When your dinner guests are out to get you

By Jacob Richler - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

‘You take wildly different people who would never meet and put them in a room and see what happens,’ says a show insider | W NETWORK

Deep in Mississauga, Ont., on a balmy September evening, a two-camera television production crew, four dinner guests, a handful of producers, PR flacks and other interested observers (well, me) sat huddled in virtual silence in a cramped basement apartment, while over in the kitchenette, a vivacious, blond woman named Cathy struggled to assert control over some defeatingly bouncy scallops.

When she at last wrestled them onto her square black dishes, she looked up at the nearest camera in triumph—but only briefly—for as she did so she caught sight of a neglected bottle sitting on top of the fridge. An overlooked ingredient? No, it was just the badly needed wine, which Cathy had evidently been keeping all to herself, while over at the dinner table her guests struggled with conversation unassisted. Even baseball wasn’t working (“Alex Rodriguez . . . he plays for the Blue Jays, right?”). So Cathy materialized to nervously splash some lubricating red plonk into four, thoughtfully chilled stemmed water glasses. Yes, into the frozen water glasses. But this was not a mistake on which to dwell. It was time to serve her appetizer—“the salty sea,” crusted scallops served with cucumber salad—and, according to my watch anyway, they were already stone cold and then some.

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The future, or a flop?

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Kimimasa Mayama/Bloomberg/Getty Images

At a recent trade show in Tokyo, Toshiba unveiled a 3-D television that doesn’t require users to wear bulky glasses. “A dream TV is now a reality,” said Masaaki Oosumi, president of Toshiba Visual Products. The main impediment to widespread 3-D TV adoption has always been that consumers—at least half of them, according to Nielsen research—refuse to buy 3-D TVs because of the hassle of wearing special glasses.

Despite that obstacle, industry research firm iSuppli estimates that by 2015, 40 per cent of TVs sold will be 3-D. Other manufacturers are betting on 3-D, too. Nintendo will soon launch a glasses-free hand-held gaming console, the 3DS. But even as manufacturers rush to churn out more 3-D products, some analysts say the sales predictions are too bullish. “If [the iSuppli forecast] is true, I’ll eat my light bulb,” says Alan Middleton, a consumer behaviour expert at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto. It’s true that Toshiba has overcome the biggest hurdle to mainstream adoption, but consumers can be fickle, says Middleton. For one thing, 3-D appeals particularly to sports fans and their “dream TV” doesn’t max out at 20 inches, like the new Toshiba. It also likely costs less than the Toshiba’s $2,950 price tag. Then there’s the question of comfort. The new Toshiba model produces its 3-D effect by shooting nine beams of light at each eye at slightly different angles. But to get a clear picture, viewers need to position themselves at a specific angle to the screen.

Another challenge for manufacturers will be to convince the average consumer to buy 3-D TVs when most TV content still isn’t filmed in 3-D. After all, “no one seriously expects all TV programming to gradually be converted to 3-D, unlike HD,” says Stewart Clarke, editor of TV industry magazine TBI. “There’s unlikely to be much demand to watch the six o’clock news in 3-D,” he adds. For those reasons, Clarke says it’s still too early to know if 3-D will become the new standard at home. Middleton agrees. “Mass adoption is certainly not going to happen in five years,” he says. “In 10 years, it’s possible, but before then? I expect not.”

The telecom contrarian

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP/ Jessica Darmanin

Three years ago, Telus Corp. chief executive Darren Entwistle and the company’s board of directors were considering a bid for phone giant BCE Inc., a move that would have created a telecom colossus with annual sales of more than $26 billion. While Telus’s bid never materialized (Entwistle blamed “inadequacies” in BCE’s bidding process), the fact that it was being contemplated at all highlighted the degree to which the Burnaby, B.C.-based telco was the more muscular of the two former phone monopolies, even if the Bell parent was bigger.

These days, though, Telus is increasingly being viewed as an also-ran in the fast-moving telecommunications sector. BCE’s recent decision to pay $1.3 billion for the 85 per cent of the CTV television network that it didn’t already own means Telus is now the only big communications company in Canada that’s not in the TV content game—Rogers Communications Inc. (which owns Maclean’s) has CityTV and Sportsnet, Quebecor Inc. owns Vidéotron, which is launching a wireless service in Quebec, and Shaw Communications Inc. purchased the television assets of Canwest Global Communications Corp. earlier this year for $2 billion. And some are suggesting that could be a big problem for Telus if rivals start using exclusive television programs and sports content to lure new customers to their wireless and other services.

