Search Engine, the popular online podcast and radio show that was a victim of CBC’s recent cost cutting is moving to TVO.

TVO is a publicly funded television network in Ontario. Search Engine was canceled on radio last year, but it lived on a podcast, where it found a devoted audience. A TVO blog discussed the move with the host, Jesse Brown, this afternoon:

The CBC has been great- they put Search Engine on the air in the first place and helped it grow into their most downloaded audio podcast. It’s won an international radio award and has been on iTunes’ “Best Podcasts of The Year List” for each year that it’s been around. But our timing stinks- times are tough and the CBC has been forced to make tough decisions. Luckily, TVO sees an opportunity here.

According to NOW Magazine the move was orchestrated by Mike Miner, producer of The Agenda. ““When I found out that his podcast wasn’t going to be renewed, we quickly moved to bring it over to TVO. It all came together amazingly quickly. Everybody here is a big fan of Search Engine, so it was clear right away we wanted to have it,” Miner said.

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	Search Engine	Posted at 4:47 pm (04 May 2009)

Yes, the boat from The Beachcombers is still alive, if not actively combing any beaches off the south-west coast of British Columbia. This photo of The Persephone was taken four weeks ago in Gibsons B.C. where the show was shot.

The series ran from 1972 to 1990 and is the longest-running dramatic series ever made for Canadian television. In all, 387 episodes were produced. During the final season, the show’s title was shortened to Beachcombers.

Photo by Katakandian, used with permission.

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	Beachcombers, Vancouver	Posted at 12:11 pm (31 Jul 2008)

CBC Television ditched the steamy hockey drama MVP after just weeks on the air after critics were lukewarm about the show and fewer viewers embraced it as expected.

But now, living a “second life” on the Amercian cable network Soapnet, the show has produced some unlikely praise. The New Yorker magazine, described by the Toronto Star, is “a high-brow magazine popular among the intellectual set.”

The New Yorker wrote in a recent review: “[The show] “calls to mind such past treasures as Dynasty and
almost every other nighttime soap you can think of…. I’m going to sit right down and send Canada a thank-you note.”

A writer with the Boston Herald agreed: “Not since the glory days of Melrose Place has a soap seemed like such a naughty pleasure.”

Should jPod fans be knocking down the doors of the Harper’s Magazine?

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	MVP, jPod	Posted at 10:18 am (30 Jun 2008)

Fans of Da Vinci’s Inquest rejoice — a made for TV movie based on the series is coming to the CBC on June 14.

The movie “Quality of Life” will bring together series vets Mary Walsh, Hugh Dillon and Nicholas Campbell to solve a murder at a big city mayor’s conference.

Let’s hope that a UFC face-off between Nicholas Campbell and David Caruso is not far off.

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	Da Vinci	Posted at 10:00 am (13 May 2008)

According to this Facebook event, CBC employees responsible for the continuance of Jpod will be getting hundreds of lego figures in the mail.

Timing their campaign to coincide with the LEO awards, these eager Jpod’ers are asking all and sundry to mail CBC staff Lego figures with a short note begging the CBC to not cancel Jpod. Yes, it’s true; the tech-loving fans of the show are actually using snail mail to launch a campaign!

The fans of the show have chosen Lego both as a homage to the cover of the book that the series has been based on, and as a tip of the hat to Douglas Coupland’s apparent love of the Lego.

The date of the guerrilla mail-in has been set for Monday, May 19th. Jpod’ers have been instructed to keep the tone light and keep the figure happy, so get ready to be bombarded with little Lego men and women. Ideas for how to use the Lego figures should be submitted to the Interior Design department no later than Friday May 16th.

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	Shows (Not In Production), jPod	Posted at 12:11 pm (30 Apr 2008)

The Globe and Mail is reporting this morning that MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives will be picked up by an American cable network that specializes in — God help us all — the soap genre.

