostly empty, 114-year-old building that once housed a fabric mill known as the Imperial Cotton Company in the industrial north end of Hamilton, Ont. On one of the upper floors, part of the vast space has been transformed into a grimy old gymnasium, where a boxing ring is ensconced in plumes of smoke. Inside the ring, two women are duking things out as throngs of beer-swilling, fedora-wearing men cheer them on.

If it all looks like a moment plucked from some bygone era, that's because it is.

Welcome to Bomb Girls – The Movie, a two-hour production that continues – and wraps up – the storyline of the once-popular Canadian TV series.

Originally designed as a six-episode drama in 2012, Bomb Girls ended up growing to 18 episodes that continued into a second season. The series revolved around a core group of four women – played by Meg Tilly, Jodi Balfour, Ali Liebert and Charlotte Hegele – who worked in a Canadian munitions factory during the Second World War.

The series attracted a dedicated following of fans who cried foul when Global cancelled the show last year. Protests eventually led the network to greenlight a TV-movie to wrap up the saga.

This particular day of filming finds the tomboyish Betty McRae (Liebert) as one of the two females in the boxing ring. When the stylish Gladys Witham (Balfour) makes an appearance in the crowd and spots Betty, it causes a bit of a distraction, in more ways than one.

For Balfour, the chance to revive the role of Gladys was one she eagerly awaited.

“It feels great,” she says during a break. “We're obviously dealing with a bunch of new subject matter, but it still feels like coming back to familiar territory. There's an element of comfort in coming 'home' and there's a sense of community to the show, which is part of what I love so much about it.”

Born and raised in South Africa, Balfour graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2009 before she and her family moved to B.C. Her list of credits includes various TV projects, including a role this season in CBC's political comedy-drama, The Best Laid Plans. Nevertheless, Balfour is still best known for her work as Gladys.

“She's kind of the role of a lifetime, particularly in the way they keep writing her and developing her,” Balfour says. “Every year, I get to tackle a real sense of growth in her. She has so many colours I get to play with – like vulnerability and fear and sensitivity and insecurity. And then I also get to play with a sense of courage. It's a really cool range of things that I get to play, so I count myself lucky.”

Written by Donald Martin and directed by Jerry Ciccoritti, Bomb Girls: Facing The Enemy picks up the storyline six months after the events at the conclusion of the series. There have been changes in all of the women's lives. In some cases, the changes are significant.

“It's bit of a tricky time for Gladys,” Balfour explains. “She is longing to see her best friend. And, you know, the central theme of Gladys' life is this inescapable loneliness that she deals with a lot of the time.”

While the primary purpose of Bomb Girls: Facing The Enemy is to tie up loose ends from the series, it also takes the show's plot a bit further. And that thrilled Balfour and her castmates.

“We were obviously all really sad when the show was cancelled but very aware of how lucky we are to get to do this,” Balfour points out. “I think many shows see themselves being cancelled and don't get this opportunity.

“It not only serves us an opportunity to tell the story some more, but also serves us an opportunity to get a little bit of closure, for us as well as for the audience. It's a nice opportunity to get to see everyone one more time.”

Bomb Girls: Facing The Enemy – Global – March 27

(A portion of this story was published in Channel Guide Magazine - April 2014.)

Enrico Colantoni is back in Remedy

ON SCREEN:

REMEDY
Global -- Mondays


Finding Middle Ground

Enrico Colantoni Straddles The Fence Between 
Comedy And Drama In "Remedy"

By Eric Kohanik

Enrico Colantoni admits he sometimes feels out of place when it comes to his career.

“I am still a man without a home,” the 51-year-old actor half-jokes inside his dressing-room trailer in downtown Toronto. “I have kids in Los Angeles. I have parents in Italy. But right now, there's nothing more rewarding than feeling appreciated by the people that I was born into. I was born in Canada. There's something huge about that. I don't think I would have done it any differently.”

Born in Toronto, Colantoni graduated from the Yale School of Drama in the U.S. and carved out a career in American television, from such comedies as Hope & Gloria and Just Shoot Me! to dramas including Veronica Mars and Person of Interest. But it was his five-year stint back in Canada, as tactical-police-squad sergeant Greg Parker on CTV's Flashpoint, that added another twist.

“Parker was fantastic. He was wonderful to play,” Colantoni recalls. “But after leaving that show, all I yearned for was something a little lighter.”

Longing for stuff on the other side of the fence isn't new for Colantoni. “I like exactly what I'm not doing in the moment,” he concedes. “A day didn't go by on Just Shoot Me! where I wouldn't go, 'I want to do something dramatic, single camera.' The good thing is I always get what I ask for.”

Colantoni figures he has found a good compromise in a new Global series called Remedy. The show revolves around fictional Bethune General Hospital, where the adventures of those interacting on the upper floors of the hospital occasionally intersect with the misadventures that occur in the basement of the building. Colantoni tops the ensemble as Dr. Allen Conner, the chief of staff who spends most days on the upper decks of Bethune General. At the opposite end is Frank Kanaskie (Patrick McKenna), who works in the basement as the supervisor of transport and housekeeping.

