On January 18, 2002, a Canadian Pacific freight train loaded with toxic chemicals derailed near Minot, North Dakota, releasing 835,000 litres of ammonia. One man was killed and hundreds were injured by exposure to the spill.

The impact of the accident would have been much less severe, but police were unable to reach anyone at the designated emergency broadcaster, local radio station KCJB because the station had been swallowed up by American mega-broadcaster Clear Channel and was staffed only by "cyberjocks".

A cyberjock is one of the ways big broadcasters save money, eliminating hundreds of local jobs by having one DJ or newscaster serve dozens of affiliated stations across the country while sounding like he's just down the block.

CTV and CanWest Global want to bring this kind of broadcasting to Canada.

On April 29, 2007, a tornado struck the Texas border town of Eagle Pass, killing seven, injuring 80 and leaving hundreds homeless. A National Weather Service warning of the approaching danger had not been broadcast to the people of Eagle Pass.

Eagle Pass residents get their TV news from San Antonio, 142 miles away, where the forecast was for extreme weather but detected no tornadoes in the immediate vicinity.

CTV and CanWest Global want to bring this kind of broadcasting to Canada.

This week, our financially troubled broadcasters, CTV and CanWest Global, filed license renewal applications with the CRTC. Both requested "relief" from their obligations, seeking to eliminate local news, reduce Canadian content in Prime Time and pretty much everything else we've come to expect from their current slate of channels.

Except the imported American series.

They're safe because they're locked into iron-clad distribution contracts which run through 2012.

Oh, and they'd really like the CRTC to take another look at those "carriage fees".

For, contrary to what they told the Commission six months ago -- that such fees would allow them to vastly expand and enhance their Canadian programming, it now appears that without a buck a month from each and every TV viewer in the country, they can't even stay on the air.

As I've posted so many times I'm becoming bored by my own writing, and most recently here and here, the problems of the Canadian networks are the result of myopic mis-management. And with these new applications, both CTV's Ivan Fecan and CanWest Global's Lenny Asper are making it crystal clear that they and their enablers mistook a Bull market for brains.

Still, CTV backed up its case by firing 108 more people and dialing down local news on their "A" Channel circuit. This included a brush back pitch aimed right at the Commission's chin by reducing newscasts in the heart of the Nation's Capitol.

I'm sure this would have had more impact if members of the Commission actually watched television. But, during last week's hearings on New Media, already aware that Commissioner Michel Arpin prefers curling up with a good book to Cancon, we were treated to Chair Konrad von Finckenstein asking a Writers Guild of Canada panel "This "ZOS", that's a Canadian production?" revealing he's never heard of The Movie Network's most heavily promoted recent mini-series.

The next day the Commissioners fell all over themselves telling an attractive intervenor from Sirius Radio that they were big fans of what she was offering. Howard Stern must have been laughing his smut lacquered ass off.

These are the people who run our lives, folks. The blind leading the blind.

A writer friend looked at their prediction for the future landscape of the industry and muttered, "It's a scorched earth policy. I want no part of it". And I agree with him on both counts.

The recent moves of both CanWest and CTV are a desperate, panic-inducing strategy designed to convince everybody that the broadcast television model is broken and only by throwing more money at their particular coterie of failed executives can things be returned to normal. It's a card often played by an entitled few willing to destroy thousands of lives and careers in order to keep their own cold, dead fingers wrapped around the levers of media power.

Let's just think about this reduction of local news for a second.

In the places they aren't outright closing the stations, the broadcasters intend to replace local newscasts with "regional" ones or just reduce the number of broadcasts. The 6:00 p.m. newscast thus repeats at 11:00 p.m. or the 11:00 p.m. repeats at 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

I realize that to a lot of the Toronto network executives making these decisions, cities like Barrie, Red Deer, Victoria or Ottawa seem like bucolic backwaters where nothing much happens anyway.

But they're not.

I get most of my news coverage from one of those expendable stations and can give you a ton of examples of those local newscasts coming in handy.