SOAPnet is owned by Walt Disney Co. and reaches about 41 million homes in the U.S. It will air the first season, beginning in June. The CBC cancelled the prime-time soap opera in its first season three weeks ago

“ABC is taking the cast around to do a number of promotions, as well as the talk-show circuit,” said MVP creator Mary Young Leckie, clearly taking a jab at the CBC, which has been criticized by independent producers for not spending enough money to promote their programs. The CBC says the cancellation was due to less-than-expected ratings, and not an issue of promotion.

But the Globe is quoting an unnamed source “close to CBC” that says the Corporation maintains second-season licensing rights for the show, leading some to speculate at the CBC will watch the U.S. ratings to see if a second season in Canada is viable.

MVP which employed about 175 people in production, administrative, and talent.

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	MVP	Posted at 9:05 am (02 Apr 2008)

The changes to CBC Radio continue. CBC will remove Sound Advice from the schedule and replace it with a second hour of Inside the Music, starting April 5.

As part of that change, Sound Advice host Rick Phillips will be leaving the CBC, after 30 years with us. His last day will be March 29.

Rick Phillips began his career as a freelance music program producer at CBC Montreal in the late 1970s. That first gig led to subsequent assignments in Edmonton, Calgary and finally Toronto with such programs as RSVP, A Little Night Music, Stereo Morning and Arts National. As the area executive producer in Toronto, Phillips was intimately involved in the planning and design of the Canadian Broadcasting Centre, including Glenn Gould Studio. Since 1994, he has been the host and producer of the popular Sound Advice.

Phillips plans to become more involved in teaching, writing, webcasts and hosting tours in the growing field of adult and continuing education.

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	Changes to CBC Radio Two, Personalities, Sound Advice	Posted at 1:02 pm (14 Mar 2008)

CBC Television has cancelled three of its anchor dramas — jPod, Intelligence, and MVP.

In the case of jPod, it debuted on CBC-TV on Tuesday nights but, after disappointing ratings, was moved to Fridays — “traditionally a terrible night to draw an audience,” noted the Vancouver Sun. About 150 jPod cast and crew members are out of a job.

In a similar refrain as the producer of Intelligence, Larry Sugar, executive producer of jPod, said CBC did not adequately promote the show. “No other show was intended to meet the mandate of Canadian broadcasters than a show that was written by one of the great Canadian writers,” said Sugar. “To not fully support it is beyond me.”

It’s such a delicate balance. Do you throw promotional money into shows that are drawing low ratings, in order to try to increase ratings? Or is it the other way around? Where do you stand on the “CBC doesn’t promote its TV shows enough” debate?

(Ratings-wise, CBC Television broke viewership records with its 2007/2008 programming line-up. Our season-to-date prime-time share is 7.9, the highest in six years. In addition, Canadian content on the network increased significantly over the last two years, with drama series increasing 68 per cent on the network and comedy series up 41 per cent.)

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	Intelligence, MVP, jPod	Posted at 2:27 pm (10 Mar 2008)

We’re getting there…

The CBC is succeeding in getting Canadians talking about its new primetime shows, suggests a survey conducted late last month by The Canadian Press and Harris-Decima.

As of Jan. 28th, one in three people polled had heard about four of the CBC’s heavily promoted winter shows: “The Border,” “JPod,” “Sophie” and “MVP.” All of the shows launched in early January.

Now the bad news. That hasn’t yet translated into large numbers of Canadians tuning into the shows, however – only 10 per cent of those polled had actually seen “The Border,” about an elite team of Canadian border-security officers. That’s more viewers than the other shows had managed to attract among those surveyed.

Thirty-three per cent of those surveyed felt that the quality of CBC programming is getting better compared to previous years, compared to 21 per cent who felt it was getting worse. But those who had watched one or more of the new programs (19 per cent of respondents) were five times more likely to say the quality was improving (67 per cent)rather than declining (12 per cent).

More younger people than older people had a better opinion about the quality of CBC programming, the survey also found.

More than 1,000 Canadians were interviewed between Jan. 22 and 28th though Harris-Decima’s national online panel, and the results are considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Canadian Press

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	MVP, Sophie, The Border, jPod	Posted at 10:49 pm (18 Feb 2008)

CBC Television is shuffling two of its new anchor dramas, in an attempt to boost sagging ratings.

