Who knew the answer to saving Canadian television would be revealed in an ad for mayonnaise…?

As Canada's television networks announced their fall schedules this week, it became clear that there would be little if any increase in Canadian production and that all the tears shed over their "broken business model", "catastrophic advertising losses" and the need for an infusion of Public funding to "Save Local TV" were just more of the false drama our broadcasters manufacture so they don't have to manufacture any real drama.

Once again, more than $800 Million has been bled out of the Canadian economy and Fedex'd to Hollywood by Rogers, Global and CTV, much of it for programs that will be cancelled by this time next year.

Meanwhile, these same networks will spend about 10% of that total on homegrown fare, much of it for programs that should have been cancelled by now for lack of audience interest.

With a blanket renewal of series already on the air and barely a new hour on any of the private nets, the creative community faces another season with no growth and even (as a result of smaller episode orders in some areas) a further decline in the number of local job opportunities and income.

Despite a growing number of Canadians experienced in producing world class television and new blood graduating from the country's film schools and universities on an annual basis, there seems no interest on the part of our various levels of government in finding jobs for these people.

Indeed, each and every level of government, be it municipal, provincial or federal spends a lot of money to support the destruction of the very jobs those people could be working at and bolstering government coffers through their taxes in the process.

I'm not talking about any lack of support for the arts or the way they overlook how the CRTC skews prime time from the universally recognized 8 pm - 11 pm heavy viewing periods to 6 pm to midnight, so our domestic networks can virtually eliminate Canadian comedy and drama from their schedules while continuing to qualify their Canadian-ness with the news and gossip shows that sandwich the real Prime Time hours.

These are issues all of us who blog about Canadian TV have railed against for years, endlessly trying to make the Public or the Powers That Be wake up to the real reasons the Canadian programming they deserve is not available to them.

I thought I'd run out of new ideas to offer in addressing these issues. And then, this morning Will Dixon posted an ad for Hellman's Mayonnaise.

An extended commercial, it asks us to consider the damage being done to Canadian family farms as well as our economy as a whole, raising the issue of the nutritional value of what we're eating and the additional costs involved in importing the vast majority of the food we consume.

Will asked his readers to simply replace the words "fruits" and "vegetables" with "American films" or "American TV shows" and consider the Hellman's argument in a wider context.

Try it for yourself here.

Those of us who know Uncle Willis, know he is capable of moments of sheer brilliance and watching the ad, I had an insight into Canadian television which had escaped me until now -- as well as an inspiration as to how we might get Canadian television to deliver more homegrown Canadian television.

You can't watch an hour of any American show running on a Canadian network without being inundated by ads paid for by one or another of our governments.

There are ads urging you to use public transit in your city or attend a local music festival. There are commercials for Provincial lotteries, nearby tourist attractions and government run casinos. And the Federal government pays for advertising urging you join the armed forces, buy Savings bonds, give up smoking or purchase more eggs, milk and cheese.

On one level, this is quite surprising. Despite all the advantages and support they get from government in the form of simultaneous transmission, genre protection, program financing and local programming assistance funds, our broadcasters depend on even more Public money being funneled their way to purchase air time for government backed messages.

And without that money, the networks clearly wouldn't be able to fill their commercial breaks with ads purchased solely by private industries with a product or service to sell.

And that would mean they wouldn't have those millions of dollars they cart down to Hollywood every year to keep JJ Abrams and Jerry Bruckheimer in nice houses and pools and Ferraris.

Therefore Canadian governments are actively involved in supporting American studios and artists while at the same time reducing the work opportunities for those working in Canadian television and film production.

So, instead of continuing to visit those windowless committee rooms to plead our case, instead of filing endless briefs and marching and lobbying and doing all those other things that never get us anywhere, how about if -- as citizens and taxpayers -- we simply asked our governments to do one thing…

Let's ask them to only buy ads on Canadian made shows.

Is that too much to ask?

If that single, simple alteration became a requirement of how public institutions spent public money, I'm betting we would see a sudden and huge network interest in launching Canadian shows.