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Piers Morgan to replace Larry King

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

CNN has announced that Piers Morgan will be taking over the time slot being vacated by Larry King. After the veteran King announced the end of “Larry King Live,” Morgan, a British journalist and TV host, was widely considered the front-runner to replace him. The struggling CNN is attempting to boost its low ratings with new hosts, and they hope that Morgan will provide King’s softball interview style with a younger and cooler twist. CNN President Jon Klein’s announcement also suggests that Morgan will look at the news “with style and humour with an occasional good laugh in the process.”

CTV News

Shania Twain next 'American Idol' judge?

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

The celebrity gossip site TMZ has reported that Shania Twain is set to be the next American Idol judge if Jennifer Lopez doesn’t get the position. Two days ago, People magazine reported that a source said that Lopez’s talks had fallen through because of her diva behavior. The show is looking for a new judge after Ellen DeGeneres announced that she would leave the series in late July citing scheduling issues. Her departure was the second major blow to the series in the past six months: Simon Cowell, arguably the show’s most famous host, left in January.

TV Watch

TMZ

"Live! With Regis & Kelly" from PEI

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 12, 2010 at 11:13 AM - 0 Comments

Regis Philbin and his “Live! With Regis & Kelly” co-host Kelly Ripa have arrived in Prince Edward Island to begin filming their daytime talk-show. The show, which will broadcast from PEI July 12 to 15, will show off the island’s scenery and culture. P.E.I.’s tourism office pitched the idea of hosting the show in the hopes that “Live! With Regis & Kelly” will bring attention and more visitors to the island. “We really felt that what we had to offer was a secret location people did not know much about,” said spokesperson Brenda Gallant. But bringing the show to P.E.I. cost the taxpayers $1 million, amounting to a fifth of the province’s yearly tourism advertising budget.

CTV News

Lloyd Robertson calls it quits

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 9, 2010 at 9:32 AM - 0 Comments

Lloyd Robertson, who has been the news anchorman of CTV since 1976, has announced his retirement. The Stratford native, who is 76, will be stepping down from CTV News With Lloyd Robertson next year. Robertson first came to national attention as a news broadcaster at the CBC; he was the host of The National in the early ’70s. At CTV, where he became sole anchor in 1983, he has announced most of the big events of the last 30 years. He was also parodied as the recurring character “Floyd Robertson” on the sketch comedy SCTV. CTV has already chosen Robertson’s replacement and plans to announce him or her soon; Robertson will share duties with his successor for the next year, before stepping down and moving on to other roles at CTV.

Toronto Star

Emmy nominations announced

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 0 Comments

Glee and Mad Men are the biggest contenders at the 62nd Emmy awards on August 29. Glee, the show about a high school glee club, is nominated for 19 awards, including Best Comedy. Modern Family and
Emmy-darling 30 Rock also cleaned up, with 15 and 14 nominations each, including Best Comedy nods. Mad Men, which is set in a glamorous 1960s Madison Avenue advertising firm lead the pack of dramatic shows with 17 nominations. The series 24 got a surprisingly low five nominations, but it didn’t get snubbed nearly as badly as the recently cancelled Law and Order, which wasn’t nominated for anything.

LA Times

Larry King finally calls it quits

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 11:18 AM - 5 Comments

Larry King tweeted his planned retirement from CNN on Tuesday. In an interview with the LA Times, he said the requirement that he cover celebrity news and crime stories made it a “tough” daily grind. “You’ve got to do tabloid shows,” he said. “You’ve got to do the girl that’s missing in Aruba. It’s hard to make the case that that is major news, but that’s what’s news today.” King, who started in radio in 1957 has interviewed more than 40,000 people on air. He will still work on specials for CNN, which he joined in 1985 when the network was only 5 years old.

LA Times

Killing Captain Kirk

By Jaime J. Weinman - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 13 Comments

Photograph by Doug Hyun

On June 16, the last day of the Banff World Television Festival, William Shatner was the subject of the feature interview. You could tell Shatner was in the building because of the line, stretching back and forth across the hotel, to see the Canadian actor and Price­line.com pitchman. And for the people who got in, he provided the equivalent of a one-man comedy show: getting laughs and applause every few seconds, telling anecdotes about his economics degree at McGill and his work in live theatre, and making fun of the long questions asked by the moderator, Big Bang Theory creator Bill Prady. He asked the video cameras, recording the event, to do a close-up of him so he could re-enact his famous terrified expression from an episode of The Twilight Zone. He delighted the audience with his awareness of a write-in campaign to make him governor general of Canada, saying that a governor general “needs to be old, distinguished and wealthy, and I’m none of those things.”

