| What an odd television industry we have in this country. Proof comes from the recently ended CBC lockout of members of the Canadian Media Guild. The resolution of the dispute proves decisively that Don Cherry is the most important broadcast figure in this country. CBC management has correctly determined that the handful of minutes that make up Cherry’s "Coach’s Corner" segment on Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts is the only chunk of Canadian television many viewers give a damn about.
For nearly two months, many of the recognizable faces of CBC TV were absent from our homes. During the lockout the CBC ran a lot of documentaries on Newsworld, and doubled up on episodes of hugely popular British soap Coronation Street on the main network. Some viewers complained about the alternative schedule, which also featured the nightly news coming from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and CFL football games broadcast without announcers, but there was far from a huge public outcry.
That would have all changed if the CBC hadn’t reached a deal with the guild only five days before Hockey Night in Canada was scheduled to return to the airwaves. The network was able to swing a special provision that allowed the program’s broadcast crew to return to work before the deal was officially ratified by union membership. If a deal hadn’t been reached, the CBC could have done with hockey what they did with football and broadcast games without announcers. But that would have meant no Don Cherry!
That would mean no rants after the first period directed at Quebec separatists and wimpy European players who’d rather wear a plastic visor on their helmet than take a puck to the eye. The NHL lockout last hockey season already deprived Canadians of Cherry’s right-wing crankiness, often bordering on lunacy, for more than a year. Any further absence of the hockey analyst-turned-Canadian icon would have been unforgivable in the eyes of his many disciples.
The reality of television in this nation is that you can deny viewers new episodes of a valuable program like Dr. David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things without incident, but if you wilfully deprive them of the nonsensical bombast of "Coach’s Corner," you could have blood in the streets.
Somehow this conclusion did not make its way into the pages of Serra Tinic’s otherwise astute On Location: Canada’s Television Industry in a Global Market, a new book focusing on the challenges and follies of Canadian TV. Written by an assistant sociology professor at the University of Alberta, On Location examines the currently thriving TV production industry in Vancouver and applies what is being learned there to national broadcasting issues. The book tries to answer such complex questions as whether or not it’s possible to consistently produce programs that are profitable and marketable internationally that still have a recognizable Canadian identity.
Tinic also criticizes the CBC for failing to follow up on the lessons learned from its past successes. Even though The Beachcombers, set in small-town British Columbia, ran for decades, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which offers national satire from a Maritimes perspective, has always had solid ratings, Tinic argues that the CBC still doesn’t realize shows with a distinctive regional voice can lead to vast national audiences.
On Location delivers some genuine insight into the current TV production situation in this country, but it’s an often dry and repetitive read. Ironically, it could use some of the fire and volatility of a Don Cherry "Coach’s Corner" tirade – then Tinic might get Canadians to care about the future of their television industry the way Cherry makes them care about hockey. |
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