This wouldn't cost the average Canadian a penny more than she now pays to fund these government initiatives. Indeed, since CBC would see a massive influx of ad revenue because it already offers far more Canadian shows, maybe they wouldn't need as much money as they know require from the public purse.

More ad revenue immediately available for Canadian shows might also make them the cash cows the networks insist they need to drive their business models.

I suspect we'd additionally see more Canadian product pushed into those plump and rosy Prime Time slots simply because the income was guaranteed, in the process exposing them to more people than they usually find in their traditionally less visited time periods.

And this might not even be something that requires a Parliamentary vote to begin with.

Somebody with more knowledge on the subject needs to weigh in here, but didn't we do almost exactly this a couple of decades ago with magazines?

If I recall correctly, that action resulted in a mini-golden age for those guys as well as American publications like "Reader's Digest" and "Time" publishing a Canadian edition to cash in on the gravy train.

So this might be an easy administrative tweak somewhere in the bureaucracy nobody even has to vote on. But even if it is, what member of Parliament, Provincial Legislature or Local council is going to vote against creating Canadian jobs?

This could turn everything around, Folks. Let's roll!

Oh, and everybody go buy a jar of Hellmann's Mayonnaise to thank them for the inspiration.

Read more »

Screenwriters regularly engage in a key element of the craft  we call "Spit-balling" or "breaking a story". It's a relatively simple process in which you ask two basic questions -- "What if…?" and "And then what?"

Take any real life situation, apply this inner, fellow-writer debated or white-boarded dialectic and you'll soon map out a story in which the motivations of the major players have come into conflict and a plot has been constructed that should keep the audience interested until you're ready to share the climax.

Over the last few weeks, I've been watching the ramp up to the G20 Conference in Toronto as security budgets have sky-rocketed past the Billion dollar mark and the people who live in the city watch it being transformed by security fences, CCTV cameras and public demonstrations of high tech crowd control weapons.

In an effort to deal with an expected influx of anarchists, anti-Globalists, groups with an economic beef or a chip on their shoulder regarding some individual head of State, or the Bilderburgers, or some Ring Wraith of the Illuminati, tens of thousands of police and military will be deployed on our streets.

More will arrive with their national delegations. President Obama alone is reported to be travelling with a personal security force of 1000.

Depending on where you reside within the political spectrum, this is either making you feel very secure, adding to your unease about the state of personal freedoms, or really screwing up your plans to watch the first World Cup Round of 16 Games in your favorite downtown sports bar.

However, approaching this as a potential script opportunity, the first "What if…" question to roll through my mind was -- "What if the demonstrators don't do what they're expected to do?"

What happens then…?

One of the first things I learned during all my police ride-alongs and research for "Top Cops" was how much both the police and criminal communities cleave to specific roles and designated patterns. It was almost as if everybody had learned how cops or crooks behaved from going to the movies.

There was always some cop emulating "Dirty Harry" or "Axel Foley" while the bad guys took their cues from "The Godfather" or "Boyz 'n the Hood". From silk pocket puffs to practiced street swagger, you almost wanted to lean across the interrogation table and whisper, "I loved your work in 'Scarface'!".

Based on what we're seeing right now in Toronto, it's clear the police are rehearsing characters based on what's gone on at every major economic conference since the WTO debacle in Seattle in 1999.

In all of those instances, street protests disrupted the conferences as commercial property was damaged. Tear gas and pepper spray were released as phalanxes of riot police confronted the demonstrators. Heads on both sides were beaten in and everybody went home happy knowing the 24 hour news cycle had lots of cool footage.

But "What if…" that doesn't happen this time? "What if…" those the powers that be don't want anywhere near the G20 Conference decide not to get tear gassed and pepper sprayed this time. I mean, let's face it, tear gas isn't exactly an occupational perk.

Which is where Hannibal comes in.

For those who hear the name "Hannibal" and picture some Fava beans and a nice Chianti, there was a guy with the same name who lived about 2000 years earlier.