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Steve Carell: "It's a good time to move on"

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 4:30 PM - 1 Comment

Steve Carell told reporters that the upcoming season of his show The Office, its seventh, will be his last. The star, who had already hinted that he didn’t plan to stay with the show, says that he will fulfill his contract by staying for one more year, and then “it’s a good time to move on. I just want to spend more time with my family.” The U.S. adaptation of the hit British comedy was not a success at first, but Carell’s ascent to movie stardom in The 40 Year-Old Virgin turned it into NBC’s most successful comedy, particularly among young viewers. There has been no indication yet of what kind of changes the show would undergo if it went on without him.

EW.com

Leno doing worse than Conan

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 5:04 PM - 6 Comments

Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show was notorious for performing worse than Jay Leno’s, and when Leno took the show back, he went back to winning the late night wars—or did he? TV By the Numbers has looked at recent ratings and discovered that although Leno started out doing well, his current “ratings trend” is actually a bit below Conan’s in the same period, and he is back to being tied with David Letterman in the 11:30 slot—and this is before O’Brien’s cable talk show starts competing with both of them. And as one observer noted, Leno doesn’t even have Conan’s excuse for these ratings: having Jay Leno as a lead-in.

Newser

TV-show Glee bans sex on the set

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 1:35 PM - 5 Comments

The actors who play lascivious teenagers on the TV show Glee are apparently acting like, well, lascivious teenagers, reports the Telegraph. Ryan Murphy, one of the show’s creators, says that dating between the actors in the show about a high school glee club is fine, but sex at work is not. Murphy won’t say exactly who has been rocking the trailers, but considering most of the actors are approaching 30 years old, he probably can’t stop them from doing what they want off set.

Telegraph

Mercer turns down job offer at proposed Sun TV News

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 1:58 PM - 31 Comments

After proposing a “controversially Canadian” specialty news channel this week, Sun TV News made a play to make political satirist Rick Mercer part of its prime-time line-up. Mercer confirmed that he met with the newly hired Quebecor vice-president Kory Teneycke “a while ago,” and was offered a job with the proposed conservative news network. Seen as the crown jewel of Canadian content, the Rick Mercer Report has been eyed by rival broadcasters in the past. The show is privately produced and renewed by CBC on a year-to-year basis, allowing other networks to inquire about its availability. Now in its seventh season, the show averaged over one million viewers a week last season. But when it came down to it, Mercer said he’s happy with his relationship with CBC and will stay with the network. Mercer said although he was intrigued by the idea of starting a new network, he decided to “dance with the one that brung me,” borrowing a phrase from former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Mercer wished the new venture luck and called Teneycke “a smart fellow.” Sun TV News is planned to launch in January 2011, pending CRTC license approval.

Toronto Star

Old Spice man in talks with NBC

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:06 AM - 0 Comments

The man on a horse may be coming soon to your television. Isaiah Mustafa, best known for his Old Spice commercials, is reportedly in talks with NBC to land a spot on one of its comedy pilots. Mustafa’s Old Spice commercial was an instant hit after it aired during the Super Bowl and quickly became a viral internet sensation. Mustafa caught the eye of NBC Universal casting executive, Grace Wu, who tried to get him a place in one of the pilots this spring but was unsuccessful. Mustafa is looking to land role in future pilots, until then, he’ll be representing Old Spice as the infamous man on a horse.

YouTube

Variety

Clinton was right about everything

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 4:18 PM - 0 Comments

Nicola Dove

Tired of 1980s nostalgia? Here comes The Special Relationship with 1990s nostalgia. The HBO TV movie, premiering on May 29 and written by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), gets its title from the relationship between Tony Blair (Michael Sheen, who played this part for Morgan in two other films) and Bill Clinton (Dennis Quaid). Though it gets a publicity boost from the U.K.’s electoral shakeup, Morgan’s script stops in the year 2000, requiring director Richard Loncraine to create a Clinton-era period piece. “The ’90s have got less personality than, say, the ’60s,” Loncraine sighed to Maclean’s, regretting a lack of distinction in “the hair, the clothes, the cars.” But the film suggests one thing the ’90s had in common with the ’60s: they had infinite hope and promise, and it all went to hell.

