The first episode of the new CBC drama Republic of Doyle airs tonight. A bunch of TV critics weighed in today with their reviews, and overall they sound pretty positive.

The Toronto Star said “Doyle rules!” The article says the show has “tons of potential” and “is cause for some genuine excitement on the Canadian TV front.”

Over at the Canadian Press Bill Brioux wrote that the show is “throwback to the good old gun-and-car capers” like Magnum PI and Rockford Files. On his blog Brioux added “It is a guy’s show, a welcome shot of testosterone on a CBC schedule that was too girly after a string of Sophies, Wild Roses and Ericas.”

Even John Doyle from the Globe, who rarely has anything positive to say about the CBC said it was “deliriously foolish, empty-headed, old-fashioned TV”.

Expectations for the show will be high. It follows Dragons’ Den, one of the strongest lead-ins on the schedule, and throws to The National. The show is also the only new CBC drama premiering in the winter schedule, so it will get some undivided promotional attention from the communications department.

If you watch the show tonight, leave a comment below with your thoughts on the first episode.

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	Republic of Doyle	Posted at 6:20 pm (06 Jan 2010)

Television is the most interesting hobby I’ve ever had. I love the chaos of TV, I love the discipline of investing. My real job is chairman of O’Leary Funds, but I look at it this way: O’Leary Funds is science, television is art. There’s room for both in a person’s life.

Kevin O’Leary explaining to the Globe and Mail the difference between his television profile and his job. He also talks about the success of Dragons’ Den, and why he’s on Twitter but not Facebook. The whole interview is available here.

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	Dragons' Den	Posted at 2:04 pm (06 Jan 2010)

^{Kary Osmond, a chef who worked a Toronto restaurant after finishing chef school at George Brown College, is the host of Best Recipes Ever.}

The first episode of the new CBC show “Best Recipes Ever” launches today at 3 p.m. Eastern. The show is a collaboration between Canadian Living and the CBC. The format will see recipes from the Canadian Living archives brought to life on television. The show will have three touch points for viewers, on television, in the Canadian Living magazine and online. Both the CBC and Canadian Living have their own show sites.

The CBC is expecting an audience of about 75,000 to watch the show. In order to meet that target, Kary Osmond, a Toronto chef with no broadcast experience, will have to sustain the energy. Judging by the trailer, she may have the verve to pull it off.

What are your thoughts on the new show?

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	Best Recipes Ever	Posted at 4:09 pm (04 Jan 2010)

After a break of nearly nine months, Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman are back on the dial at 2 p.m. today with new shows.

The show had been on hiatus since March of last year, one of many victims of a multi-million dollar revenue shortfall from a sharp drop in advertising last spring.

During the hiatus, the show’s blog says “Steven and Chris traveled across the country and abroad, researching the latest trends in lifestyle, decor, food, fashion and more.”

Although the show didn’t have a huge audience, Hyndman said since the show went on hiatus a core group of loyal viewers had been asking for its return. During the hiatus the CBC marketing department secured enough advertising to offset the production allowing the show to return to air. The show is produced in-house at the CBC broadcast center in Toronto.

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	Steven and Chris	Posted at 2:36 pm (04 Jan 2010)

According to people involved in the production, the CBC Calgary-based drama, Heartland, has been renewed for a fourth season. The web site Kelowna.com posted a story a few hours ago saying the show had been renewed. They didn’t provide any sources.

The show has had strong ratings this season, frequently toping a million viewers, which it rarely did in it’s first couple seasons.

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	Heartland	Posted at 10:31 pm (22 Dec 2009)

The set was hot and hectic, with the smell of horse definitely in the air, but no one seemed to mind as the cameras rolled capturing the images for what will be Heartland’s last episode of its third season.

The Cochrane Eagle on the a five-day shoot of Heartland at a riding arena in Cochrane, Alberta. Pictured on the left is the director, Steve DiMarco, the star of the show, actress Amber Marshall is on the right. The episodes will air in March.

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	Heartland	Posted at 4:08 pm (16 Dec 2009)

“We’re expanding the notion of what politics means to people. We won’t just cover the Hill but also how we interact with the rest of world, with businesses, with NGOs. Let’s be honest, buying a cup of organic coffee is a political statement, since that kind of act touches so many lives.”

Evan Solomon explains what viewers can expect from his new show, which launches today on CBC News Network (aka Newsworld) at 5 pm Eastern.