“There's a lot of an Upstairs, Downstairs dynamic to this show,” Colantoni says. “That's the tone of the show when those two worlds meet. Allen is constantly battling two worlds. I think that's what's going to set it apart from other medical dramas.”

The interactions often have comical consequences, which appealed to Colantoni. “The biggest reason I wanted to do it, from an acting perspective, is that there is comedy in it,” he explains. “It really is a hybrid. It's not the comedy of Just Shoot Me! It's not the drama of Flashpoint. It's right in the middle.

“There's an undertow to this show that makes me laugh. It's either built in with the dynamic of the relationship of the family members or, sometimes, it's just blatant comedy. That's what intrigued me.” Colantoni is also tackling other chores on Remedy; he is directing the sixth episode.

“To be able to see something from that perspective, it turns the light bulb back on,” Colantoni says. “Doors that were closed to me at one time are now open for me on this show. That just makes me feel like I'm welcome, that my opinions have value, that I have a stake in it. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“That's why I came back to Canada. I've gotten to play historic figures, heroic figures and, now, I'm allowed to direct an episode of a television show in its first season – in its first season! – which is unheard of and generous beyond everything I've ever experienced. That's what I love about being home.

“I'm Canadian again. I'm here. I want to stay,” Colantoni says, and then adds with a smile, “unless somebody wants me back in the States.”

Remedy – Global – Mondays

(First published in Channel Guide Magazine - March 2014.)

Must-have Apps to help you watch TV

ON SCREEN:
Media Man


TV to go

Boost your TV with an app.

By Eric Kohanik

THESE DAYS, IT'S VIEWING ON THE GO. Tablets and smartphones present a radical shift in media.

A new study says 23 per cent of TV viewers between the ages of 18 and 34 tune in after buzz online through blogs, social media and apps. TV stars are getting in on the craze.

Ashton Kutcher (Two and a Half Men) is a trailblazer in the Twittersphere. Last year, he moved the needle with a Twitter app (aplusapp.com) designed for desktops, laptops and mobile. Adrien Grenier (Entourage) is on the app bandwagon. His Reckless Adrien Grenier app (app.net/reckless) lets fans follow his every move.

These ones are fun, frivolous and favourite. Here's a few to guide your programming or help steer you to stuff on your big screen at home. Some must-haves:

What's On TV? From Zap2it
Let's start with the basics: TV listings. Onscreen guides on your TV are cumbersome and not up-to-date. Zap2it is the mother of TV listings services and What'sOn TV? is a customizable mobile listings app for iPhones and iPads (available at the iTunes App Store). Zap2it also has a mobile listings site (tvlistings.zap2it.com) that works on all other web-enabled mobile devices without having to download an app at all.

IMDb Movies & TV
The Internet Movie Database offers cast lists, production credits, trivia and loads of other information on almost every TV, movie and video production. IMDb's mobile site (available at imdb.com/apps/) serves up a version for almost every mobile platform.

Network TV Apps
Many popular shows are available from broadcasters who own rights to those shows in Canada. Among them: CTV (ctv.ca), CBC (cbc.ca), Global (globaltv.com) and Citytv (citytv.com). It's a tangled mess as to what apps are available for each platform. Check the mobile-services section of each network's website to see what's there.

Crackle - Movies & TV 
Unlike most American sites, Sony's free online video service is now making its library available to Canadians. It offers a changing selection of classic TV and movies. (All in the Family, The Three Stooges, Sanford & Son, etc.) (Available for Android and Apple IOS through Google Play or the iTunes App Store, or through crackle.com.)

And to help make TV viewing even better:

LCBO
This is a cool companion. Look up products, set favourites and even check inventory levels at the nearest store. (Available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad through the iTunes App Store or at lcbo.com.)

iHandy Level
These days, flat-screen TVS tend to be mounted on walls. Level on on the level is an app away with this free app. Available for iPhones, iPod Touch and iPad only. (Available through iTunes or at ihandysoft.com.)

(First published in Hamilton Man Magazine c/o The Hamilton Spectator - Summer 2012.)

Breath of fresh airwaves at CHCH

ON SCREEN:
The resurgence of CHCH

ONLINE:
chch.com

Breath of fresh airwaves

On the verge of extinction two years
ago, Hamilton's CHCH staked its
future on news. It was a good move.

By Eric Kohanik

The Jackson/Hunter Street home of Hamilton TV station CHCH seem a lot happier and more upbeat these days.

“It’s nice to be at a place now that is expanding and growing and hiring, rather than one that is imploding,” confides Brian Wood, a veteran on-air personality. “I’m very pleased to see it like that — and to be still a part of it.”