For starters -- how many "Snow days" have you had in your part of the country this winter?

We had 3 or 4 pretty big storms blow through in the middle of the night. Most of the kids around here walk to the nearest rural road where a school bus picks them up for school. Is that pre-storm 11:00 p.m. news repeat gonna tell their parents if that bus is even coming this morning?

What's the traffic like? Are any roads blocked? Is there more snow on the way?

I can find any number of Toronto stations (less than 40 clicks away) with live newscasts, but you know what -- sometimes we get a whole lot more snow than they do and sometimes the streets are buried there while we have sunny skies and Hummingbirds on the balcony.

So, if their news isn't relevant and my local "A" Channel is only serving yesterday's leftovers, where do I turn?

Wherever it is, you know it won't involve a television.

As some wag commented the last time this version of cyberjocking was floated, "Gee, the next time there's a flood in Winnipeg, I can turn on my TV and find out how much fun people are having at the street festival in Toronto".

Or how they're dying because they didn't know a tornado was coming or a train load of toxic chemicals had derailed.

What neither our broadcasters nor the Commissioners willing to give them relief seem to accept is that local broadcasting is the heart of the system and culling it will put even more of their assets on life support.

If I want to watch a major sporting event, a nearly new movie or a documentary on Antarctic seabirds, chances are I'm not watching it on CTV or Global. I'm getting that from a specialty channel or niche operation much further up the dial. Maybe I'm watching their simulcast of "House" or "CSI: Miami" but more likely I'm DVRing those to access the American broadcaster's better quality HD version.

What pulls me to my local Global or CTV outlet is either a local newscast which is informative and engaging enough to get me to linger on that channel, or Canadian programming I can't see anywhere else. Unfortunately, the CRTC has allowed both networks to wangle their way out of doing that sort of stuff.

So I found it somewhere else. And they have lower numbers that begin attracting fewer ad dollars.

No local news equals not only less local ad revenue but also less reason for people to watch. It's a self fulfilling suicide mission.

And providing CTV and Global with "Relief" only prolongs their inevitable demise. It also ill serves the public the Commission is mandated to serve and prevents those who might better run the media in these local markets to take over those licenses.

Would it be difficult for a new owner to make money? Of course it would. But it's tough making money anywhere these days and in order to make it, you'd need to figure out who your neighbors were, what was important to them and how to give them programming they couldn't get anywhere else.

It really doesn't have to be this hard.

When I first moved to Regina as a kid, the city only had one TV station. The next year, a second one opened in Moose jaw, serving the same region. One of the things the new guys did to find an audience was to put on a late movie on Friday and Saturday nights.

Late movies were something we kids had heard about on "Leave it to Beaver", but we'd never actually seen one. And now they were right here in Butt-kick.

The movies were always pretty crappy. A Horror film on Friday and a Western on Saturday. But we watched and in the process were introduced to our first local media sensation -- Roman Vimy.

Just before the movie started and at every single commercial break throughout, this slight little man with a pencil thin mustache and coke-bottle glasses would stare into the camera and say, "Men's underwear shorts -- three for a dollar!" in a thick Yiddish accent. Then standing next to a single, badly dressed mannequin, he'd point to socks, ties, T-shirts and suits with two pairs of pants and a belt available at Vimy's Men's Wear.

The "Shorts" line always cracked us up. It was a time when you never saw a pair of jockey shorts on TV let alone mentioned them by name. And elsewhere in our lives, be it a classroom, hockey locker room or bus loaded with kids from schools you didn't go to, any pause interrupted by "Men's underwear shorts -- three for a dollar!" always got a huge laugh.

At some point in early high school, a couple of buddies and I needed to get dressed up for something and decided to visit "Vimy's". It was a tiny store near the railroad tracks with the famed TV dummy standing in the window. One of those places so small you could touch both walls by spreading your arms out -- even at the age of fourteen. And true to his word, Vimy was able to outfit each of us to respectability at a cost that never got far into double digits.

