Left hook

Nearly three years ago, the Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis, one of the finest and most prescient writers on foreign affairs anywhere, walked away from his regular gig on TVO's Diplomatic Immunity because, as he told me at the time, producer "(Dan) Dunsky et. al. tried to censor my views on Iraq and the Mideast, and kept packing the guest list with far-right neocons from Washington. I have never in my (then) 21 year media career accepted anyone trying to tell me what to say. Events have, of course, proven the TVO party line dead wrong."

Indeed. Iraq is a quagmire. The Bush regime a disaster. They lied. Tens of thousands died. Etc. Etc. Margolis sums it up well in his latest effort about ''the war president'' not being able to war. (H/t to Jiminy C.)

Defeat I: Five years after Bush ordered Afghanistan invaded and proclaimed `total victory’ there, US and allied forces are struggling to defend their bases and supply lines against rising attacks from a growing number of Afghan resistance groups. The war costs $1.5 billion monthly. US-ruled Afghan now produces over 80% of the world’s heroin. The US just quietly deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan to hunt al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in a desperate attempt to save Republicans from heavy losses in November mid-term elections.

Defeat II: Remember `Mission accomplished!’ in Iraq? President Bush’s war in Iraq is clearly lost, but few dare admit it. The US has spent $300 billion on Afghanistan and Iraq, with nothing to show there but chaos, civil war, body bags, and growing Iranian influence in Iraq and western Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney `liberation’ of Iraq has now cost more than the Vietnam War. So much for the `cakewalk.’ Iraq is likely the biggest American foreign policy disaster in living memory – even worse, in many ways, than Vietnam.

Defeat III: Off in the strategic Horn of Africa, another dangerous fiasco is unfolding. The White House had CIA and Pentagon spend tens of millions bribing Somali warlords to fight Islamist reformers trying to bring law and order to their strife-ravaged nation. The Islamists whipped CIA-backed warlords and ran them out of Somalia. Following this defeat, the US has encouraged and financed ally Ethiopia – shades of Lebanon - to invade Somalia, thus raising the threat of a wider war between Somalia, Ethiopia, and its old foe, Eritrea. Meanwhile, growing numbers of US Special Forces and CIA teams are getting drawn into obscure tribal melees in the Horn of Africa and the Saharan regions.

Defeat IV: Lebanon is, of course, the fourth major American military disaster. Bush and Cheney encouraged Israel to launch the hugely destructive but militarily fruitless war in Lebanon as the first part of their long nurtured plan to militarily crush Hezbullah, Syria and Iran. The Bush Administration brazenly thwarted world efforts to halt the conflict while giving Israel the green light to tear apart Lebanon. Now, just over a month later, Bush announces he will send $230 million to `help rebuild’ Lebanon – the same Lebanon blasted apart by US smart bombs rushed by air to Israel.

Anyway, after Margolis' departure, I got complaints from dozens of fans of the show who abandoned it because they missed Margolis and disliked the political turn it took.

No kidding. Did TVO really need to give Richard Perle a forum when he was already on all the Amnets? They even put out a news release announcing this ''get." The show lost a chunk of its constituency and ratings, I hear, dropped  with Margolis' departure.

Well guess what?

Looks like Dunsky, and host Steve Paikin, want Margolis back this fall when they launch their new program The Agenda. It's the program that will replace the suddenly-cancelled Studio 2.

Looks like ratings trump politics.

UPPITY DATE: One of the biggest idiots on the right is David Horowitz, a ''former Marxist" who conducts witch hunts on campus of liberal-leaning academics. The reason he's relevant is because, in Googling Margolis, I tripped over this screed by Horowitz on Horowitz's website against him, where author Eugene Girin calls the Sun -- hee-hee -- ''the leftist tabloid" and Margolis "an apologist for terror." What an ... er ... goof. (H/t to DEnnis Earl for catch my mistake here.)

OVERDUE DATE: Speaking of foreign affairs writers, Robert Parry takes hammer and tong to the New York Times' over-rated and over-exposed Thomas Friedman, the man who never gets it right and attacks those who do.

New York Times foreign policy analyst Thomas L. Friedman finally has come to the conclusion that George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq – which Friedman enthusiastically supported with the clever slogan “give war a chance” – wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Noting that “it is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are babysitting a civil war,” Friedman wrote, “that means ‘staying the course’ is pointless, and it’s time to start thinking about Plan B – how we might disengage with the least damage possible.” [NYT, Aug. 4, 2006]

Yet, despite this implicit admission that the war has unnecessarily killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 2,600 U.S. soldiers, Friedman continues to slight Americans who resisted the rush to war in the first place.