“There’s a big difference now,” echoes camera/microwave operator Nick Garbutt, another senior staff member. “It’s almost like the old days. Being independent again, decisions get made right away, here rather than at ‘corporate.’ Because this is ‘corporate’ now.”

It’s been a little more than two years since a small, relatively unknown Toronto-based media company named Channel Zero Inc. breathed new life into CHCH, bringing the beleaguered station back from the brink of broadcast extinction.

According to figures obtained from CHCH, the station has 141 full-time jobs on its payroll now, roughly a 20-per-cent increase from the 117 full-timers in 2009.

Today, CHCH is healthy again, insists Cal Millar, Channel Zero’s president and chief operating officer.

“We’re really thrilled with how it’s going,” Millar explained during a recent telephone interview from his Toronto office. “The progress, over two years, has been fairly steady. It’s going well in terms of viewership.It’s going well in terms of the kind of programming we’re doing. It’s going well in terms of the team in Hamilton. It’s going well in terms of the new shows we’ve launched. It even went well in the digital transition, the million-dollar-plus investment we made in new transmitters across the province.”

Numbers from BBM, Canada’s ratings service, bear that out. CHCH’s 6 p.m. newscast often pulls in anywhere from 100,000 to 140,000 viewers per night in the Toronto-Hamilton extended market. Both the 6 p.m. and11 p.m. newscasts regularly beat out those from CBC, CP24 and Citytv. In fact, CHCH’s newscasts usually rank third, behind CTV and Global, and sometimes even outperform Global enough to land in second place.

And although the balance of CHCH’s schedule may not be breaking ratings records, the shows are managing to hold their own.

“We’re sustainable at this point,” says Millar. “Nobody’s getting rich over night, but we’re making money.”

The story of CHCH-TV has been one of tremendous ups and downs. “Lucky Channel 11” signed on the air in1954 as a CBC affiliate before becoming English Canada’s first independent station in 1961.

Building its fortunes and audience with a lot of local programming, the channel grew in popularity during the1960s and 1970s. In 1982, it expanded its horizons further, becoming a superstation distributed across Canada via satellite.

During the past two decades, increased competition and changes in ownership and on-air IDs — TV 11, ONtv, CH, E!, CHCH News — were accompanied by a steady stream of budget cuts and staff reductions that eventually gutted the station.

CHCH was on the verge of being shut down in 2009 when Channel Zero acquired it, along with Montreal’s CJNT-TV, from the bankrupt broadcasting division of what was then the Canwest media empire.The total cash price of the deal: $12 — which included an $11 price tag for CHCH.

“We had to pick a number for allocation purposes,” Millar recalls with a chuckle. “We thought it was so cool to buy Channel 11 for $11.”

In reality, the investment was substantially more. The deal saw Channel Zero assume the assets and, more significant, the considerable fiscal liabilities of both stations.

Sept. 1, 2009 the revamped CHCH was launched, with a new “Your Superstation” moniker and a new on-air look inspired by a logo from the past.

The relaunch also banked on a schedule heavily weighted with local news.

For the CHCH news team, it was an exhilarating vote of confidence.

“As you can imagine, there was a lot of excitement,” CHCH executive producer John McKenna said during an interview inside the station’s newsroom. “We were all thinking we were going to lose our jobs. Then, these guys came in and, suddenly, we were not an afterthought. We were the centre of their universe. Suddenly,we were important again.”

CHCH filled evening and weekend schedules with another throwback: classic movies that served as “comfort food” for viewers.

Last season, CHCH expanded its lineup to include such American programs as Chuck, Supernatural, 60Minutes, 48 Hours Mystery, 20/20 and Jimmy Kimmel Live. This fall, the American content grew some more with two new drama series — Hart Of Dixie and The Secret Circle — along with The Insider, a nightly entertainment-news show.

But CHCH has kept “comfort movies” as its evening/weekend centrepiece. It expanded local programming with this fall’s launch of Morning Live First Edition, a 90-minute show that hits the air weekdays at 4 a.m.

The new show means CHCH now airs 84 hours of local programming each week, a milestone the station trumpets as more hours than any other local television station in North America. Although ratings for Morning Live First Edition are still minuscule — about 1,000 viewers each day — Millar is willing to be patient. After all, he says, CHCH’s resurrection has really been a simple process.

“My analogy for a long time was that CHCH was like a tiara that somebody had painted with green paint,”Millar quips. “People thought it was just a plastic throwaway for years.

“All we did was kind of peel the paint off and go, ‘Wow! A nice gem!’

“There is no reason CHCH can’t be the juggernaut it has been in the past.”

The station’s overall reach certainly has that potential. As well as satellite distribution across Canada, CHCH has transmitters that beam its now-digital signal directly over the air into such markets as Ottawa, Windsor, London, Barrie-Orillia and Kitchener-Waterloo.

“We are in four million homes across Ontario and 7.5 million homes across Canada.

