Letterman/McCartney: Back in the USA

If you missed last night's historic Paul McCartney/David Letterman summit, here are a few clips. It is cool to see Letterman behave like a fan. He got in his share of dumb guy questions, such as, "Were you guys nice to Ringo?" But he did managed to get McCartney to share a few less-traveled stories. We learn, for one thing, why Ringo had a "rather high bathing costume" on that trip to Miami beach way back in February of 1964.
McCartney and his excellent band later rocked out way up on the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater--the same place they made history back in 1964. Ever play a marquee before? Letterman asked. "I've played a roof," quipped Sir Paul.
The TV audience got to hear "Get Back" and a song from McCartney's recent "Fireman" album. But, off camera, he also treated New Yorkers who packed Broadway to a couple of other songs, including "Back in the U.S.S.R." and "Helter Skelter." Wish the dude with the camcorder had zoomed in, but the clip below gives you a taste of the New York treat:

Box Score Reviews Debut on Toronto News 24

Why read reviews of TV shows when you can watch them--along with video clips of the show being reviewed? That's the idea behind Box Score, my brand spankin' new video feature. The first review, a look at the return of Hell's Kitchen (Tues., July 21 at 8/7c on Fox and Citytv) is up right now at TorontoNews24. Jump to it here.
The one-minute segment was shot and produced by my pal Juan Fanzio, a former Toronto Sun shooter and Sun TV videographer and now full time entrepreneur who has a cool little studio down in Toronto's Beaches district. Fanzio used to follow me with a camera and shoot the "104 Steps with Bill Brioux" review segments we used to do for Sun TV. For this down and dirty Hell's Kitchen segment, he's caught me walking along Queen, swearing at restaurant customers just like cranky Hell's Kitchen chef Gordon Ramsay likes to do on his show.
That's another buddy, Tim McConvey, in the Box Score video behind the counter of his spiffy new Pie Shack at 2305 Queen St. East. Tim's another guy living his mid-life makeover dream. The amiable dude with the friendly mutt (his "dog shack" is right out front of the Pie Shack) used to work marketing magic for the Globe and Mail. When that gig went "poof!", he launched a second career as a pie man. So far, the tasty concoctions are flying out of the shop.
Through another one of his ventures, BizClipz.com, Fanzio is helping businessmen like McConvey throughout Toronto and beyond post professionally shot, minute-long commercials on their web sites and in their places of business.
Fanzio's latest baby is TorontoNews24, a 24-hour headline news service with postings from some of the cities most-seasoned writers and voices. Look for this sucker to take off in the coming weeks as more and more name journalists jump aboard. Sign up now for free membership and stay in the news loop. Get into the mix through the forums and other feedback links.
TorontoNews24 is Fanzio's passion and the dude has the drive and ideas to take this thing into Huffington Post territory and beyond. Box Score is a modest little feature getting some action there today. Check it out there right now and look for it here at TVFMF starting next week.

My Pal Slawko Backs My Pal Satan

An extra day spent bringing the cottage into the 21st century (Light switches! Breaker panel!) has me behind in TVFMF postings. But if you find yourself streaming more and more video off the web, and searching for original content, here's a link to a piece I wrote for the Toronto Star (it ran in Sunday's paper).
It's all about original web content, with My Pal Satan--a crazy little series from Dennis Heaton and the Canadian Film Centre--as the jumping off point. Jump to the Satan site here and check it out.
Heaton, a Vancouver-based TV writer with credits on The Listener, Show Me Yours and others, jumped on the CFC's Pilot Program initiative to pull this six-episode treat together. The concept is simple--what if Satan was your roommate. Heaton says anybody who ever shared an apartment with him over the years would have no problem identifying the inspiration!
Heaton shared some of his favourite web TV sites, singling out funny stuff like Yacht Rock, a funny, low-tech look at what might have been the deal with lame-O '70s "yacht rockers" like Hall & Oates and Loggins & Messina. Go here and laff.
Heaton mentioned another, completely politically incorrect fave. It makes me laugh, too, but it will offend some so go here if you laff at some of the really wrong moments on South Park.
My Pal Satan is backed by My Pal Slawko Klymkiw, the former CBC programming boss who now runs the CFC. He's all over this web stuff, seeing it as an opportunity for future TV producers to jump-start the pilot process--always a rocky road in Canada.
Another good guy is in on this action--Chris Szarka, exec producer of Rent-a-Goalie. I survived a road trip with the hard-partying RAG gang last year (an amazing charity event in Newfoundland--jump to a link about that here) and anything these cats do deserves a look. Their web venture, Skittlebrau--about a fledgling hip hop band from Burlington, Ont. (seen above)--is due in September but you can check out a trailer for the series right now here.