It wasn't until much later in life that I thought about those continuous commercials and that store and wondered how Vimy afforded advertising on television and how all those ads endeared me to movies like "Werewolves in a Girl's Dormitory" or any Audie Murphy duster.

The answer was simple. It didn't cost him much and the station didn't need much because nobody wanted those movies. But as a result of serving a local need, they both did okay.

That's because the TV business was about getting people to watch what they put on.

Nobody had to fund convergence acquisitions or copy trendy celebrity magazine shows. Nobody needed advertisers targeting their core demographic or their brand image. Nobody was trying to make as much money as possible for the least amount of risk.

But local is television's future. Just as it has always been its successful past. And in this context, local can mean one small urban market or one underpopulated country.

We already have a vast array of options for the big stuff, the sports, the movies, the series with the big stars. They're available from their original broadcasters, through time-shifting, online and on a mobile phone. We don't need CTV and Global if all they are going to do is simulcast and repeat that product on endless platforms. Their only hope is in being better at something the big guys aren't already doing. Give me "Trailer Park Boys" and "Corner Gas" and "Mayerthorpe" because I won't ever get that from FOX, ABC or CBS -- and tell me what happened down the street before I go to bed.

And if you can't do that, give your licenses to people who will. Because somewhere, there's a guy with a fistful of underwear who'll advertise them so I can watch something I can't see anywhere else.

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Saturday night, I watched my last hockey game on CBC television. 

It wasn’t that the game was dull or badly produced. Indeed, my beloved but eternally woeful Leafs came through to win their sixth in a row, suddenly on the verge of making the playoffs for the first time in three years. It won’t happen, of course. But even if that miracle does come to pass, I’ll be watching the rest of this season and the playoffs elsewhere. Because I just can’t take any more of the garbage that spews from CBC’s resident bigot and bully, Don Cherry.

                                                                                             

I used to be a big fan of Don and always looked forward to his “Coach’s Corner” observations. He was plain spoken, politically incorrect and passionate about the game we both love to death. He always championed the guys with heart, recognized the contributions of players who seldom got noticed and otherwise educated his audience in the invisible nuances of what happened on the ice. Don Cherry has forgotten more about Hockey than I’ll ever know and taught me things that have enriched my experience of the game.

But somewhere along the way, Don got ugly.

Maybe he always was and I was late noticing. But quite honestly, I think his fame and larger-than-life TV persona finally got to him.

He used to spar with his on screen partner, Ron MacLean, but more and more often his arguments have become petulant and insulting, refusing to brook any opinion but his own and brow-beating anyone who dares question him. More than once, I wondered how badly MacLean must need his job to put up with the abuse he endures. Or, maybe he just secretly enjoys being Cherry’s Bitch.

Or it could be that’s all part of the act CBC demands. But what happened on Saturday night was a new low.

On a “Coach’s Corner” appearance you can watch for yourself here, Cherry began with one of his recurring bits wherein he insults a couple of non-Canadian players by mispronouncing their names. Don has always voiced a dislike for NHLers who aren’t “Good Canadian Boys”, often bemoaning the jobs they take from the locals, their preference for visors and their general lack of interest in dropping the gloves and pummeling somebody. Most of us have come to just let that part of his repertoire slide,  ignoring it in the same way we ignore old farts who still use the “N” word because they just don’t know any better.

But then Don took on Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, a guy widely acknowledged as the most skilled and exciting player currently playing in the NHL and whose enjoyment of what he can accomplish often leads to exuberant celebrations after scoring a goal. To Don this goes against “The Code” of hockey, a Code which requires players to suffer brain damage to redress perceived insults, to lose eyes rather than wear protective visors and to place settling personal scores above doing what’s best for their team.

Angry at Ovechkin’s “hot-dogging” after scoring a goal and comparing it to the celebrations of detestable European Soccer players, Don suggested that it was time some big defenseman “hiding in the weeds” take the opportunity to “Cut  him (Ovechkin) in half”. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The most popular hockey commentator in the world, a man literally worshipped by every grinder and wannabe who plays the game, had not only advocated injuring the best player in the league, but encouraged somebody to do it because -- celebrating a goal just wasn’t “The Canadian way”.