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	Power & Politics	Posted at 9:27 am (26 Oct 2009)

“I attempted to purchase tickets for the November 1st show. I went online and phoned the Ticketmaster number simultaneously at noon on Monday, October 19th. How the tickets could all be sold out at 12:01 is mystifying to me.”

Sharlene Kopec wonders how tickets to the live tapings of Battle of Blades could be sold so quickly, yet ended on online ticket sites the same day for almost 20 times the original price. She made the comments on the show’s Facebook page.

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	Battle of the Blades	Posted at 3:00 am (24 Oct 2009)

“We may start to play with how much of the country sees the Leafs or the Sens or the Habs based on team performance and matchup.”

Scott Moore, the executive director of CBC Sports said that Hockey Night in Canada is considering limiting coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs if the NHL team’s early season slide continues. He made the comments in an email to Sun Media this week.

“We are ready to make changes whenever we have to,” the show’s executive producer, Sherali Najak told the Sun. “We’ll watch every week and rely on the numbers, but what we’ve learned is that fans want to see some variety.”

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	Hockey Night in Canada, Sports	Posted at 8:07 am (23 Oct 2009)

A new system that measures what people watch on TV is shaking up the industry, causing some major concerns at some shows and channels, while boosting the fate of others.

Previously television and radio ratings were based on what a representative pool of people said they’d watched or listened to. It was a trust system. No longer. Now the ratings are collected via small pager-like device that detects what is what is on by listening for an inaudible signal embedded in the broadcast. And this new system is causing some pretty dramatic swings in the ratings.

Some shows, like sports, children’s and some prime-time programming have benefited handily. The Globe reported yesterday that the prime time numbers for both CTV and Global are way up for many top shows, House and Grey’s Anatomy up both up by more than 20 per cent. The season premiere of House drew 4.4 million viewers “audience numbers of that size have not been seen in years,” Grant Robertson wrote in Globe.

The system is also creating some losers though. The Weather Network has seen its ratings shrink by 10 per cent, and there’s some obvious concern at the CBC, where audience numbers for The National are down.

Today the some senior managers at the corporation sent out a note to staff in an effort to debunk some of the rumours that have been circulating about the new ratings system. Their “Myth #1″ was that The National “The National has taken a big hit under [the new system].”

There’s obviously some concern. The ratings for The National have dropped by more than 10 per cent. The average for September 2009 was 532,000 viewers. That’s well under last year’s average of 671,000 when Parliament was prorogued and Obama was elected. More worrisome though, is that the ratings have slipped since the summer, which is usually the low point of a ratings year.

“As we’ve been saying from the outset, we’re going to take some time before we draw any firm conclusions about what the numbers are telling us,” the letters says, “although we recognize the unease any downward movement can create.”

The managers said they’re hoping to see the ratings recover in the next few weeks, “As we said, we’re keeping a close eye on the numbers, but it’s still too soon to draw any conclusions.”

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	Behind the Scenes, The National	Posted at 6:48 pm (22 Oct 2009)

The Tudors, the Fifth Estate, and CBC’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics picked up a bunch of hardware at the Gemini industry galas on Monday and Tuesday nights.

The CBC’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics lead the way with five awards, including best live sporting event, best analysis, best feature, best play-by-play and best reporting.

The Fifth Estate also won four awards for best writing, best direction, best host and best news information series in an information program.

The Tudors won four Gemini awards. The historical drama about the life and times of Henry the VIII won for best photography, best editing, best production design and best sound in a dramatic series.

The Tudors is a CBC co-production between Peace Arch Entertainment, Reveille Eire in Ireland, Working Title Films in the United Kingdom and the CBC. The show is shot in Ireland, with most of the post-production work done in Canada.

The industry event, held over two nights in Toronto, celebrated the best Canadian youth, comedy, drama, variety, news, sports, documentary and lifestyle television. The rest of the awards will be presented on November 14th in Calgary.

The full list of awards associated with the CBC is after the jump. Let me know if I’ve missed any.

[Read more →]

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	Olympic Games, The Fifth Estate, The Tudors	Posted at 11:59 am (21 Oct 2009)

I’m doing a quick interview with Erin Karpluk, the star of ‘Being Erica’, at the CBC’s fall launch event this afternoon in the next few days. If you have a question you’d like to ask, leave a comment below.

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	Being Erica	Posted at 10:28 am (16 Sep 2009)

Despite multiple denials from the CBC, the lobby organization Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is insisting the CBC has a secret plan to move The National from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. weeknights.