Steamy hockey soap-opera MVP will move to Tuesday nights, bumping jPod to Fridays beginning this week.

Media In Canada reports:

Both one-hours struggled to maintain audiences in the key 25-54 demographic. Produced in Vancouver, jPod started off with 293,000 in the Tuesday 9 pm time slot, but by the third week had dropped to 100,000. The story is much the same for MVP, about the office antics of hockey pros and their wives and girlfriends, which garnered 208,000 viewers in the demo with its debut, but was down to 51,000 last week.

Like drama series Intelligence, the shows are garnering positive reviews from critics; the reviews don’t seem to translate into viewers in the numbers CBC had hoped for. (CBC has yet to make a decision on whether it will renew Intelligence for a third season. The show’s producer, Chris Haddock, says CBC is dragging its feet on a decision and failed to promote the previous two seasons to his satisfaction.)

On Tuesday nights, MVP will now compete against ratings powerhouse American Idol on CTV and House on Global (though the latter has been airing re-runs for about two months, owing to the American writers’ strike).

THE GOOD NEWS?

It’s not all bad news at CBC Television. The sitcom Sophie was recently sold to ABC Family, and rumours say The Border will be sold to CBS or ABC soon. Reality series The Week the Women Went earned nearly 900,000 viewers last week.

An a memo to staff this morning titled “Champagne anyone?” CBC’s head of English services Richard Stursberg said CBC Television has “had an excellent season so far, including the highest launch week prime-time share (8.3%) in six years. And our fall regular season prime-time share is 7.6%, a 0.7 percentage point increase over 06/07.”

Our new research, tracking public opinion and perceptions about CBC-TV, suggests we’re making significant gains across the board. We measure people’s attitudes towards us; how people feel about the programs we broadcast. We think it’s important to know not only how many people are watching and what they watch, but how they feel about us. And when it comes to the values we at the CBC really care about, it turns out we leave the competition in the dust. Specifically, CBC continues to lead the other two conventional broadcasters on measures like “Distinctively Canadian” and “High Quality Programming.”

The memo did not mention MVP, jPod, or any information on CBC Radio numbers.

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	CBC Television, MVP, jPod	Posted at 11:56 am (04 Feb 2008)

The CRTC has rebuked CBC Television for airing a racy promo of its upcoming MVP show about the secret lives of hockey wives.

The steamy soap opera debuts Friday.

The CRTC smacked the Corp after a viewer complained that the ad was a little too dirty to air when it did, before 9:00 p.m.

The scene in question is in a locker room and shows a older woman (the team owner) with a guy (recent rookie recruit) in which she says “Let’s see what $5 million buys us.” She rips off the towel and, although the camera never follows where she clearly looks, the player’s bare rear is exposed.

That ad is now off the air (still viewable on YouTube, though) and has been replaced by new ones, including one in which the new player shows off his abs while female p.r. person says “I’m going to position you as the most visible rookie in the league.”

Comments so far on the full-length YouTube version of the trailer include:

WICKED!!! I can’t wait for this show to hit the air!

and

ok so this is obviously a Canadian rip off of Footballers Wives (MVP’s tag line is “The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives”). Honestly it just looks like another Sex and the City to me.

and

Not bad. Try (redacted).com for naughty cam girls!!!!

The original ad is below.

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	MVP, Marketing/Promotion, The CRTC	Posted at 1:17 pm (07 Jan 2008)

There’s “no conspiracy,” says a CBC spokesperson about the negotiations underway with the executive producer of Intelligence.

The show, starring Max Headroom Matt Frewer, has been a critical success, but only reached moderate audience levels (averaging 250,000 viewers weekly). The show’s head, Chris Haddock, complained to the online news site TheTyee.ca that his show wasn’t being promoted well enough by the CBC.

…Haddock suspects that the low numbers are in part a useful problem deliberately created by those who have their own reasons to change how drama is done at the network. “Somewhere in the CBC someone is saying ‘do not promote this show.’”