“But we also haven’t forgotten our roots. It’s a Hamilton station. It’s relevant from the Humber River to the Niagara River. If you want to call that the Golden Horseshoe, go ahead. But it’s centred on Hamilton.”

(First published in The Hamilton Spectator - November 5, 2011.)

The State of Canada's Media

CHCH TV personality Donna Skelly (right) is spearheading an effort to keep the Hamilton station
alive by putting its ownership in community hands and broadcasting more local news.
The station is one of many news organizations across North America in danger of closing.

A pressman scans the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
coming off the press. It is now an online publication.

Are we losing the community voice?

Local news coverage is under threat as
the economic risis rips through media outlets


By Eric Kohanik
Special to The Hamilton Spectator

(March 21, 2009)

There is a massive shift under way at Canada's TV stations and media outlets, and it will profoundly affect how they serve local audiences.

Financially troubled times have decimated newsrooms and threatened to close community-based media outlets.

Under this climate, with its unprecedented issues, the federal watchdog monitoring the Canadian broadcast industry will take up its licensing review of private TV stations next month. The hearings of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will have far-reaching implications. Not only will they examine the heart and economic lifeblood of Canadian TV broadcasting, they will touch on fundamental issues at the core of all media outlets -- journalism and local news.

In fact, the hearings beginning April 27 may be the catalyst that blows the journalistic holes in Canada's media landscape wide open.

The main spotlight will be on Canada's two biggest broadcasting rivals, Canwest Global Communications Corp. and CTVglobemedia Inc., who run the country's two biggest private networks, Global and CTV, as well as two secondary networks, Canwest's set of E! stations and CTVglobemedia's A Channel string.

Among the E! outlets is Hamilton's CHCH.

Both Canwest and CTVglobemedia have been slashing operating, programming and capital costs in recent months, moves that mirror similar cuts by broadcasters in the United States.

The cuts have included significant staff reductions, program cancellations and, in particular, a marked decline in local news coverage.

With stations trimming budgets and staff, reliable TV journalism at a local level is in grave peril. But television isn't the only journalistic arena hit by this. It is affecting local journalism everywhere.

Newspapers and other media outlets across North America have been slashing costs, too. Significant layoffs have occurred at every major Canadian newspaper organization, including The Hamilton Spectator. As a result, what was once reliable, strong and trustworthy professional coverage of local news, issues and even entire communities could soon become extinct on TV screens, websites, radio airwaves and the pages of major newspapers.

Some may blame today's economic downturn, but others say the problem has been brewing for a while.

"Even before the recession, the fundamental question facing journalism was whether the news industry could win a race against the clock for survival," the American-based Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism pointed out this week in its annual State of the News Media report.

That clock may be ticking louder than ever.

Much of the attention at next month's CRTC hearings will focus on the fact that Canada's private broadcasters will likely be vying for only one-year licences for their TV stations, instead of the standard seven-year term. At one time, a one-year licence renewal would have been viewed as a rare and severe reprimand from the CRTC -- a punishment for a station not meeting a fundamental promise of performance. Last month, however, the commission announced it was leaning toward one-year licences at these hearings as a way of grappling with specific issues and with the huge financial upheaval affecting the TV industry.

Figures released by the CRTC last month revealed that the total profits, before interest and taxes, of Canada's 99 private-sector conventional TV stations had fallen to just over $8 million for the year that ended Aug. 31, 2008. That's a 93 per cent drop from the $112.9 million in profits chalked up by 97 stations that existed a year earlier.

Locally, Hamilton's CHCH is projected to lose about $29 million next year, according to material filed to the CRTC to support Canwest's application to renew the station's broadcast licence.

In an e-mail exchange, Canwest spokesperson John Douglas said the five stations in the E! network, including Hamilton, have been consistent money-losers for a decade. Canwest is trying to sell CHCH as it wrestles with a long-term debt of more than $3.4 billion.

Broadcasters will also be asking the CRTC to scale back longstanding requirements for Canadian content, a move that will likely have a profound impact on local programming and news coverage.

In its report last month, the CRTC called out what appears to be a clear financial shift away from local programming.

While the money private broadcasters spent on local and other Canadian programming remained "essentially unchanged" last year, at $619.6 million, Canada's private broadcasters boosted spending on foreign programming by 7.4 per cent, to $775.2 million, on the back of increases the previous year.

That jump prompted the CRTC to announce that it is considering whether broadcasters should be required to spend an equal amount of money on Canadian and non-Canadian programming.

But in this big financial picture, it may not be content spending but acquisition that has done more to put the industry in such poor shape.

In recent years, CTV gobbled up CHUM's radio stations, TV stations and cable networks, while Canwest secured the former Alliance Atlantis cable specialty channels.

In Canwest's case, the debt load of its $2.3-billion deal for Alliance Atlantis is magnified by an additional $3.2-billion tab dating back to 2000, when it acquired a chain of major newspapers across Canada. All of which has sent Canwest officials scrambling to begin selling assets this month and to hammer out a new credit deal with its lenders. Canwest now has until April 7 to reach an agreement.