Twelve days after his shift in position, Friedman demeaned Americans who opposed the Iraq War as “antiwar activists who haven’t thought a whit about the larger struggle we’re in,” presumably a reference to the threat from Islamic extremism. [NYT, Aug. 16, 2006]

In other words, according to Friedman, Americans who were right about the ill-fated invasion of Iraq are still airheads when it comes to the bigger picture, while the pundits and politicians who were dead wrong on Iraq deserve pats on the back for their wise analyses of the larger problem.

Great piece on the go-Bush-go punditry elite. Read it.

One is the loneliest number

The ratings are in for ABC's much-vaunted The One: Making of a Music Star -- and they stink. In Canada, last night's two-hour debut simulcast on CBC-TV eked out an average 236,000 viewers per minute according to the Nielsen overnights, leading into the bumped edition of The National at 11 which earned 556,000. (The other telecasts of The National on Newsworld and the main channel managed another 150,000 each, clearly demonstrating that Canadians are desperate for news about the mess in the Middle East.)

As for The One's ratings in the U.S., they too sucked, fitting for a show that blew.

“One” became the lowest-rated new summer reality series debut this season, more than half a point below the debut of CBS’s “Tuesday Night Book Club” last month.

The program dipped all the way to a 0.9 rating in its second half hour before rebounding to a 1.2 at 10 p.m. It finished behind even Univision during its two-hour run.

“Club” and “Guy” were both yanked after a handful of outings. “Champions” remains on the schedule after dipping to a 1.2 last week.

“One,” which is based on a Spanish-language series from Endemol, puts 11 wannabe singers in a house and watches them compete both on and off the stage for a recording contract. It’s different from “American Idol” in that cameras follow the contestants 24 hours a day, meaning the show is a blend of singing and soap opera.

Perhaps ABC simply premiered the show too late. There are already three summer programs, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” Univision’s “Cantando Por un Sueno” and CBS’s “Rock Star: Supernova” showcasing wannabe singers.

The One is an absolute disaster. Everybody I have talked to today feels terrible for host George Stroumboulopoulos -- or George S. as ABC prefers him here. What happened to his nose ring? His hanging wallet on a Home Hardware neck chain? His t-shirt look? As one friend put it, they put him in a strait-jacket, literally and figuratively, with an uncomfortable looking black sports coat that he fiddled with all night.

But, and it's a big but, he is the only thing worth watching on the show. I only hope he survives the experience and makes a stink about the inanities he is obviously forced forced to perform.

The judges ''Mentors'' came straight out of American Idol central casting, and they love themselves a little too much. The contestants are pathetic. The music is dated. The sound, as one viewer wrote, ''is so low and buried that it's as if it was an afterthought, sounding like one of those background house bands 30 years ago on the Sonny and Cher Show or The Osmonds."

As for the message boards, OMG. Do the kids ever hate this show!

All this is up against a truly good reality show, Mark Burnett's Rockstar on CBS, the real deal. It sounds amazing, the house band rocks, the judges know what they're talking about, and the production and website are vastly superior.

How does CBC get out of this mess? What happens when ABC starts bouncing it around its schedule in order to save it? Will the Canadian version be doomed because of the stench around the ABC edition?

Looks like CBC-TV executive row has a steaming pile sitting right on its front step.

UPPITY DATE: CTV just put out a release boasting of its ratings last night. Compare and contrast!

Last night's Canadian Idol Results Episode was the most-watched prime-time program in Canada. The episode, in which Top 10 finalist Kati Durst was eliminated, was watched by 1.24 million viewers (2+), 32 per cent more viewers than watched Rock Star: Supernova (Global, 9-10 p.m. with 938,000 viewers) and 424 per cent more viewers than watched the series premiere of The One (CBC/ABC, 9-11p.m. with 236,000 viewers).

Overall, CTV delivered the Top 3 most-watched primetime programs last night (Canadian Idol, Law & Order: SVU at 1.12 million and Criminal Minds at 943,000) and the most watched program of the day CTV Evening News (1.29 million).