Degrassi Set Visit Wins Over Crusty Critic

As anyone who reads this blog or read me at The Toronto Sun knows, I’ve never been a fan of Degrassi: The Next Generation. I was too old for the first series, which always looked fairly slapped together to me, like it was shot through a silk stalking with a leg still in it. The new shows all seem so overheated, with teen pregnancy and drug overdose storylines piled on top of cutting and teen suicide scenarios. Aren’t there any kids left who just get pimples or periods?
Clearly, the show was never aimed at me. Others who grew up with Snake or Wheels or Spike love these characters like they were school mates. And while the new show stumbled badly in the Canadian ratings last season, it remains a worldwide hit, airing in over 150 countries.
That it remains popular in the United States was brought home to me Thursday on a visit to the set. Publicist extraordinaire Iain Christiansen arranged to escort my WIMA Talk Radio morning man buddy Mike Miller, who was up visiting from Ohio, his 14-year-old daughter Meredith and her school chum Amity on a complete tour of the Degrassi operation, which is neatly hidden in an industrial corner of Toronto.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cast, crew and especially production executives make young guests feel so welcome. These two wide-eyed kids got to have lunch with the stars, chat with creator and executive producer Linda Schuyler and even put on head sets and help direct an actual scene, yelling “action!” and “cut” like the pros.
The tour of the set was an eye opener even for a seasoned TV scribe who’s been up and down such Hollywood sets as Universal’s Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives.
The Degrassi exteriors include a full, brick, high school, which houses the gym, several classrooms (including real ones where some of the cast members have to do their learnin’ ‘n stuff), the pool hall interior and other sets. Dressing rooms, hair and makeup and costumes are also housed here; there’s even a working washer and dryer.
Outside near the school exterior is a street set up which includes several houses and store fronts, including the Degrassi version of the 90210 Peach Pit, the Dot Com Café. There is a whole new, two-story street storefront being built at the end of the roadway so the cameras can catch cars turning corners and stuff. It is one of the more elaborate back lots in all of Canada, comparable to the kinds of major studio back lot exteriors that are all but paved over in Burbank and Hollywood.
There are a couple of cats who have the run of the Epitome Pictures compound. One of them is named Noggin, after the US cable channel that airs Degrassi, although it is being re-branded Teen Nick (the channel, not the cat).
Christiansen allowed the girls to have a sneak peak at the upcoming TV-movie Paradise City: Degrassi Goes Hollywood, which airs Aug. 14 on Noggin or N or whatever and Aug. 30 on CTV. Degrassi super fans Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes are featured prominently in this deal. The girls had already streamed the trailer back home on their laptops and knew the music being used in some scenes. They generally knew more about the series than the people there who were running the show.
A hallway encounter with Stefan Brogren, the former Snake who remains with the series (and directed the TV-movie), drew gasps from the teen twosome. He could not have been nicer, as was exec prod. Stephen Stohn, who shared many stories and quizzed the kids on their career plans. TVFMF favourite Melissa DiMarco—who plays principal Hatzilakos and whose own celeb reality show just got a 23 episode pick up on Citytv--was equally gracious (and maybe enough on her own to actually tempt me to watch an episode of this damn show).
So no more goofing on Degrassi from me. These are warm, classy people who have--off and on--found a way to keep their franchise factory humming for nearly 30 years in Canadian television. Pretty damn impressive.