So, how did Canada's media giants end up in such a mess?

Some might point to years of bad decisions that go all the way to the top, particularly the overzealous spending sprees to acquire American shows, with prices sometimes driven up more by a desire to keep shows out of competitors' hands than by any pressing need to fill actual holes in schedules.

Others might blame technology and the Internet, and the growing generations of consumers who have forsaken traditional mass-media outlets in order to get news and entertainment via personal computers or mobile phones.

That has shifted the focus of the advertising industry to those frontiers. But the economic downturn has also led companies to cut marketing and advertising budgets everywhere. That has put a major squeeze on media companies.

Some might even lay at least part of the fault for the current fiscal mess of Canada's media industry squarely at the feet of government bodies such as the Competition Bureau and the CRTC, which have, over the past few years, approved mergers and takeovers that have led to more and more power -- and more and more debt -- being shouldered by fewer major players.

Of course, the complications that arise from mergers, corporate takeovers and financial meltdowns aren't unique to the media world. The steel industry, retail sector and automotive arena are only some of those suffering similar turmoil.

This time, though, the media world is being dragged into it in a different way than ever before.

The influence of TV's big players now extends far beyond TV boundaries. Canwest's assets include its daily newspapers, while CTVglobemedia's interests include the Globe and Mail and a chain of big radio stations across the country.

Other major conglomerates -- Corus Entertainment Inc., Astral Media Inc., Quebecor Inc., Torstar Corporation, Rogers Communications Inc., Transcontinental Inc. -- have also amassed (with the blessing of almost everyone who had a say) multiple layers of assets in the TV, radio, print and digital worlds.

The result? Whereas the collapse of one company might have had a minimal effect on the overall media landscape in the past, the crumbling of one of them today would have far-reaching aftershocks.

This has put the entire media industry, and perhaps all of journalism, in an unprecedented state of disintegration -- a progression that was gradual but is now magnified by the economic downturn.

So, what's ahead? Once the dust settles, the media landscape may look quite different for consumers.

Newspapers are, perhaps, among the most vulnerable. Across North America, major papers in such cities as Halifax, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and Philadelphia have already closed down, ceased physical publication or filed for bankruptcy protection. Others have been put up for sale, with no buyers willing to step up.

"This moment is nothing like any experience any of us have had," Rich Boehne, CEO of the Denver Rocky Mountain News' parent company, E.W. Scripps, told staff members Feb. 26 as he announced that the 150-year-old paper would publish its final edition the next day. "The industry is in serious, serious trouble."

"I think we have finally arrived at the point where newspapers are going away," Michael Wolff, the founder of a news website called Newser.com, told CBS News correspondent Jeff Greenfield last month in a TV report on the state of the newspaper industry. But Wolff didn't see that as a problem when it comes to consumers getting news and information.

"From a consumer's point of view, it's kind of heaven," Wolff said. "There is so much more of it, and it's so much cheaper, that I would be hard-pressed to argue that, in information terms, we are losing anything."

Although information may be plentiful in today's multimedia world, much of it is the same. Fewer and fewer media are controlling more and more of the message. And while the power bases have grown, the individual local voices that make each of them unique are dwindling.

"By our calculations, nearly one out of every five [American] journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone," the Project for Excellence in Journalism points out, "and 2009 may be the worst year yet."

It could mean a dramatic shift in who is covering local news and how. Two years ago, local news website Pasadenanow.com, based in Pasadena, Calif., blazed a new trail, and raised eyebrows in the journalism world, by outsourcing its coverage of local city council meetings -- to India, where two reporters would write stories after watching webcasts of council meetings and interviewing Pasadena's councillors by e-mail.

In the TV world, Canwest and CTVglobemedia both announced strategic reviews of their E! and A Channel stations, with the eventual aim of selling or closing some of them. In fact, CTV recently revealed that it wouldn't even seek a licence renewal next month for its affiliate in Brandon, Man., or for its A Channels in Wingham, Ont., and Windsor and a repeater station in Wheatley, Ont. Unless buyers come out of the woodwork, they will all close down at the end of August.

On the Canwest front, some or all of the E! outlets could face a similar fate. It's forcing some to look at a new form of media ownership.

Donna Skelly, co-host of CHCH's Live At 5:30, has been spearheading a business model that could put station ownership into community hands, filling the station's schedule with mostly local news programming.

The proposal would see the station funded by contributions from the community or other partners, along with an annual grant from the Local Programming Improvement Fund, a pool of money which the CRTC will set guidelines for at next month's hearings.

"I really do think that this is going to be what we have to do in order to grow local news and to protect local news," Skelly explained during a recent interview. "The only unique part of programming today is news. Otherwise, any other show you can pretty much get, whether it's on an American station or a Canadian station, or both.

"By going back to local content, you are carving out a niche. You are tapping into a market that [network executives] have ignored."