For CTV, Canadian Idol continues its ride as Summer's #1 program. Monday's Top 10 performance episode attracted a season-high 1.96 million viewers, peaking at 2.2 million in the last half-hour. Now halfway through the 2006 Summer Season, CTV programs account for all 10 of the Top 10 programs in Canada. They are:

1. Canadian Idol (Performance)   1.7 million

2. Canadian Idol (Results) 1.6 million

3. CSI 1.413 million

4. America's Got Talent (Performance)   1.405 million

5. So You Think You Can Dance (Thurs)           1.39 million

6. Law & Order: SVU           1.37 million

7. CTV Evening News        1.29 million

8. CSI Miami 1.28 million

9. CSI: New York      1.22 million

10. Gameshow Marathon (Thurs) 1.01 million

Source: Nielsen Media Research, June 5/06 - July 16/06 (6 wks)

And here's the Global spin:

-Rock Star: Supernova both won the night as the #1 program nationally among adults 18-49 - topping Canadian Idol and The One - AND dominated the 9pm-10pm time period nationally for Tuesday, July 18.

-Notably, 'Rock Star' outperformed CBC's The One by more than 3 to 1 in total viewers and 5 to one amongst A18-49 nationally.

-In addition, last night's highly anticipated third week of 'Rock Star' performances featuring Vancouverite Jenny Galt and Torontonian Lukas Rossi, bested its own winning ratings from last week by 19%.

(Source: BBM Canada - 2+ - unless otherwise stated)

Bottom Line?

The One ain't.

UPMOST DATE: Here's the official word from CBC's official blog.

Stroumboulopoulos seemed like a natural on set — even bold enough to cut off the judges (Favourite Strombo line: "Okay! We get it, we get it, we get it, we get it!") . In the show message boards, he was pretty much ignored, though, except for one chatter who liked him.

    ABC, on the other hand, managed to screw up the critical opening minutes of the live show with major production glitches like mics shutting off, the video feed dropping right out, and levels between singers in the opening song varying wildly. It looked like a show that had been rushed into production without much opportunity for rehearsal. The crew seemed to get it together in the last half.

Judging from the comments, most CBCers seem ashamed.

George, we still love you.

Old media score with soccer

CTV reports that the Nielsen numbers for yesterday's World Cup final hit a record high of four million. I bet that a lot more Canadians than that watched that final winning kick, judging by the sidewalk spillover in front of every bar and cafe in town -- and not just the ones in the Italian 'hoods. No doubt it was like that all over the world.

In all, an estimated 1.2 billion people, or 17 percent of the world's population, is reported to have watched yesterday's final. Here in Canada, after a complete 64-game broadcast schedule, the 2006 FIFA World Cup finishes with a string of record ratings stories for its Canadian broadcast partners Rogers Sportsnet, TSN and CTV.

Which leads to this: The real winners in all this were the old media.

France's surprising run showed that "old" soccer players like Zinédine Zidane, 34, can still perform at a top level. At a time when many viewers are turning away from mainstream media, the World Cup demonstrates the continuing power of live sports events to pull in the mass audiences that advertisers crave.

Kevin Alavy, an analyst in London for the media buying agency Initiative, said that through the semifinals, television audiences in 49 of the largest markets rose an average of 15 percent from the last World Cup in 2002. One reason for the increase was a more favorable time zone for viewers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas: The 2002 Cup was played in South Korea and Japan.

Compared with the 1998 World Cup in France, which was played in the same time zone as this year's tournament, average audiences were down by 3 percent to 5 percent, Alavy said. Still, given that the last eight years have seen a proliferation in the number of TV channels available to many households in Europe, "the World Cup has done better than a lot of other programming in dealing with fragmentation," he said.

Old media's successes were not limited to television. According to La Tribune, a French business newspaper, the sports daily L'Équipe sold 900,000 copies the day after France's quarterfinal victory over Brazil, nearly three times its daily average.

Sure the new media made some inroads. But there ain't nothing like a happy bunch of beer-swilling fans yelling and cheering together in front of a giant plasma TV.

Name drain

CBC Newsworld's George Stroumboulopoulos is packing up all his vowels and taking them to ABC this summer as the host of The One: Making a Music Star, the reality show that will be simulcast on CBC which will bump The National one day a week blah-di-blah-blah.

"It's great for us, because we get to have a Canuck down there representing on (U.S. network) ABC," (CBC spokesperson Danielle) Fielder boasted.

"He'll be down in L.A. for the rest of the summer doing the show and then the show wraps at the end of the summer, he comes back and then starts (CBC talk show) The Hour."

The eight-week U.S. series, produced by Endemol USA, will be simulcast on CBC-TV starting July 18, she said.

In the show, 11 musicians live together while competing for a chance at a recording contract. Cameras follow the young hopefuls as they brag, bicker and backstab, all the while being coached and trained by recording industry professionals.

<SNIP>

In a blatant ratings challenge to rival CTV, CBC-TV has put the singing contest on the same nights as the hugely popular Canadian Idol, hosted by the squeaky clean-cut Ben Mulroney.