Hamilton Won, Channel Zero

How much did Channel Zero pay for the acquisition of Canwest's Hamilton E! station, CHCH? Well, with other stations in Canada being shopped around for a dollar these days, the guess is that Channel Zero got a bargain that pretty much lived up to their name.
The purchase still needs to be approved by the CRTC and union concessions for the 100-plus employees are being sought. But the new guys have a plan and the plan is to go local and go home.
Will that work and perhaps even provide a blueprint for other broadcasters to fix their broken business model? Focusing on local news would seem to make CHCH eligible to dip into that $100 million-plus CRTC Local Programming Initiative fund. Branding it as an all-news station also plays to the station's ratings strength. News numbers were up spring to spring says news director Mike Katrycz, with the supper hour newscast up 30%. The Morning Show is the second most popular morning broadcast in the GTA (behind only Citytv's long time front-runner Breakfast Television). Katrycz says the station is averaging 1.5 million viewers for its local programming, up from last year and way up over all the E! crap it paid too much to export from L.A. Seems CHCH viewers would rather tune in to a show about Kitchener than Kimora.
Read more about it here in the story I filed today for The Canadian Press.

More MJ Chatter on This Week's Podcast

You couldn't avoid that Michael Jackson memorial yesterday even if you were hiding out in front of your laptop. According to Neilsen Media Research, an overnight estimated 31 million Americans watched yesterday afternoon's memorial service. It was broadcast live over 19 networks, including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC as well as CNN, Fox News and Telemundo. The event also dominated social networking sites yesterday, according to this Mediaweek report.
In Canada, CTV drew 401,000 Tuesday at 1 for their "Remember The Times" MJ coverage. All three Canadian national newscasts were at fairly nomal levels yesterday: Global at 6 p.m. (737,000), CBC at 10 (810,000) and CTV at 11 (931,000). The supperhour entertainment shows got a bigger boost, with Global pulling 726,000 for Entertainment Tonight and CTV 621,000 for Access Hollywood. The Can mags flipped leads, with eTalk (559,000) besting Global's ET Canada nationally (467,000). CTV's local Evening News beat them all with 1,,212,000 viewers.
The pervasiveness of the whole Jackson deal is just one of the topics on today's radio chat with CHML's Scott Thompson. You can listen in here.
It is staggering how Michael Jackson seems to be worth so much more dead than alive. As Scott points out, Elvis Presley made $4 million the last year of his life and made $52 million last year. Jackson's death has brought his recording career to life; sales of his solo albums have jumped 90% to over 800,000 units sold according to this report today from Reuters. You know that in coming months there will be new CDs of lost or unreleased music, DVDs of yesterday's memorial, and endless other authorized and unauthorized MJ extensions; let's hope some of it gets into the hands of his three kids.

Trust Deggans' Take on the Jackson Wake

Colleague Eric Deggans told me several years ago he knew how to save Michael Jackson's recording career. Deggans, the TV/media critic for the St. Petersburg Times of Florida, isn't just a TV scribe, he's a former music columnist, so when he talks music, I listen.
When Jackson's 2001 album Invincible came out, it did not have much impact, but Deggans felt the album had its moments and that all Jackson had to do was to take his voice down an octave or two to prolong and revive his stalled singing career. I remember the comment because Deggans was still thinking about Jackson's music instead of the whole other crazy stuff, which not too many other people were bothering to do in 2001.
So if you want to get an informed opinion on the Top-11 moments from today's Michael Jackson memorial, including daughter Paris' sweet, teary shout out to her departed dad, get it from Deggans. His blog is The Feed and you'll find his Jackson memorial list here.