- - -

The chopping block

Already Closed

Major Canadian and American daily newspapers that have recently ceased publication:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: March 17, 2009
Rocky Mountain News (Denver): Feb. 27, 2009
Albuquerque Tribune: Feb. 23, 2009
Baltimore Examiner: Feb. 15, 2009
The San Juan Star (Puerto Rico): Aug. 29, 2008
South Idaho Press (merged with Twin Falls Times-News): August 2008
Capital Times (Madison, Wis.): April 26, 2008
Halifax Daily News: Feb. 11, 2008
Cincinnati Post/Kentucky Post: Dec. 31, 2007
King County Journal (Kent, Wash.): Jan. 21, 2007

Under Bankruptcy Protection
The Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
Tribune Company (publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and 10 other daily newspapers)
Philadelphia Newspapers (publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News)
The Journal Register Company (publisher of the New Haven Register and 19 other dailies)

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Changing picture - CHCH-TV - Jan. 3, 2009

Changing picture

CHCH was once a giant locally and
nationally, but it's been on a long, slow decline


By Eric Kohanik
Special to The Hamilton Spectator

(Jan 3, 2009)

"THIS IS CHCH-TV ... HAMILTON ... CANADA."

These simple words would proudly identify Hamilton's television station to viewers throughout each day.

That was back in the early 1970s, the glory days for CHCH - a time when the broadcaster was a major force on the local media scene and on the verge of dominating the entire Canadian TV spectrum.

In the 1960s, it became the first independent TV station in English Canada. Later that decade, it became one of the first stations in North America to broadcast in colour.

By the 1980s, satellite technology had helped the Hamilton channel beam its signal to viewers across all of Canada, making it a veritable satellite superstation.

Most importantly, few could match its impact on local programming and dedication to community. Viewers simply knew it by its place on the dial, Channel 11.

It's a different story today.

Over the years, the face of CHCH has become battle-scarred by competitive assaults, rising program costs, advertising declines and audience fragmentation. Added to that are several ownership changes, staff reductions and budget cutbacks, all diluting CHCH's national identity and diminishing its once-forceful local presence.

Today it is called E!, one piece of a Canadian mini-network that includes stations in Victoria, Kelowna, Red Deer and Montreal. All are owned by Winnipeg-based Canwest Global Communications Corp. , with other TV properties across the country, including 21 cable specialty channels.

The E! moniker comes from the American-based cable network whose programming is made up mostly of entertainment coverage, Hollywood tattletale shows and low-rent reality programming. Canada's version of E! is a hybrid, combining that fare with major American network shows and other syndicated programming. Rounding out the daily schedule are shows that have been repurposed from Canwest's various cable channels.

And then, there's the shrinking slate of news and other local programming. In the past month, the station lost two longtime fixtures, news anchors Connie Smith and Dan McLean. More than a dozen other positions have been axed as part of nationwide staff reductions by Canwest.

The cuts will see CHCH's local programming reduced to 37 hours per week from 41.5 hours. That's just a notch above the 36.5 hours required for the station'slicence.

So, what happened to Hamilton's TV superstation?

Some might see the story of CHCH as a maudlin tale - the decline and fall of a once-mighty local television entity. Others will simply view it all as a necessary transition in an era in which young viewers are ignoring traditional TV in favour of laptop computers or other technology that can access TV shows via DVDs or online video streaming.

In either case, the picture is far from CHCH's beginnings, when station founder Kenneth D. Soble had a vision of creating a TV giant that would call Hamilton its home.

Soble started out in radio, in his native Toronto, back in 1927 at the age of 16. In 1936, he moved to Hamilton to manage radio stationCHML, which he ended up buying in 1944. A few years later, he set his sights on the new medium of television.

Soble came up with a unique idea, a privately owned station that would be a CBC affiliate. He teamed with the Southam newspaper company, then owners of The Hamilton Spectator, and with local media mogul Clifford Sifton, whose company, Wentworth Broadcasting, then owned and operated radio station CKOC. The consortium, which would become known as Niagara Television, got its licence in March 1953 and set up shop inside the old Southam mansion at 163 Jackson St. W.

At 8 p.m. on June 7, 1954, "Lucky Channel 11" went on the air for the first
time.

CHCH remained a CBC affiliate until 1961, when Soble felt Hamilton was no longer well served by that arrangement. He pulled his station out of the network and, instead of jumping over to CTV, Soble surprised the industry by turning CHCH into the first independent English-language TV station in Canada.

Soble had already hired a former theatre manager named Sam Hebscher to buy movies for his station when it first went on the air. "He figured I bought movies for the theatres, so I could do the same for TV," Hebscher told The Spectator several years ago.

"We were known," Hebscher said, "as the most successful movie station in the world."

By the 1970s, long before Toronto's CITY-TV built a schedule around movies, and long before DVDs, video cassettes or pay TV brought theatrical flicks into homes, CHCH was famous for showcasing "world television premieres" of blockbusters such as The Ten Commandments and The Godfather, often beating American networks to the punch.