                                                                               

Perhaps, in his dotage, Don has forgotten “good Canadian boy” Tiger Williams riding his stick around Maple Leaf Gardens or Theo Fleury joyously sliding the length of the Calgary Saddledome after scoring a goal that would win the Stanley Cup – a moment “Hockey Night in Canada” features in its opening montage of historic highlights.

I waited for Don’s wrap up of the game to see if he might take a step back, realizing he’d overstepped the bounds of civilized sport and simple decency. But he used his time to reiterate his call for Ovechkin’s head and then spewed some more Xenophobia, indicting the League leading Detroit Red Wings for having so many Europeans on their team and railing against all those who don’t share his love for fighting in hockey, looking more every moment like that old guy at the end of the bar who rants about the righteousness of his bigotry long after everybody has stopped listening.

It’s interesting that the week preceding had been marked by CBC begging for more money to cover a budget shortfall and its supporters suggesting that not meeting their need would signify that the Canadian government wanted to silence the only true voice of the nation. Since when is slagging the ancestry of millions of us and suggesting a bounty be placed on somebody’s head been part of what this country represents?

Although part of me surmises that if Peter Mansbridge were to suggest knee-capping Stephen Harper on “The National” he’d strike the same sympathetic chord with his viewers that Cherry seems to illicit from his crowd.

Sometimes I think Passive-Aggression is our real National Pastime.

And isn’t it interesting that a network that for years has equated America with racial intolerance and international ignorance keeps showcasing a guy who trashes anybody from outside our own borders. Have you ever heard any American sportscaster suggest Hideki Matsui didn’t deserve to play for the Yankees, Yao Ming was taking an American’s job on the Houston Rockets or that all those Samoans were ruining the NFL?

Can you imagine what the CBC would say about that if they did?

Is it those clichéd low self-esteem Canadians who have a problem with foreigners – or is it really somebody in CBC management?

What Cherry (and maybe the CBC) seems to forget is that this country is no longer representative of what he expounds on such a regular basis. A lot of us appreciate the skill, speed and dexterity that European players have brought to the game. Most of those “kids out there”, who Cherry presumes to teach, think nothing of correctly pronouncing the names of classmates from all over the world. And on weekends, those same kids play “Timbits” hockey with teams that are half-Asian, half-South Asian or (in my neighborhood) predominantly Russian. Most of those kids also don't mind having a girl or two on their team.

Like most Bullies, Cherry is also both ignorant and a coward. His claim on Saturday that nobody goes to games in Detroit because of their Europeans and what brings fans in are the fights are both completely false arguments. Detroit’s gate is 98% this season, in a city with one of America’s worst economies. And the team involved in the most fights, New Jersey, is 25th in attendance.

Today, Canada’s foremost Sports Journalist, Bob McCown of TheFan590, repeated a call for Cherry to come on his show and debate the merits of fighting in Hockey. Like many of us have long noticed, Cherry never gets anywhere near scraps with anybody his own size. As McCown rightly described it, Don Cherry “turtles” rather than having the courage to face somebody who’s willing to go toe-to-toe with him.

At any rate, Don and I are done. And one of the few remaining shows I watched on the CBC is done too. They may get some more of my tax dollars but my eyes are going elsewhere. I just discovered the big screen LCD has a direct link to play anything on my laptop, so NHL.com here I come.

It’s great to have options and to not have to be subjected to tired old acts that no longer reflect reality. CBC should take note.

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During one of my residences in LA, an actor buddy and I used to visit the South Asian Barrios on some of our aimless Saturday afternoons to search out Bollywood movies. It was a shared affection we'd discovered by accident. He'd grown up in a predominantly Indian neighborhood and I'd stumbled across one during my first summer in Toronto, after taking a streetcar in the wrong direction.