The 33-year-old Stroumboulopoulos, known for his straight talk and black wardrobe, will remain on CBC's late-night lineup once the U.S. show ends. The Hour is moving from CBC Newsworld to the main network and will follow The National from Sunday to Thursday starting Oct. 2.

Good thing George's coming back: I have finally figured out how to spell his name without looking it up. That's saying something for somebody with a name and background like mine.

Also, Stroumboulopoulos is definitely going to outcool Ben Mulroney -- and let's not even get started on Ryan Seacrest. More important, his presence on this show helps deflect all that criticism being dumped on CBC regarding the simulcast of the ABC show.

UPPITY DATE: Speaking of The Hour, there is a bunch of job openings there.

Hardware crash

THIS POST HAS BEEN CORRECTED:

CTV News is pulling out of the Gemini Awards, says honcho Robert Hurst today in an internal memo.

Earlier today I wrote to Maria Topalovich, CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, to inform her that CTV News is withdrawing from the Gemini Awards. This decision only involves CTV News and does not affect the ongoing participation in the Gemini Awards by other CTV departments or specialty channels.

Many of you have been arguing for years that CTV News participation in these awards is of little value. Last year, we won Geminis for Best Newscast (11p), Best Reportage (David Akin) and Best News Information Series (W-FIVE). But those awards did not seem to change attitudes across our news division. A few weeks ago, at a CTV News management meeting, I called a vote on the issue. It was nearly unanimous in favour of withdrawing.

While the CTV News division will not be involved in the Gemini Awards, we will still be supportive of any CTV News employee, or news team, that wishes to submit on an individual basis. 

CTV News will continue to be active supporters and participants in various other journalistic award programs, notably the Radio-Television News Directors Awards both in Canada and internationally, The Canadian Association of Journalists awards, The Atlantic Journalism Awards and the Websters in BC. These award programs celebrate excellence at both the local and national levels. It's worthwhile to note that most broadcast journalists in Canada work in local newsrooms.

In case you missed it, CTV News won 9 RTNDA-Canada awards three weeks ago in St. John's Newfoundland. CTV News was the top recipient, receiving more awards than any other broadcaster. And last week, CTV British Columbia and CTV Atlantic each won an Edward R. Murrow award for journalistic excellence - judged against the best in the world.

Robert Hurst
President
CTV News

To be honest, I am wondering what took CTV so long as CBC has usually dominated the awards, in all respects. But last year was a good one for CTV so I am scratching my head.

As for the other TV news awards, I have a simple philosophy about them. I never write about them. TV people are always handing out awards to one another -- and the RTNDAs CAB Gold Ribbon Awards are for private stations anyway -- and bombard us poor ink-stained wretches with self-congratulatory news releases. (CBC does this too.)

But when the National Newspaper Awards are held, where are the TV cameras?

Aha! Exactly.

That despite how almost as many people read the Star as watch CTV News with Lloyd Robertson every night at 11.

Sunset clause

The stench of death continues to emanate from Sun TV, the born-under-a-bad-licence Toronto station that keeps sinking lower and lower. There have been waves of firings and cuts, with most of the station's in-house programming now coming from the Toronto Sun's newsroom. Today word is that the sales and marketing department is about to get the chop, which probably means that the newspaper's ad department will handle whatever commercial time gets sold.

Emphasis on the whatever.

Carrier pigeons

The nascent Al Jazeera International, the English-language spin-off of the ginormous Arabic-language satellite news channel, is not getting much of an audience with your friendly local cable/satellite distributor, according to today's Globe and Mail.

A Rogers official said the English-language network doesn't fall under the company's strategy to build its roster of multicultural channels, though it has talked to AJI.

"We have been approached," Rogers spokeswoman Tanta Gupta said. "Our multicultural focus is actually on different languages . . . that's what we told them."

Yes but this is a NEWS channel.

The inability to get support in Canada has angered (Richard) Gizbert, a native of Toronto who will produce a half-hour news show for al-Jazeera out of London. He criticizes Canadian carriers for being too timid to pick up AJI because of the past controversies surrounding its parent network. The Arab-language channel is watched in some parts of Canada, mostly on satellite feeds from the United States.

"Frankly, as a Canadian, when the British ask me about this, I'm embarrassed . . . by the small-mindedness and the anti-intellectual thinking behind it," Gizbert said from London.

And so he should be. What are we afraid of in Canada? Seeing the Arabic point of view -- and so seeing how the other side of this so-called ''clash of civilizations'' see us?

