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)

jPod, the quirky series based on Douglas Coupland’s novel of the same name, will not be returning to CBC, despite an extensive Internet campaign by a few of the show’s devoted fans.

So says CBC Television’s head of network programming, Kristine Layfield, in a wide-ranging interview with TV critic Alex Strachan:

“It’s a very loyal group,” Layfield acknowledged. “Absolutely people are passionate about certain shows. They feel strongly about them. And just because that show isn’t widely watched isn’t a factor with them. From my point of view, though, it’s just not conceivable for me to spend taxpayers’ dollars on things that only a small group of people want to see. [jPod] was an experiment. It was a great show. It had flashes of brilliance. Obviously, we believed it would be a mainstream success, or we wouldn’t have chosen to do it in the first place. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you hope, though.Television is not a formula. No one can say why one thing works and another doesn’t. These decisions are tough, but unfortunately they have to be made.That’s the nature of the business.”

Layfield noted that she cancelled Rumours last year, to catcalls of protest from that show’s small but loyal cadre of viewers. Rumours’ producer went on to help create Sophie. Had Layfield not done away with Rumours, she reasons, Sophie would never have happened, and CBC would still be showing a boutique comedy for a niche audience, instead of the mainstream hit Sophie has become.

In an opinion piece quite critical of the CBC’s new Fall schedule, Strachan says if he had Layfield’s job, he probably would not have cancelled the show.

Sure, the ratings were not what they could have been, but it was bounced around the schedule and was never really given a chance to reboot on its new day and time period. jPod was an audacious experiment, and like many audacious TV experiments, it faced a steep learning curve. It was unlike anything else on TV. And with a little patience and nurturing — the kind of patience and nurturing that kept Mad About You alive, and enabled Seinfeld to become a cultural sensation — it’s not hard to imagine that jPod could have become something unique and special, a show all Canadians could have been proud of.

Organizers of a campaign to bring jPod back acknowledge their campaign did not get the foothold they were hoping for. A recent “love-in” held in Vancouver was disappointing, organizer Miranda Mallison told InsideTheCBC.com. “The “Love-in” was a really sad showing.”

“Only four people besides myself came. I guess that’s the Facebook reality — or perhaps reality in general. If people aren’t committed in some concrete way, they assume it really doesn’t matter at all. Especially if they figure 100 other people will be there.”

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	jPod	Posted at 12:15 pm (02 Jun 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)

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)