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YouTube sells out

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

Of all the racy videos that Samantha Mack, an exotic dancer from Vancouver, has posted on YouTube, she still can’t figure out why that one got banned. Earlier this month Mack uploaded a video, in which she dons a bright bustier and various bikinis, to promote a breast cancer charity event. By the carnal standards of the Internet, it was downright innocuous. Even so, 19 hours later the company sent her a message to say it was inappropriate and had been removed.

“They say YouTube is not for porn­ography, but are they considering me grabbing my boobs and saying, ‘These should be cancer free,’ to be pornography?” she asks. “I was alarmed.”

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The content kings

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 2 Comments

Canwest Media Inc. / Mike Yarish / FOX

Shaw Communications’ $2-billion purchase of Canwest Global Communications’ television empire is all about piping TV content over “multiple platforms”—cable, satellite, broadband Internet and wireless smartphones. But Peter Bissonnette, the president of the Calgary-based cable company, doesn’t want you to call it convergence. After all, that was the concept that underpinned the last round of media consolidation at the beginning of the decade, when TV, newspaper and Internet companies largely failed to turn grand ideas about common ownership and content-sharing into big profits. The granddaddy of such deals was the US$350-billion mega-merger of AOL and Time Warner, which is now regarded as one of the biggest disasters in American business history. This time around is different, assures Bissonnette. “AOL is so Cro-Magnon compared to what is happening today.”

There’s no question the media landscape of 2010 bears little resemblance to that of 2000, when pokey dial-up Internet connections were common and computers, cellphones and television sets boasted very different functions. These days, the lines are blurred as people are equally likely to watch video on their laptops, type emails on their cellphones and access interactive Web features on their giant, flat-panel HD television sets. And then there’s a whole new category of device, Apple’s iPad. Call it what you like, but for cable operators, a new era of convergence has dawned.

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Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 12:54 PM - 1 Comment

Perhaps the most beneficial and most affordable idea ever presented here: an end to political hackery.

If a single move could restore civility to politics, that is it. Get rid of the left-vs.-right commentators who are just out scoring points for their team. This sort of opinion-mongering is not only boring and predictable, it is destructive of the truth. If your only credentials are “GOP shill” or “Democratic hack,” you’ve no business cluttering up the airwaves or the op-ed pages…

Whom do we put in their place? I say replace the pundits with people who have genuine expertise — whether from their academic work, professional life or personal experience — on the key issues of the day. Instead of partisan talking heads or mad hatters from the “tea party” preaching their views on, say, health care and taxes, let’s hear from doctors and insurance professionals, or the number-crunchers from the Congressional Budget Office.

Someone give Glenn Close a hug

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 7, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

Illustration by Lauren Cattermole

Parenthood, the television series adaptation of Ron Howard’s movie, uses a mix of soapy drama and comedy to tell the story of five interrelated families. But most of all, it’s a show that is determined to warm our hearts. Every week provides what executive producer Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights) calls “a sense of catharsis,” which often translates into opportunities for characters to cry: Kristina (Monica Potter) cries about her fears that she’s made mistakes raising her autistic son Max (Max Burkholder); single mom Sarah

(Lauren Graham) cries when she has to stop dating her daughter’s English teacher. Scenes that seem funny at first, like the one where Crosby (Dax Shepard) admits that he has an illegitimate son, wind up being full of tears and sentimental guitar music. “My favourite episodes are ones that start very bright and full of humour, and then you find that the emotional stuff creeps up on you when you’re not expecting it,” Katims told Maclean’s. Television is bringing back something that hasn’t been seen in a while: mushiness.

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The "cozy" mysteries of summer

By Patricia Treble - Friday, April 30, 2010 at 6:47 PM - 0 Comments

While mysteries like Henning Mankell’s Wallander series have received critical acclaim, the traditional “cozy” still sells like hotcakes. Just witness the popularity of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which is based in Botswana, or this summer’s line-up on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery! In cozies, the detective—often a woman and/or an amateur—solves crimes that defy befuddled small-town authorities. Violence is kept to a minimum and important clues are often accidentally overheard or stumbled on by pure coincidence. Agatha Christie might be dead, but the genre she perfected in the form of Miss Marple lives on.