I ended up in a down-at-its-heels part of the city's East end that was dotted with Tandoori restaurants, stores selling saris or curry and a tiny movie theatre. I'd been on my way to see some Charles Bronson film and, when the trolley driver explained I had about a half hour ride back the way I'd come, I realized I wasn't going to make the next show.

So I got off to explore and noticed the huge, garrulous crowd outside the theatre. There were entire families from elderly grandparents through women in Saris and men in turbans to kids with bags of exotic candies, all mingling together amid that pre-show sense of excitement that's the same in every culture.

The poster for the double feature on offer showed a couple of square jawed men brandishing pistols as they stared each other down, while all the lobby cards depicted lavish musical numbers. Just how those two genres fit together intrigued me, so I bought a ticket -- and discovered Bollywood.


The cinematic experience was exhilarating and I would later learn that Bollywood churned out far more movies than Hollywood, had stars much more popular than any I admired and that some of its most popular films ran in the same theatre in India for up to ten years of sold out performances.

There have been tons of social and cultural essays on the appeal of Bollywood, examining its reasons for doing the things it does and what all that ultimately means. And I'm not going to go into any of it, because frankly, I don't care -- anymore than I care about putting Canadian film or French Cinema on the couch.

As far as I'm concerned there's way too much cultural meaning being read into or divined from movies and not enough just enjoying them for what they are. Yes, I'm sure Sean Penn's win for "Milk" symbolizes a new dawn for American homosexuals, much in the same way that "Forrest Gump" elevated our acceptance of borderline retards and "Braveheart" brought about Scottish Independence, allowing Sean Connery to become my ancestral homeland's first head of state.

Look, a movie's a movie and winning the rights gay men and women deserve will come at the hands of people who live and work like Harvey Milk, not pretend to be him.

The pure celebration of cinema's power within the confines of a movie theatre has always been what attracted me to Bollywood. That world is one in which you are transported, taken where a Western trained mind like mine is constantly surprised, ambushed and forced to deal with juxtapositions and concepts foreign to it.


My friend and I would walk out of those (far dumpier than the ones back in Toronto) LA theatres feeling fully entertained. We often wondered how and when what we were watching would infiltrate the Hollywood machine. Oh, we'd seen bits and pieces move into the culture. The Beatles and others had sampled the music. Michael Jackson had copied the dance styles. But there was so much more still waiting to be mined.

Apparently, even those who green-lit and financed "Slumdog Millionaire" didn't think the time had come and had relegated this year's winner of 8 Academy Awards to a direct to DVD release until an audience at Toronto's International Film Festival changed their minds.

There are debates on both sides of the Pacific as to whether "Slumdog" is really a Bollywood movie and wondering if it signals the ascension of the Indian culture or its co-option by the White man and the Hollywood machine.


That debate exploded full force with the release of the "Slumdog" theme and best song Oscar winner "Jai Ho" this week by none other than the ultimate music industry manufactured girl band "The Pussycat Dolls". Everywhere you looked, pundits were pontificating on the "cheapening' of the song by allowing these surgically altered tarts to sing it and reminding everybody that this is just like what Elvis did to Black people in the 1950's.

I was reminded of this when a writer friend and I got talking about Elvis this week. Because most of Elvis' Black artist contemporaries will tell you he got a bad rap. Yeah, Elvis inherited many of his moves from Black musicians he rubbed shoulders with in Memphis like Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, B.B. King and Fats Domino. But they and several others will tell you they owe their fame and fortunes to that redneck cracker from Tupelo.

According to Jackie Wilson, "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man's music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer I knew copied him." And Little Richard once noted, "Elvis was a blessing. He opened the door for black music."

So maybe Hollywood isn't being so dumb here or so grasping or so malevolent. They know what America likes (hot girls and an infectious tune) and are simply using that to make swallowing the next big thing a little easier for some.

Apparently, the "Dolls" are still putting the finishing touches on the video for the song, rumored to be their hottest yet. I imagine it will come out just in time to be in all the Clubs for March break.

Bollywood meet Hollywood. I think you've finally arrived.

Baila! Baila! Enjoy your Sunday.

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