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."
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