Today, Alexander McCall Smith, a professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, is the reigning champ of the cozy. He pumps out a handful of books each year, each more delightful than the last. McCall Smith has four series on the go, though some, like the Isabel Dalhousie novels, are really character essays rather than mysteries in the usual sense of involving bodies and crimes. And in each book, especially his best-selling No. 1 series, the crime is less important than the people who inhabit the pages and their reactions to each other and to the crime.

This is perfectly exemplified in an exchange in the latest book of the series, The Double Comfort Safari Club. Mma Grace Makutsi, the assistant in the Gaborone-based detective Agency tells her boss: “Sometimes wickedness prevails.” She is referring to an old foe, Violet Sephotho, notorious for using her looks to ensnare men. However, Makutsi’s belief is anathema to detective Mma Precious Ramotswe. As McCall Smith writes: “In her short career as a private detective, Mma Ramotswe had encountered relatively few instances of evil, but she had seen some, and in each case she had seen the wings of wickedness clipped. Violet Sephotho had now stepped over a boundary that separated mere nastiness from real wickedness. She could not be allowed to prevail.” And, with the two women on the case, there is no doubt in readers’ minds that Violet Sephotho will get her comeuppance.

That simple reasoning that “might does not make right” is at the heart of a cozy’s appeal. Like a Harlequin romance and its inevitable happy ending, cozy readers know that in their world evil will be vanquished. A different variation of the cozy starts on Sunday, May 2 on PBS when Masterpiece Mystery! begins airing the final three episodes of Foyle’s War.

Set during the Second World War in the ancient British town of Hastings on the English Channel, the series features the most reluctant of detectives, Chief Supt. Christopher Foyle, who must solve crimes that can appear insignificant compared to the cataclysmic events occurring all around him. In these episodes, the war in Europe is over and Foyle is on the cusp of his much desired, much delayed retirement. Though these episodes deal with rather more grand issues than usual, Foyle’s War as a whole is the ultimate cozy.

Starring Michael Kitchen, who’s a delight as the enigmatic Christopher Foyle, the series is really about his quiet, determined refusal to accept the “party line”—that crime in wartime isn’t worthy of the most diligent police work. Of course Hastings plays host to the most amazing crimes, all of which would remain unsolved if not for Foyle, his former driver “Sam” Stewart and his deputy Paul Milner.

And after Foyle’s War ends there are eight episodes by the queen bee of cozies, Agatha Christie, including five Miss Marples and three new Hercule Poirots. For devoted readers of the clever sleuths, it’s enough to send them scurrying for the ideal tipple, perhaps an herbal tea or a Pimm’s, with which to enjoy watching the bonanza.

Is the CBC dumbing down?

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 1:16 PM - 10 Comments

The CBC’s ratings are up, with four shows that draw over a million viewers, as well as good numbers for scripted dramas like Heartland and Republic of Doyle. But there are charges they’ve increased viewership the old-fashioned way: by turning away anything that isn’t fluffy and mainstream. Ken Finkleman, who created The Newsroom for the CBC, says that Canada’s public broadcaster turned down his latest edgy half-hour comedy, Good Dog, which he had to take to cable instead. “Forget about dark and edgy,” Finkleman told The Globe and Mail, “the CBC only seems to want warm and friendly.”

The Globe and Mail

Ex-Tonight Show host to star on cable

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 12, 2010 at 1:56 PM - 0 Comments

Conan O’Brien has finally announced his post-Tonight Show plans: he has signed a deal to host his own show on the cable network TBS. His new show, airing Mondays through Thursdays at 11 p.m., will begin in November; the show currently occupying that slot on TBS, George Lopez’s “Lopez Tonight,” will move to 12 midnight. The announcement comes as a surprise, since most of the rumours about O’Brien’s future centred around Fox, and he was said to be in talks with the network. But basic cable has once again triumphed, and O’Brien can look forward to a proud future of following Tyler Perry shows and Seinfeld reruns.

LA Times

Oprah to host evening show

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 0 Comments

Oprah Winfrey is set to announce plans to host an evening show on her new cable network, the Wall Street Journal reports, which will probably debut late next year. Called “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” the show will be an hour long and might air as much as two or three times a week. It will follow Winfrey around the world to locations like Egypt and China: “I’m going to take viewers with me, going to take celebrities I want to interview with me” around the world, she told the paper. The Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN, will be programming 24 hours a day, presenting Winfrey with the challenge of lining up advertisers and viewers (her vast audience now is mainly women at home during the day). She will be taking on evening reality shows like NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” and Fox’s “American Idol.”

Wall Street Journal