But CHCH was always about much more than movies. It was all about local programming.

To help fill his station's schedule, Soble fostered a huge breeding ground for local production. Out of that came numerous productions, such as Tiny Talent Time, Saturday Night Jamboree, Club 11 Dance Party, Cap'n Andy, Schnitzel House, Ein Prosit, Party Game, The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein, Don Messer's Jubilee, The Palace, Comedy At Club 54, Smith & Smith, Pasquale's Kitchen Express, Boogies Diner, Don Cherry's Grapevine, The Red Green Show ... the list goes on and on.

There were interview programs (The Pierre Berton Show), public-affairs programs (Under Attack), political debates (Full Circle), lifestyle-women's programs (The Jane Gray Show) and even late-night telephone call-in shows (Hotline). They were all key building blocks in CHCH's schedule.

So, too, was its news presence. The roster of talent boasted big names such as Tom Cherington, Norm Marshall, Jack Burghardt, Bill Lawrence, Harvey Kirck, Bill Knapp, R.O. Horning Jr., Geoff Scott and many others.

CHCH's commitment to local production got a big boost in the 1980s when the station expanded its Jackson Street facilities, replacing its old studios with a huge state-of-the-art production centre in time for its 30th anniversary.

CHCH was often ahead of the curve on technology fronts. Satellites were still in their infancy in the 1960s, but Soble had been working on a plan to use them to form a third national TV network. Those plans came to an abrupt end when a heart attack claimed Soble's life on Dec. 16, 1966.

Decades later, there are those who still argue that Soble's death delivered a blow from which CHCH never recovered.

Although the station did begin beaming its signal to cable systems across Canada via satellite in the early 1980s, CHCH never fully capitalized on it, in terms of advertising revenue, marketing strategies and plain old bragging.

Increased competition in the 1980s from CTV and the new Global TV network in Ontario saw CHCH waging, and often losing, bidding wars for American shows.

The station fought back in 1988, spending more than $50 million on an ill-fated two-year pact to hang onto national rights for a handful of hit American shows that included L.A. Law, ALF and Knots Landing. Plans to recoup costs by selling off regional rights to other stations across Canada faltered after a writers' strike in the U.S. put a halt to most big Hollywood productions that year. As well, CHCH's cross-country presence, via satellite, would beam the same shows into those other regions, thereby lessening their value to stations that were potential buyers.

Perhaps the most significant impact of Soble's death, however, was its effect on CHCH's ownership. The next 25 years would see the station change hands several times among major corporations until, in the early 1990s, CHCH finally
ended up in the stable of TV properties owned by a Vancouver company called WIC Western International Communications.

In 1997, having added over-the-air transmitters that extended CHCH's local
reach into Ottawa, London and parts of Northern Ontario, WIC then decided to rebrand the station as ONtv. It was a controversial move that significantly downplayed the station's Hamilton focus in favour of an Ontario-wide emphasis on news coverage and viewership.

Canwest purchased WIC and its stations in 2000 and restored ONtv's local focus. It also rebranded the station again in early 2001, this time simply as CH.

The move was actually the first step in setting up an entire CH "network" made up of Canwest's secondary stations across Canada. Those same stations were rechristened again as E! in 2007, after Canwest inked a deal for the American channel's brand.

The future is uncertain, particularly in light of the current economic downturn and less-than-stable advertising environment. Budget and staff cuts over the past few years have left CHCH's big production complex sitting mostly empty. Given the most recent cuts, that isn't likely to change.

Topping things off, both Global and E! are facing licence-renewal hearings
with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in April. Those hearings could certainly get feisty.

In a conference call with financial analysts in November, Canwest Global CEO Leonard Asper said his company will renew a request, turned down by the CRTC in October, to charge cable and satellite companies and their subscribers a fee for its local TV signals.

Asper also said that Canwest would lobby for a reduction in local-programming requirements that his stations "really can no longer afford."

The CRTC may well have a different view at the April hearings.

"Holding a licence to operate a conventional television station comes with certain responsibilities and obligations," CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said last June, "one of which is to provide viewers with a significant amount of local news."

Half a century ago, Ken Soble ran his station with that sensibility.

TV Season Report Card - Oct. 11, 2008

ON SCREEN:
PRELIMINARY REPORT CARD ON THE NEW TV SEASON

BOTTOM LINE:
THERE'S GOOD AND BAD AMONG THE NEW AND OLD.


Cheers and jeers

The new TV season is only a month old. 

And, already, it's clear there are things on 

the tube that are - and aren't - working well.


By Eric Kohanik

It has only been a few weeks since thenew TV season officially got rolling. But it has already become clear. There are shows, both new and old, that are – and are not – working for me this fall.

So, what’s doing it for me?

✔ Dancing With the Stars (Mondays andTuesdays; ABC, CTV): The calibre of talent is better than ever. In fact, the first week saw routines that were already miles ahead of the final weeks of some earlier seasons.

