Poor, poor English CBC television. Degrassi, the Olympics, the Junos, the Grey Cup, and now the coup de grace.
What's next: Beachcombers TNG on CTV? HGTV buying the I.P. rights to Rusty and Jerome? Global buying the perpetual exclusive rights to boring documentaries on the Royal Family?
When I was very young, I watched altogether too much CBC. Sometimes, I would get up really early to watch it sign on (!) It would begin with this awesomely hokey montage anthem (although I only really remember the last 15 seconds, where the kids cheer the highjumper): http://youtube.com/watch?v=U_vloXL52DI
At about 7AM, there was a 10-minute show called "Parlez-moi", which tried to teach French to kids. But they spoke so fast and introduced so many words at once that I watched hundreds of episodes without learning a word: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vilHNrxUdgs
Richard Stursberg (on financing Canadian shows vs. American simulcasts):
The CBC, as Bob pointed out, is the only broadcaster where deep prime time is actually available for Canadian shows. Having said that, the economics of this is brutal. To give you a very straight-up example, if I want to buy an hour of high-end dramatic programming right now, I can buy an American program that would cost $3 million to $4 million an hour to make, for $200,000. At $200,000, I can put it on TV and make $425,000 in revenue. A parallel Canadian program, even if I’m not even in the same ballpark–despite the fact that whether we like it or not, we will be judged by the same production standards as American programming–is going to cost me, say, $1 million to $1.5 million to $2 million an hour. What can I recover by way of revenue? Maybe $120,000 to $150,000, because of the relative performance of the programs. Big problem.
