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)

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)

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)

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)

It should have been no surprise, but the shows I mentioned in yesterday’s item on the 2008 winter preview also have websites - you just haven’t seen them yet. And some of them are rather spiffy!

These sites are not yet promoted on main CBC pages or press releases, and they aren’t listed on the program index. But you can find them through a site search, or by just guessing the URLs - you’ll notice the obvious pattern.

• http://www.cbc.ca/theborder is my immediate favourite, in the dark-n-ominous vein carved out by Intelligence and even the long defunct Spynet. The site includes a nifty game where your first job is to withstand an airport interrogation. Stick with it, because if you can endure that it unlocks other games, with more to follow when the show goes to air. Mercifully, there appear to be no Tasers or cavity searches.
• http://www.cbc.ca/jpod - Weird. But not nearly as weird as the official site for the book, with its skateboarding turtle. Both sites are either very cool, or utterly awful - and I can’t decide which. Can you?
• http://www.cbc.ca/sophie - I think someone figures this site will appeal to women… It even uses the same shade of pink as Slice.ca. Not much information here yet, but I’m pleased to see a social bookmarking widget being built into the new designs.
• http://www.cbc.ca/mvp - Hockey! Babes! Music!… ouch, the music. How long will it take you to find the off button? (Or the swear word?)

Anyhow, give ‘em a click. What do you think?

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	CBC.ca web site, MVP	Posted at 12:20 pm (22 Nov 2007)

In case you missed it, yesterday CBC-TV tried something new, and held its first “winter preview” of upcoming prime-time programs.

Previewed programs include immigration drama The Border, sitcom Sophie, Douglas Coupland’s jPod, lifestyle series The Steven & Chris Show, reality program The Week the Women Went, and the much-anticipated MVP – “a sexy look at a fictional NHL team of hunky players and the women who love them.”

Special programming includes The Englishman’s Boy, Project X, The Confidential Series, plus the returns of H2O, Test the Nation and Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.

(Aside: I kept stumbling upon tidbits about the tapings of these shows back in July, when I last did this blog - including jPod, The Border and The Week the Women Went - so I’m looking forward to seeing them on air.)

Today’s Globe sees the lineup as an effort to attract “a younger, more female audience.” And the media has been quick to draw a correlation between CBC’s push and the ongoing American screenwriters strike. CBC executives admit there’s certainly an opening.

“All I see is opportunity - we have a shot,” head of network programming Kirstine Layfield told the Canadian Press. “People are going to be looking for something to watch, and I always find when people watch Canadian television, they are pleasantly surprised. It’s hard, it’s really hard, to make a mark and this is really going to help us.”

A day earlier, Layfield reported interest from U.S. networks in CBC programs . She confirmed that The Border was one of them. Westwind Production’s Mary Darling says Little Mosque on the Prairie is another.

But Writers Guild of Canada president Rebecca Schechter, who also had a hand in Little Mosque, said optimists like Darling are “dreaming in Technicolor.”

“It’s a weird pipe dream,” she said. “American giant conglomerates, they’ve not come across the border to Canada. They have consistently showed no interest in putting Canadian programming on American network television.”

The WGC plans to participate in an international display of solidarity on Nov. 28.

If you are really pining for American content, you’ll be able to get that on CBC too. According to CP, “CBC also said Tuesday it has acquired the rights to Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune from CBS Paramount International. Both shows will begin airing in September 2008.”

As for the Canadian stuff – well, the launch, and its fortuitous timing, managed to create a certain level of optimism. Prolific television blogger Denis McGrath, also a writer on The Border, had this to say of the event:

The impression I walked away with? When Layfield and the new regime started at CBC they took a lot of heat for saying they wanted to redefine and remake what the broadcaster was, and the kind of programming it did. This looks like a pretty vibrant schedule — it definitely has energy and a potential for big pop. I hope the stuff all works. It would be nice for CBC to get a win.

And if the WGA strike is still on, Canadians might actually get a chance to fairly sample their homegrown wares. It’s the best slate I’ve seen from CBC in a while.

What do you think of the winter lineup? Does the U.S. strike present an opportunity for CBC?

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	CBC Television, Little Mosque on the Prairie, MVP, Marketing/Promotion, The Media Landscape	Posted at 4:36 pm (21 Nov 2007)