✔ The Big Bang Theory (Mondays; CBS): Jim Parsons’ stints as the socially clueless Sheldon get more ingenious each week.

✔ Californication (Mondays; The Movie Network, Movie Central): Hank Moody (David Duchovny) and those around him keep hitting one wall after another. It’s so much fun to watch them pick up the pieces.

✔ 90210 (Tuesdays; The CW, Global): OK, don’t laugh. Nobody expected it to be good because it didn’t have to be; the show had a built-in audience. And that actually makes it kind of a pleasant surprise.

✔ The Rick Mercer Report (Tuesdays;CBC): Mercer is a brilliant satirist, even if the elements of each instalment of his show are getting way too familiar and predictable. At least the federal election is providing plenty of new ammunition.

✔ Survivor: Gabon (Thursdays; CBS, Global): OK, if ever there were a show made for HDTV, this is it. Too bad it took so long.

✔ Weeds (Sundays; Showcase): Quite simply, it stars Mary-Louise Parker. Enough said.

✔ The Bonnie Hunt Show (weekdays; Citytv): Despite its cheesy opening titles, Hunt’s warmth on this daytime gab showputs TV’s latenight talkers to shame.

There’s plenty that’s not working for me this season, too. The leading offenders?

✘ Mad Men (Sundays; AMC, A): The first season was so fabulous. But sometimes, there are such long, silent moments this season that you can’t figure out what’s up.

✘ Desperate Housewives (Sundays; ABC, CTV): Executive producer Marc Cherry reset the clock, moving things ahead five years to get rid of story screw-ups. After only two episodes, though, the show has already painted itself into a creative corner again.

✘ Knight Rider (Mondays; NBC, E!): Sorry. Maybe a supercharged car would be way more appealing if gas were cheaper.

✘ Saturday Night Live (Saturdays; NBC, Global): No matter how good it gets, how come cast members still don’t know how to read lines on cue cards without making it so obvious that they’re reading cue cards?

✘ So You Think You Can Dance Canada (various days; CTV): I LOVE it, but I feel sorry for it. As the debut week of Dancing With the Stars and Grey’s Anatomy illustrated, if CTV’s American shows have something big going on, the network will quickly treat this as a second-class refugee. If only Canadian broadcasters had the balls to put Canadian shows ahead of American ones …

The Canadian Network Upfronts - June 2, 2007

ON SCREEN:
THE CANADIAN NETWORK UPFRONTS
THE FIRST WEEK OF JUNE IN TORONTO

BOTTOM LINE:
SIGN HERE.


Talking the talk

Ah, June! It's that time of year when Canada's
TV networks love to forget past blunders
and invite advertisers to bank on the future.


By Eric Kohanik

There’s nothing like the sweet smell of the first week of June in the Canadian TV business. 

It’s that time of year when Canadian TV networks like to forget what sort of screw-ups they were last season and, instead, focus everyone’s attention on how brilliant they’re going to be in the TV season that lies ahead.

American networks have already done that. They spent the middle of May assembling and announcing their new fall schedules. They trotted out their lineups and stars for advertisers and the media at their splashy “Upfront” presentations in New York City.

This week, it will be the Canadian networks taking their turn in Toronto.

Some have already jumped the gun. Convinced that it absolutely has to be the first kid on the block to break the news every year, CBC showed off its fall programming plans – such as they are – last Tuesday. 

Meanwhile, network executives from CTV, Global, CHUM Television and other Canadian TV outlets were still recovering from having spent the previous week-and-a-half in Los Angeles at the L.A. Screenings. That’s the annual feeding frenzy that has program buyers from around the world wheeling and dealing to buy American TV shows.

This practice is particularly important for most Canadian TV channels because they would much rather rake in huge profits by buying and airing new American shows than flush their money away on developing new Canadian ones. It’s a shame, really.

Anyway, Canadian networks pay only a fraction of what NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and The CW dish out on licence fees for the same shows. Still, big American shows cost big American dollars. But that’s OK, because those big American shows haul in even bigger Canadian advertising bucks. And so, the final days of the L.A. Screenings are a tense and hectic exercise for Canadian TV execs as they jockey to assemble the best lineup of American shows possible. 

This week, Canadian broadcasters will show off the results of their L.A. spending sprees at big presentations meant to convince ad buyers that their money would really be much better spent with one particular network rather than any of the others.

Never mind that the past season was disastrous in so many ways. Or that most of last year’s new shows failed. It’s time to start all over again. The future is all that matters. 

Oh, and sign right here.

The chief rivals in these dog-and-pony shows are CTV (which does its big thing Monday) and Global (which follows suit Wednesday). They’ll each put the best spin they can on what they’ve got for next season. They’ll ply advertisers with food, booze, door prizes and, in some cases, even money.

It’s all part of talking the talk. And part of that sweet smell that fills the Canadian TV business every June.