Film and Television

The Audience for Canadian Shows is Tiny

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It doesn't take many viewers to make a show #1 on the CBC in Canada. The series THE BORDER was the highest rated "off-ice" Canadian series last week with 765,000 viewers. The guest appearance of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA's Grace Park is credited with the spike in viewership. According to the TV Feeds My Family blog, there are YouTube videos that are getting bigger audiences than most Canadian series.

The rest of CBC's week went like this: Air Farce Final Flight: 710,000, Dr. Who: 701,000, Rick Mercer Report (repeat): 637,000, Heartland: 625,000, The Tudors: 567,000, Fifth Estate: 526,000, Nature of Things 486,000, Little Mosque on the Prairie: 464,000, This Hour Has 22 Minutes (repeat): 428,000 and, dwindling well below sustainability, Sophie: 280,000.

Among the other Canadian-produced fare last week, CTV's So You Think You Can Dance Canada waltzed off with 1,160,000 viewers (another 888,000 watched the results show Thursday night). Next was ol' reliable Corner Gas at 1,066,000. Global's The Guard was down to 385,000. Well back, making Sophie look like CSI, was Degrassi: The Lost Generation at 222,000 viewers–across Canada. There are more people in Saskatoon!

UPDATE: The previous headline on this post ("The TV Audience in Canada is Tiny") was miss-leading so I have changed it to more accurately reflect what I was trying to say. American shows draw the lion's share of episodic TV viewers in Canada as they do in many European countries.

How NOT To Get People to Watch Your Show

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Insulting your viewers probably isn't the best way to get them to watch your show. But that didn't stop HEROES showrunner Tim Kring from laying the blame for the ratings decline of his show on serialized storylines and the limited intelligence of his audience. 

The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dipshits who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way." 

A superior way? Why is it "superior" to watch the show on your iPod or your computer instead of on TV? Isn't it a TV show? How does the medium you choose to watch HEROES with make the stories and characters any more or less compelling?

I'm sure that heavy serialization is part of the problem with HEROES. But the bigger problem is that the show is a confusing, uninvolving mess that isn't compelling or entertaining enough to get the viewer to make the necessary commitment. At least not this viewer, one of the "saps and dipshits."

I watched all of season the "superior way" on my iPod on plane flights while traveling back-and-forth to Europe. And I really liked it. I saw the first four or five episodes of season two on TV. And gave up on the show.  I guess if I'd watched the season two episodes on my iPod I would have liked them. (Or is he saying the opposite, that TV is the "superior way" and other platforms are for saps and dispshits? He's not too clear. Either way, it's the stories and characters that matter, not whether you watch it on TV, a computer, or a DVR).

Now Kring is planning to make his stories less serialized…or not serialized at all. That could work, but I'm not sure that he's attacking the real problem, or as Time Magazine TV critic James Poniewozik puts it:

Yes, you can blame technology for siphoning all the smart viewers away from your series. You could try revamping your show so that it becomes the complete opposite of what it was conceived as. Or you could try, you know, not sucking. A story arc or two that doesn't inspire ridicule could go a long way with the saps and dips***s, is all I'm saying. […]Whatever problems Heroes has, the fault lies not in its DVRs but in itself.


UPDATE 11-25-08: Poniewozik reports that Kring has apologized for his comments in an open letter to fans, which reads in part:

I was making the point that these platforms now offer a superior way to watch the show (without commercials, with extra content, commentary, at the audience's convenience, etc.) … It was a boneheaded attempt at being cute and making a point. Instead, it turned out to be just plain insulting and stupid. I know now how it sounded, but I truly never meant to suggest anything bad about our audience. 

They are The Champions

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TheChampionsOpening (1)
Variety reports that Guillermo Del Toro and Christopher McQuarrie are teaming up to write United Artists' movie version of the 1960s UK series THE CHAMPIONS, which starred Stuart Damon as one of three spies who develop super powers after crashlanding in the Himalayas and being rescued by a secret civilization. Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner will produce. 

Huh?