In a press release issued this morning the organization described a “closely guarded secret plan,” to move the show an hour later.

The CBC flatly denies there is any such plan. “The rumours are not true, Mr. Morrison has it completely wrong,” Chris Ball a spokesperson for the CBC said today. “The National will remain at its current timeslot.” He said the CBC has requested that the press release be retracted.

Ian Morrison, spokesperson for ‘Friends’ said the plan to move The National is being discussed at high levels within the corporation by “a very limited number of people around [Richard] Stursberg’s office,” he said.

But one of the people that would presumably be involved in those discussions denied that they ever happened. “There has never even been any discussion of moving The National,” Kirstine Layfield, General Manager of CBC English Television said in a letter she sent to Morrison this morning.  She said the rumours were “unfounded” and “strange.”

“Let me be clear, this is the furthest from our plans and strategy as one can possibly conjure,” Layfield wrote. She added that the idea of filling the time slot with imported entertainment programming is “ludicrous.”

Morrison said he heard about the plan from two anonymous sources, which he said were reliable, “We don’t fly off the handle on rumours, we’ve checked it out,” he said. Nevertheless Morrison conceded that the plan may not happen, “it’s a discussion and a plan,” he said “they want it to happen.”

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	The National	Posted at 2:58 pm (04 Aug 2009)

Jian Ghomeshi spoke about the situation in Iran recently with the web site rabble.ca. In the interview Ghomeshi said the Iranian people are “inspiring the world right now.”

Ghomeshi said the a lot of people are suprised at how connected the Iranians are, “they’re tapped in… I’ve been on the internet with my cousins in Iran in recent years, we’re talking about Radiohead. They know what’s going on in the world.”

“They also know they can’t express some of what they believe or how they want to express themselves in the streets of Iran,” the host of Q said.

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	Q	Posted at 10:30 pm (06 Jul 2009)

It’s generally assumed that a viral video is a momentary diversion. It’s something that pops up out of the blue, entertains you for a few minutes and then disappears as quickly as it arrived. But what if you or your show is the source of that video? Can a video gone viral have a lasting impact? Well over at Q the answer to that question is yes.

It’s been over two months since Oscar winning actor and musician Billy Bob Thornton’s disastrous interview with Jian Ghomeshi. That’s two months for the senior team at Q to assess the impact the video has had on their online properties.

“In the first 24 hours our (YouTube) channel had over one-million views. It was the number one video in all of Canada and I saw it hit number three in all of YouTube, although it may have gone higher. In that first day we also had over 1,200 people subscribe to our channel going from 2204 to 3409. The numbers continued to be astronomical for four days until they dropped below 250,000 views a day,” wrote Ben Aylsworth, senior producer of Q on Bold TV in an email.

Arif Noorani, Q’s executive producer said that their website went from an average of 20,000 page views a week which is high for radio programs to 300,000 during the initial week. The Q audio podcast on iTunes we went from being ranked anywhere from 20th to 50th, to being in the top five of all podcasts for that week. The video podcast made it into the top ten.

But here’s the interesting part. While the numbers have dropped down since their initial spike. They have stayed higher than they were before the video went viral.

“All our numbers are higher than they were before the video and this is two months later. We have definitely expanded our core audience and broadened the number of loyal viewers/listeners…(our website) regularly ranks in the mid-30,000s. Q is often the top-ranked or second-ranked program site in radio,” wrote Noorani.

Aylsworth said that Q’s YouTube views are on average 50-75% higher than they were before the video.

So what steps did they take to capitalize on the video as it spread?

“We made sure that the video of the interview was up as soon as the show was over both on the CBC site as well as Q’s YouTube site. Q’s goal is to be cross platform and provide our content in as many places as possible. We also Twittered the link. We didn’t editorialize around the interview, just pointed people to it and let them judge for themselves,” wrote Noorani.

“I would also add here, immediately after the interview we discussed strategy for getting this material out there. We decided to contact all of the major global media outlets, including CBC, to see if they were interested in footage, embedding, linking, etc…,” wrote Aylsworth.

Jian also did interviews with other media outlets about the Billy Bob meltdown.

So the lesson here is that it’s not enough just to hope a viral video will work magic for your show’s numbers. Q was proactive. They encouraged the video to spread by featuring it prominently on their sites and they pushed out outward by making clips available to whoever wanted them.

If only every bad interview had such good consequences.

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	Q	Posted at 5:00 am (12 Jun 2009)