“The question is why would they be so hostile to the show? I can’t for the life of me put my finger on it because it is broadly appealing and has had such success internationally.”

The CBC shot back, addressing Haddock’s comments, saying there are lots of shows that need promotion and there’s nothing sinister going on with the Intelligence promotion.

We’re disappointed he feels he’s not being adequately promoted (but at same time doubt there’s a producer in the history of show business who thinks their program HAS been adequately promoted). And with all due respect to Chris, his is not the only program in our schedule that requires promotion. I can tell you that the program has received significant promotion in both its first and second seasons. It will continue to do so through its season finale;

What do you think of the promotion of the show? Has it reached you?

P.S. Anonymous CBC management blogger “Ouimet” caught this sticker on the ground on Queen Street West promoting the second season.

Cool sticker.

I wonder if we cleaned up after them?

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	Intelligence	Posted at 6:50 pm (11 Dec 2007)

Another round in the fight over Intelligence: Today, Jeff Keay of CBC Communications sent a rebuttal to producer Chris Haddock’s claims that CBC “wants Intelligence dead”. “We have not yet made a decision as to whether we’ll continue with the show; when we do, Chris will be the first to know,” Keay said in response to what he called Haddock’s “attempts to negotiate through the media his relationship with the CBC.” According to Keay, CBC put significant resources into the show’s first season, and stuck with it despite low ratings.

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	Asides, Intelligence	Posted at 11:02 am (11 Dec 2007)

Interesting piece in yesterday’s Toronto Star about tonight’s season finale of Intelligence, which may or may not be on its last legs with CBC.

Michael Wilson is a former U.S. intelligence operative who is now producing an American spy show (perhaps he’s waiting for his writers to come in from the cold….) Wilson wrote a letter to the Star about how informative and engaging Intelligence is.

The letter is a little odd – part ode to the show, part rant on U.S. political hegemony, and part a plea a for viewers for a fellow producer’s program. Here’s what he has to say about the finale:

You won’t need a spoiler alert for this next bit about Season Two, but Mary is about to be thrust onto the horns of a moral dilemma: do your job as a handler and protector of your country, but deal with the human cost of having that upper hand. If you’ve been following the story, you know our CSIS heroes and anti-heroes are fighting yet another egregious violation of Canadian sovereignty, this time from a CIA front. My advice to Mary echoes advice Haddock clearly channels from the collective spook unconscious: when you’re up against people whose job it is to break the law, previously of just the target country but increasingly the moribund, anachronistic concept of “international law,” your greatest skill may well be to lie like a f—ing rug.

It’s all here in the show: drugs, sex, money, betrayal, moles, smuggling, murder, money laundering, geopolitical stakes. But beyond just words, there’s an opportunity to immerse yourself in the distilled essence of the “Great Game” and decide if you want to play, and if so for which team? Choose, and watch.

The two-hour season finale of Intelligence runs tonight at 8:00 on CBC-TV.

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	Intelligence	Posted at 7:20 pm (10 Dec 2007)

Hockey has its share of violence, but the NHL is OK with CBC adding a little sex and drugs to the mix.

According to a CBCNews.ca Arts story, the NHL wanted a sneak peek of MVP, a sexy prime-time soap about pro hockey players.

As the National Post put it, league execs “just wanted to see what kind of fictional, salacious shenanigans the fictional hockey players get up to in the fictional league”.

The good news is that they do indeed recognize that it’s, you know, not real.

“While it certainly could be interpreted not to cast professional hockey players in the most positive light, I also understand that its fiction,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly wrote in an e-mail to CBC.

“And I have enough faith in the Canadian public to see it as such. The CBC understood why we’d want to see a copy.”

I can see why CBC wants to sex up the game; according to a Toronto Star story, Hockey Night in Canada ratings are slumping due in part to the sucky Maple Leafs. (What? Three wins in a row? That’ll fix the power rankings!)

MVP premieres Jan. 11, 2008.

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	MVP	Posted at 11:22 am (05 Dec 2007)