New sites for new shows
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 |
Someone screwed up on the character encoding for the Sophie site. The web page says ISO-8859-1, but the accents are UTF-8 and the apostrophes are something else.
All done by the same talented group of geeks, too right? Get the to design news.
Actually, from multiple different geek groups.
Here are my first impressions.
The Border – There doesn’t look to be anything new or interesting here. It looks like just a rehashing of old ideas that have already been done to death, without even any culturally interesting aspects to the show. I have very low expectations for this show.
jPod – This certainly looks fresh and interesting. The CBC has very little programming that truly reflects and addresses younger Canadian audiences, (middle aged Queen Street West hillbillies like Jian and George don’t fill the bill), so this looks like it could fill a big need too. Whether or not it turns out to be a quality show remains to be seen, but it’s certainly got my interest and I’ll be checking it out.
Sophie – This could be interesting. The fact that it’s produced in Montreal is a big part of its appeal. It could have a fresh and interesting feel to it. Corner Gas and last year’s LMOTP showed that, when produced outside of Toronto, which has become basically a schlock factory for such shows, Canadian comedies can be fresh and interesting and very culturally relevant, so I’ll hoping that this show will carry on that tradition.
MVP – The site was playing a great Sloan song when I viewed it, but besides the music this show looks bad. I would say that it looks cheesy, stale, and empty.
These are just my first impressions, of course.
Great website for The Border! I look forward to seeing the show.
Fans of 24 would likely want to watch The Border. However, scheduling it on the same night and the same time as 24 may lose some viewers.
I see I’m not the only one who guesses my way to finding new CBC show sites.
I love the music on the MVP site. I was singing the song in my head for three days. I can’t wait for that show to start. The trailers look fantastic.
The Jpod site sucks. I was there for about four minutes before it annoyed me too much so I exited out of it.
The Border site is good. I played all the available games. It’s probably the best website for a Canuck show that I’ve ever seen. I’m looking forward to seeing the show.
The Sophie site is rather boring. I’m not sure if I’ll bother checking out the show.
Don’t make me check these for Web standards and accessibility.
I actually wish you would.
One of the actors on “Sophie” is allegedly named “Catherine Bérubé”.
Well done.