NETWORK BLUES

I am so frustrated with impersonal decision makers.

Last year I worked on two TV series; Blood Ties and jPod. From an insider's perspective, they were really fun shows to work on. The cast and crew were really great people, the producers were accessible and friendly, and the scripts were intelligently written. Both series generated individual loyal fan bases. And those fans were up in arms when their shows were cancelled after just one season.

Blood Ties was a show about Vicky, a private detective; Henry Fitzroy, a 400 year old vampire; and Mike, a cop. They worked together to solve crimes that involved a supernatural element. Lifetime refused to renew Blood Ties for a second season despite the outcry from fans who, before Blood Ties, had all but given up on the network to produce shows they deemed watch-able. They mobilized to lobby the network to rethink their decision using the internet and fan sites to spread the word. They flooded the Lifetime website with postings, they sent emails to any executive they could find an address for, they signed on-line petitions, and any online poll that included Blood Ties was voted on by the fans to ensure it had a great result. All to no avail. The big guns at the network were impervious to the fans pleadings and so the show died a premature death.

But the obstinate suits at Lifetime and their callous non-response to their fans pleadings pales in comparison to the outright idiocy of CBC.

For those of you who haven't heard, jPod is based on the book of the same name by Douglas Coupland who is one of Canada's foremost authors. It takes place in a computer gaming company called Neotronic Arts and centers around five of it's misfit programmers. The show had a great cast including Alan Thicke, Sherry Miller, Colin Campbell, as well as the five main and relatively unknown actors. It was on CBC on Tuesday night, 9:00. After the third episode aired, CBC decided to change the time slot to Friday night, 9:00. HUH? The target demographic for this audience is 18 - 35 year olds. Now I am no network executive yet I can figure out that pretty much NOBODY in that age bracket is going to be home on a Friday night watching TV. In fact, pretty much nobody but your 80 year old aunty is at home watching the telly on a Friday night. That is why that time slot is usually referred to as the 'death slot'. So why did they do it? My theory is that someone at CBC had a personal vendetta. Maybe Doug snubbed them at a party. Maybe Larry lost it on an exec. Who knows? What goes on in the mind of the sequestered elite and the resulting decisions are an enigma tied up in a riddle wrapped up in a conundrum (or however that saying goes).

All I know is this: CBC hasn't a clue what people want to watch. I have three kids in the demographic jPod was geared towards. Until jPod, the only time they tuned in to CBC was to watch the Canucks. My 27 year old son loves jPod and proclaimed it the best show CBC has ever aired, so good that he couldn't believe it was a CBC production. Since the time slot change he downloads it via bit-torrent. My 23 year old daughter works at an online, interactive gaming company. She doesn't have cable so she can't watch it when it airs, but she has many co-workers who watch (albeit now they program their PVR's) and she watches the show on tapes one of her friends makes for her. She loves it. My 25 year old daughter in England has them on her computer from a bit-torrent site. She and her boyfriend love it.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people on line who have started petitions and facebook groups in support of jPod. And yet CBC is not moved. Like Lifetime, it seems they don't care what their viewers think or want. They will go ahead and do whatever they want and viewers be damned. CBC is funded by the Canadian government, so they can afford to be stubborn moron's, I guess. They will continue to survive via the benevolence of a government who is happy to throw our money around. But Lifetime stands to lose a lot by ignoring their viewers. Biting the hand that feeds you only works if you are Henry Fitzroy.