Hannibal was a Carthaginian General who swore an oath to destroy the Roman Empire when he was 12 years old and almost succeeded. He is universally recognized as the greatest military tactician of all time, most famous for taking an army and his war elephants over the Alps into Northern Italy when everybody in Rome was building warships because they expected him to sail across the Mediterranean from Carthage.

Hannibal's tactical brilliance can be summed up quite simply. He went where the Roman army wasn't and wasn't where they wanted him to be.  Maybe it was because they just didn't have movies back then, but Hannibal succeeded by not doing what the Romans needed him to do for them to win.

For almost a decade, Rome kept preparing for him to attack the city. But Hannibal, knowing he'd wear down his own forces by engaging in a long siege, instead roved back and forth across the countryside, bleeding Rome dry while simultaneously continuing to terrorize them.

One of his goals was to eliminate Roman influence over the far flung territories of the ancient world and for the most part he succeeded.

So, "What if…" the demonstrators hoping to send their various messages to the G20 leaders opted to ignore the designated "Red" and "Yellow" zones, decided to avoid inhaling tear gas and eschew baton pummeling and simply went where the Romans aren't?

Are the guys at CNN and Fox News, who mostly can't find Toronto on a map anyway, going to know that the intersection hosting a peaceful demonstration is in Mississauga or Brampton? Are the guys watching a viral video of an ATM blockade going to nit pick that it's in a 7/11 in Markham?

Come to think of it, how ridiculous are all those armored cops and their police state motif going to look if you don't show up at all except maybe to bounce a soccer ball off the razor wire while screaming "Forza Italia!"

Let's be honest. All those economists and astute politicians attending the G20 have pretty much completely revealed their ineptitude over the last year of economic collapse. There's a good chance the Euro will be completely in the dumper by the time this conference opens and nobody has to tell the average guy on the street that his government hasn't got a clue anymore.

Trust me, most members of the public have looked at their pension plans and realized how fucked the system is. That Papier Mache puppet you're making of some Prime Minister or Finance Secretary is a bigger waste than the money they're spending on security.

Yeah, you could further emulate Hannibal and trash some fat and unprotected suburban bank or corporate branch office instead of the HQ's that are within the protected zone. But that's just going to alienate all the people who are on your side but still need a place to work in the morning.

So far, the best approach I've seen to the whole G20 Conference is taking place on Twitter with messages like these…

Last summer, I took a University course on Hannibal and while the professors kept coming up with theories as to why he never focused his immense strategic skills on destroying Rome, the answer seemed completely clear to me.

Where would you like to hang out, Tuscany or some armpit of a sand dune in Morocco?

The guy also knew that politicians, as much as they screw with us, always screw themselves far worse in the end. And the best thing we can do to speed up the process is not doing what they want us to do -- make that need us to do to justify their actions.

Read more »

This is the point in the Stanley Cup Finals when those playoff beards make all the players look like escapees from Boyd Crowder's "Church of the Last Chance" on "Justified".

You can no longer distinguish stars you followed all season from guys you never heard of or the homeless panhandling outside the arena -- except that it's the guys you never heard of who seem to be doing most of the scoring.

This might be the only Cup Final I've watched where the franchise players aren't deciding the outcomes of any of the games or making headlines…

That would be except for Chris Pronger, the only guy on the ice more clean shaven than Gary Bettman. But since Pronger has finally scored, maybe he doesn't have to pick up any more pucks after the game to remind himself what they look like.

Did he want out of Edmonton because of his wife or to get ahead of some shoplifting charges?

Anyway, things inside the "Infamous Writers Hockey Pool" are getting a little hairy as well, with the possibility that somebody might steal the championship in this our final week.

Where the heck did Barry Kiefl come from? How'd he get past me so fast? Will his rapid rise carry him past the two guys who have been duking it out for the lead for the last couple of weeks?

We'll know soon. This season could be over as early as Sunday and certainly before next week's report comes around.

As for the Props Division contest, it's a dogfight there as well. My thanks to the ton of new players who submitted an entry, making this the biggest field we've ever had in the sidebar competition.

Next week, we'll be announcing a lot of winners, so start packing your prizes. Meanwhile, here are the standings as of Game 3 of the final frame.

 

Read more »