Scrolling Eye
Ed the Sock: the last local-television hero?
Local TV leftovers
BY Marc Weisblott June 19, 2008 17:06
The announcement of the July 11 launch of the iPhone in Canada has been invariably accompanied by groans — which have gotten even louder today with the leak of the data-plan prices. That exasperation isn’t being directed at Apple; it’s the sound of another technology rendered less enticing by Ted Rogers.
But there was no such indignation greeting the recent announcement of the fall programming lineup on Citytv, snapped up last summer by Rogers Communications in the wake of the CTVglobemedia takeover of CHUM. City’s schedule will include acquisitions like Celebrity Fit Club, Glam God and Rock of Love, along with reruns of E/R, Nip/Tuck and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit — along with what looks like every new American show CTV or Canwest didn’t desire. Not exactly what City’s legacy of local television was once built on.
Rather, the press attention was directed at which of the Citytv fixtures Rogers was getting rid of: 76-year-old pugilistic consumer scam-buster Peter Silverman, and the weekly half-hour compilation of Speaker’s Corner clips volunteered by viewers in the corner booth at 299 Queen W. for the past two decades.
With the Citytv brand also attached to channels in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, those changes could only be countered by the news that Rogers snapped up the Canadian rights to ABC’s I Survived a Japanese Game Show.
While the $375-million purchase of Citytv — a fire sale ordered by the CRTC to keep CTV from owning two local stations in those major markets — may have given Rogers an instant entrée into the old-school television marketplace, the corporate repositioning may not even look to be worth the expense or effort by the time their headquarters move to Yonge-Dundas Square by late next year.
Granted, the cachet associated with Citytv, dating back to 1972 when it was co-founded and run by Moses Znaimer — with a bargain-basement aesthetic serviced by soft-core porn, music videos and freakish chat shows — still resonates with greater relevance than a relative UHF non-entity like SUN-TV.
But it’s not that long ago that this type of television platform was seen by big media companies as something they could covet — autumn of 2001, to be exact.
The desire to fill an open frequency was initially expressed by Torstar, who proposed a no-budget hyper-local operation for Toronto, Hamilton and Kitchener, which triggered competing bids from several other players insisting their notions could be even friendlier to Canadian Content. Winning the license was Craig Broadcasting Systems of Calgary, who the commissioners believed were best suited to bring a “Western voice” to the business of Toronto-based television.
The resulting channel, Toronto 1, fumbled out of the gate in September 2003 and, five months later, the Craig family got the hell out of the business for good. Quebecor took over the license and SUN-TV was their strategy to salvage it: a few blandly low-budget local shows, cheaply acquired movies and American simulcasts nobody else wants marketed in conjunction with the Toronto Sun.
Jay Switzer, then president of CHUM — which was adjusting to a more corporate identity leading up to its sale to CTV — spoke out against the decision to grant the license from the start, arguing that the local TV market was already overcrowded.
“Looking back, I think the sequence of events was a catalyst for many of the things that happened since then,” he says. “It may have been a little prophetic, where that decision led to all of the consolidation that has happened since then.”
Meanwhile, it’s not surprising to see Switzer attached — along with other seasoned media executives seeking the next big whatever — to $5-million in new investment for GlassBox, a multi-platform interactive scheme incorporating digital-cable channel, BITE-TV, which airs short-form video geared toward young males.
Whether or not this kind of thing proves to represent a sustainable tomorrow for small-screen CanCon, it’s at least more thrilling a prospect than the offerings on SUN-TV’s fall lineup, with daytime reruns of The Beachcombers and Danger Bay. Switzer won’t write off the viability of local television altogether, though.
“There are structural challenges in this entire sector,” he says. “The returns have gotten lower over time, so it’s not something you can blame on bad management. For the time being, their priorities are probably to stop the hemorrhaging through a process of triage, at least during the short term.
“It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback, but they have my sympathy. The challenge is to build something, connect with audience, and prioritize that connection. And, if companies are smart about it, then television that caters to city pride, or even nationhood, will turn out to have a great amount of life left.”
For the new Rogers-era Citytv, that apparently still means trading on the reputation of information shows established when Switzer was still there: BreakfastTelevision, CityNews and — even though its host Marilyn Denis was retained by the CTV camp — the happy homemaker chat show CityLine.
Those franchises all belong to Rogers now, a company whose community-cable channels started off facilitating freak shows — most notoriously the one starring Ed the Sock, which moved to Citytv, and is now heading into its 15th late-night season — but have come to be synonymous with formulaically milquetoast local television.
Rogers initiated their multi-platform approach to the new acquisition in March, airing a Toronto Blue Jays spring training game hosted by anchorman Gord Martineau, which was roundly ridiculed as a cheap Sunday afternoon hype pitch for the Rogers-owned team — who claimed the shameless strategy sold tickets.
Caroline Van Hasselt, author of High-Wire Act: Ted Rogers and the Empire that Debt Built, figures that kind of scheme is destined to be commonplace on Citytv.
“I don’t think they want to lose a certain edginess with the station because it’s how they can push their other products to a younger audience,” she says. “The company has tried to push that envelope in the past — and sometimes it’s even gone well. Where things get difficult for them is that customer service reputation.”
Meanwhile, owning the CityNews.ca website provides new Rogers employees with an outlet to express their loyalty to the boss. Toronto Life blogger Douglas Bell pointed to a “jaw-dropping hagiographic blow job” in celebration of Ted’s 75th birthday last month: “Genghis Khan’s PR guy would blush at this nonsense.”
“When they move to Yonge and Dundas I’m guessing it will be done with a big splash,” says Van Hasselt. “ That’s when they’ll start pushing the channel again as something you would actually want to watch. But, until that happens, I don’t see any clear message out there that they’re even trying to make Citytv relevant.”
UPDATE: According to a June 24 memo from Rogers Television, "Citytv and Steven Kerzner (creator/executive producer of Ed & Red's Night Party!) have come to the mutual decision that Ed & Red's Night Party! will not be returning to the Citytv line up for fall 2008-2009."
Previously on the Scroll:
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