The TV Is Dead. Long Live the TV

Awesome article from Wired that everyone interested in either the Internet or television should read, print and pin to the bulletin board for future reference.

But even as network executives try to balance old and new, a new generation of online video producers is emerging, with no historical constraints to limit the ambitions of what some call "small TV."
The economics of TV production have irreversibly changed, this new generation argues. Cheap cameras, easy editing tools and practically free distribution online allow the masses to make low-budget but compelling content.
"The cost of producing a good show has come down so far that someone can produce a good sitcom out of a living room, or a good drama out of the garage," says Dina Kaplan, chief operating officer of Blip.tv, which hosts independent video programming. "The gatekeepers of an NBC or CBS will have a lot less power in five years than they have now."

full story ...

On this weeks annoucnements

A flurry of annoucements this week from the Ceeb, for one thing they announced their new shows for fall including The Border "a fast-paced, hard-driving series set in Toronto in a paranoid post-Sept. 11 world concerned with security crises, terrorist infiltrations, cross-border police actions and trafficking in everything from enriched uranium to abducted children"

All I can do is sigh about this one - so it's kinda like "Intelligence East"? Personally I think there is enough fear about terrorism, even 24 seems on the verge of jumping the shark, but that's just me.

New shows aside, another 41 layoffs were announced including people from "Communications, HR, and Sales and Marketing." I've pointed out all the reasons before but it seems to me that the last thing the CBC needs to cut is communications and marketing. On a related not, I should mention that the Friends of the CBC MySpace is at 4,000 plus now and growing at 15 (ish) a day. When I get the chance I'll set up similar accounts on other social sites.

The most shocking of yesterday's announcements though, to me anyway, was the cancelling of Venture. Unique amoung Canadian business programs, Venture was the ultimate how to, or how not to, guide for entrepreneurs - taking you weekly into the lives of people trying to start their own business and showing you their trials and triumphs, the things that made their business' succeed or fail.

Yes, it was for a niche audience, but a very special niche audience without whom Canada's economic future may be bleak - It was, and is, the kind of programming that a public broadcaster should be doing and it's cancellation is further evidence that desire, at the CBC to be a public broadcaster is waning.

Hockey Fight In Canada Gets More Attention

The Toronto Star has picked up the Hockey Fight in Canada story originally reported by Oimet on Friday. The Star has apparently conversed with the sites owner and unlike Tod Maffin's willful surrender of CBCRadio4.com it appears that the CBC may have to fight for hockeyfightincanada.com

Dead Things Strikes Again

Everyone who is at all interested in Canadian Television (or Television in general) should regularly read Denis McGrath's Dead Things on Sticks. Which I'm sure you all already do. Just in case you missed it though - go read his take on (amoung other things) the closing of the design department "the CBC Bobbles It's Legacy.

Bureaucratic organizations just cannot be trusted to make decisions that have to do with history or legacy when it comes to broadcasting. TV and cultural product is simply different. It's not just a product, it's a reflection of a society. And as the notion of "reality" becomes ever faker thanks to TV, preserving that which helps us really define our industry grows ever more important.