If Canada's broadcast regulator does hold a public hearing to allow cable and satellite providers to argue in favour of adding AJI, the channel will probably face many of the same opponents that the Arabic-language version encountered a few years ago. In 2004, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission received more than 1,200 comments supporting the addition of al-Jazeera, but heard more than 500 comments against the idea.

The regulator decided to allow the channel, but made cable and satellite carriers directly responsible for whatever material was broadcast from Qatar. That proved too big a risk for any of the companies, so the network wasn't added.

Among the opponents were the Canadian Jewish Congress, which argued that several broadcasts promoted hatred toward Jews and Israel.

About the new spinoff, "We are at best skeptical," said Bernie Farber, the CJC's chief executive officer. "Unless there is some significant indication that they have every intention of not being the old al-Jazeera, I can't see at this point that we would not take the same action that we did last time."

That despite how Al Jazeera, the original, is available in Israel and the U.S.

Nothing like pre-emptive censorship.

Cut'n'run?

The New York Times reports that the U.S. networks are starting to reconsider their coverage of the Iraq war, especially after this week's casualties in the media ranks.

On Tuesday, some executives argued that the risks are even greater for television personnel because of the equipment they must carry — including cameras that are sometimes mistaken for weapons — and how visible they must be to convey the story.

Ms. Dozier and her crew, while working on a piece about the job American soldiers were doing on Memorial Day, had to get out of their armored vehicle to shoot video in the street, leaving them exposed to the car bomb.

"Camera crews are very much more easy to target," said Steve Capus, the president of NBC News.

Mr. Capus said he was shaken when he first heard of the attack. "Of course your first reaction is to say: is this worth the costs?" Mr. Capus said. "The answer is: nothing is worth losing someone's life.

"But this a very tough call. You can't deny this is a big story."

If the networks pull out -- which at this point still seems unlikely -- then they'll be doing the Bushies a great big favour. The blood and the bombing will be that much easier for Americans to ignore.

Global issues

Questions I would have asked Steve Wyatt, senior vice-president of news and information programming at Global TV, had he returned my call:

What’s with the on-air audition process going on at Toronto's Global Newshour lately?

Is anchor Leslie Roberts about to get a side kick?

Is Jim Miller, a consultant from the U.S. last seen at CNN, running the show?

Why have Global’s ratings (in Ontario) plummeted ever since the show was bounced to 6 to make way for Global National with Kevin Newman at 5:30?

Did Miller promise openly at a meeting that moving Global National to 5:30 would affect the Ontario newscast's ratings only in the short-term and that, by fall, it would be number one in the market?

Does Global really expect to be number one in the Toronto market next September, beating even the CTV juggernaut?

Does Miller (and other Global managers) honestly believe that adding a co-anchor will fix the problem of Global Ontario's no longer having the wildly popular soap The Young and the Restless as a lead-in?

Is Miller actually tracking the overnight ratings for the female ''sub-anchors'' rotated through to see which one the dwindling audience likes?

I could go on.

Call.

You have my number.

 

Tipping Point

Here's today's treeware column, a quickie review of Canoe Live. It's the latest effort by Quebecor's Sun TV (formerly known as Toronto 1 under different owners) to keep ratings from totally washing out.

If Canoe Live is Quebecor's attempt to keep Sun TV afloat, it is in deep ... uh ... water.

Last night's debut of this collision of TV, Internet and newspaper technology was frantic, frenetic and just plain freaky.

And NOOOOOO, I don't condemn it because I am too old for a bunch of fast-talking young hosts who kept missing their cues and countdowns.

It's just bad news.

<SNIP>

The show was recently hailed by Quebecor chief Pierre Karl Péladeau as the answer to a "tsunami" of technological changes threatening to engulf the conventional "old" media.

"By combining the resources of the Toronto Sun, CANOE.ca, 24 hours and Sun TV, we intend to create a new current affairs approach that will feature significant contributions from citizen journalists," said Paula Davies, executive producer of in-house productions, in a news release.

On Canoe Live, viewers are repeatedly urged to participate by sending in their comments, questions and videos of babies spitting up. The program is also streamed live online.

It would all be innovative if it weren't so 1999.

And that's the gentle bit of this critique.

I felt especially sorry for Toronto Sun TV critic Bill Brioux who actually appeared on this ship of fools, trying mightily to make light of how bad it was. A victim of media concentration, he was in an uncomfortable spot -- although I don't know if he walked willingly to the scaffold or had a gun held to his head.

Whatever. There was no review of the show in the Sun today.