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Fasttrack-393
I just received the Canadian DVD release of my movie FAST TRACK: NO LIMITS…but I don't understand the teaser line on the cover:

Fast…Furious…No Limits. If Time is Money, What's Your Quarter Mile?

What does that mean? How is that supposed to entice me into renting/buying the DVD?

The movie is now also available on DVD in China,  Japan , Australia , Thailand and Spain... as well as many other countries (but not yet in the U.S.). You can also find DVDs of FAST TRACK on Ebay.

Memory Lane

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Tonight I went to a cocktail party and screening at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to celebrate the Archive of American Television's DVD release of the classic series STUDIO ONE. The boxed set contains 17 episodes, including the original, TV production of "Twelve Angry Men," which was long thought to be lost until a rare kinescope turned up recently in the estate of a deceased trial lawyer who collected books, movies and ephemera about the law. So much our priceless TV history has been lost through carelessness and stupidity, but that's another story…

You never know who you are going to bump into at these events and, for me, this one became an unexpected opportunity to revisit the start of my career in television. I ran into Bruce Bilson, who directed the first script Bill Rabkin & I ever had produced, an episode of SPENSER FOR HIRE. We chatted for a bit, and then I spotted Leonard Stern walking across the room. He was one of the executive producers of MURPHY'S LAW, a short-lived series starring George Segal that was our first staff job. I was pleased and flattered that Stern not only remembered me and Bill, but also my book "Unsold Television Pilots" (Stern, in addition to being a legendary writer/producer, is also a publisher, one of the partners behind Price Stern Sloan and now Tallfellow Press).

Jack Klugman, a veteran of many live TV productions, was also at the cocktail party (he was there to speak on a panel after the screening). I said hello, reminded him who I was, and thanked him again for guest-starring in one of our best DIAGNOSIS MURDER episodes, "Voices Carry." I liked the episode and his performance in it so much, that I ended up writing a prequel — the novel "Diagnosis Murder: The Past Tense," which became the most widely acclaimed of the eight novels in the series.  I told him that, too.  He seemed flattered, or maybe he was just being polite.

For a TV nut like me, being able to go to events like this is one of the great things about living in Los Angeles.

Writers Write

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My friend Lisa Klink has some great advice for TV writers who are finding it very cold out there right now:

Budgets have been cut and
writing staffs have been reduced, resulting in more competition for
jobs.  Some experienced writers are taking less money and/or lower
titles just to keep working.  Networks are ordering fewer pilots, which
is also increasing competition among writers trying to sell shows. 
There’s a general tension and uncertainty in the air, which makes the
people doing the hiring less inclined to take chances on unproven
talent.

Depressed yet?  I don’t say all this to be discouraging, just to
offer some perspective.  If you’re not getting the opportunities you’ve
been hoping for, it probably has less to do with your talent as a
writer than the stressed-out state of the business.  So what’s a writer
to do?  What we do best.  Get creative.  Expand your horizons beyond
television to other media: video games, web series, graphic novels,
etc.  Get (or borrow) a digital camera and make a short.  Write a one
act play and stage a reading.  Explore every possible way to get your
work seen and produced.

None of this is to suggest that you should stop writing new specs,
meeting new people and looking for TV work.  But in addition to a
full-frontal assault, try coming at the TV biz sideways.  Having any
kind of success in any medium will distinguish you from your
competition.  More importantly, I think it’s psychologically helpful to
any writer frustrated with the business to find other creative
outlets.  Take a break from beating your head against the wall and have
some fun with your talent.  Remind yourself that you are actually a
good writer – and become an even better writer while you’re at it.

She's right. As my grandfather used to say, "You can't catch fish with your line in the boat" (it's amazing how many different situations I can apply that advice to, just like he did). That's why I am always working on several things at once.

Today is a good example. I had a pitch at FX, I did some research for my next "Monk" novel (which is due in April), I wrote five pages of my "standalone" novel, got notes on a spec script I've optioned to some producers,  and I started sketching out some ideas for a pitch I have on the 13th.

I have my professional ups and downs, and personal ones as well, but no matter what I am always writing something. Even when I had two broken arms. It's how I stay sane and it's probably how I stay in business.