Heritage committee grills CBC bosses on reality TV, hockey
CBC management was on the hot seat in Ottawa Wednesday, as the committee on Canadian Heritage questioned senior managers about programming decisions and rumours the network could lose hockey.
CBC president Robert Rabinovitch, English television executive vice president Richard Stursberg, English radio vice president Jane Chalmers and Sylvain Lafrance, executive vice president of French services, appeared before the all-party standing committee Wednesday afternoon.
Two high profile CBC-TV projects that made national headlines this year were discussed: the decision to simulcast U.S. reality singing contest The One, and the furor over inaccuracies in the miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story.
NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus had been a vocal opponent of the reality show simulcast, which bumped flagship evening newscast The National out of its slot. The One was ultimately cancelled by U.S. broadcaster ABC.
On Wednesday, Angus reminded Rabinovitch that just a year ago, he had told the committee that CBC would not do reality television.
"Did something change dramatically in the six or seven months between deciding on that show and when you told us you wouldn't have reality TV?" Angus demanded.
Reality, but no bug-eating: CBC president
Rabinovitch said that he had been ambiguous last year and stressed that the network would not do "shows that stress plastic surgery, sex and humiliation [and the] eating of insects."
The committee also grilled the managers about Prairie Giant. A re-broadcast of the two-part miniseries was pulled and DVD sales stopped after the family of Jimmy Gardiner bristled at the artistic license taken in depicting the former Saskatchewan premier and Douglas rival.
Aside from the Gardiner family's outrage, the move drew ire from the miniseries creators and several production unions.
Concern about local news, hockey
However, the CBC management team focused on outlining its current and future challenges.
Rabinovitch said English television's local supper-hour newscast pilot project had proved disappointing and is going back to the drawing board for re-evaluation.
"The numbers, quite frankly, are unacceptable. They're too low by a long-shot," he said. "We have to ask ourselves some very fundamental questions about what it is we want to do."
The senior managers also were frank about reports that core CBC show Hockey Night in Canada — which the network has broadcast for more than 70 years on radio and then television — is at risk. Rumours have arisen that CBC could lose its broadcasting deal with the National Hockey League to private sector competitors CTV and TSN.
Hockey loss would mean complete TV re-evaluation
Rabinovitch said it was "distinctly possible" that the NHL could go to CTV and if it were to happen, "we will have to seriously re-evaluate almost everything about English television."
An absence of the hockey broadcasts would create several enormous challenges: the need to fill a 400-hour programming hole on Saturday nights from October through April and a significant loss of revenue.
According to Stursberg, professional sports broadcasts contribute about $100 million a year to the CBC.
"If this piece were to move out in a significant way, then the economics of English television are challenged at the most fundamental kind of level," he said.
Urge for stable funding
Faced with this unstable situation, the senior managers are calling for a long-term funding commitment from the federal government, for instance a 10-year funding plan versus the current system of year-to-year approval.
Other suggestions they made to the Canadian Heritage committee include regular mandate reviews and the ability to collect fees from cable and satellite subscribers.
Sci fi series "Doctor Who" zooms into record books
LONDON (Reuters) - The cult science fiction series "Doctor Who" has won a place in the record books as the longest-running television show of its type, a fitting accolade for the time-travelling adventurer.
The book "Guinness World Records" said on Friday more than 700 episodes of the program, which first aired on the BBC in 1963, had been broadcast, covering 173 story lines and showcasing 10 different actors in the role of the Time Lord.
A spokeswoman for the book said the category of longest-running sci-fi series had been newly introduced for the 2007 edition.
The latest actor to play the Doctor, David Tennant, told the book he decided to become an actor after watching an earlier incarnation -- Tom Baker -- during the 1970s.
"I took one look at his Doctor Who and decided it was the job for me. I was convinced that when I was old enough I was going to play the part of the Doctor on TV," he said.
While fans of the different series may have their favorite Doctors, the concept has endured and the program attracts more than 7 million viewers in Britain and many more abroad.
That the series has lasted so long is partly thanks to iconic villains such the "Daleks" and the Cybermen, and also because the main character can regenerate, allowing the series to keep fresh by bringing a new lead actor.
Helping maintain consistency are props such as the Doctor's time traveling machine the Tardis, his companion -- usually young and female -- and his robot dog K-9.
Terri Irwin: Footage of Steve's Death Won't Air
There's going to be one less morbid tape soiling the airwaves these days.
In her first interview since her husband's death, Steve Irwin's widow, Terri, said that the video footage captured of the Crocodile Hunter's run-in with the stingray that killed him will never be broadcast on television.
"No. No. What purpose would that serve," Terri Irwin told ABC's 20/20 in a segment set to air Wednesday, adding that she has never watched the tape, either. "It was an accident so stupid. It was like running with a pencil. It was not risk he was taking. It was just an accident."
Irwin, 44, was killed Sept. 4 while filming a documentary near Australia's Great Barrier Reef when he was stung in the heart by a stingray. Wildlife experts have called the TV star and conservationist's death a "freak accident."
More than 5,000 people gathered last Tuesday at Irwin's Australia Zoo to pay tribute to the man known the world over for his "Crikey" outbursts and enthusiasm for some of nature's deadliest creatures.
"I have to make sure the zoo keeps running," Terri Irwin told 20/20's Barbara Walters. "He planned all that masterfully. He planned this wonderful business so that it could continue if anything happened to him."
Despite Irwin's jovial demeanor, Terri Irwin said that her late husband had a feeling he wasn't going to live to a ripe old age, and not just because he bucked the odds every day, cozying up to poisonous snakes and wrestling with creatures from the deep. "He'd talk about it often," she said. "But it wasn't because of any danger from wildlife. That was never a consideration. He just felt life could be dangerous."
Terri, who's from Oregon, and Steve Irwin tied the knot in 1992, six months after meeting in Australia, where Terri was on vacation. "I fell then and there, love at first sight," she said.
The khaki-clad Croc Hunter told the pretty American that he had a girlfriend, though.
"I was a little bit devastated," she told Walters. But, luckily that "girlfriend" turned out to be Irwin's pet dog, Sue.
"I had romance like I didn't think existed anymore, a wonderful romance," Terri Irwin, who frequently traveled with her mate on his adventures and costarred in the 2002 film The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, said. "He was passionate and determined and enthusiastic."
It wasn't always paradise in the Outback, of course, but the Irwins made it work. "There were so many things that made me crazy," Terri recalled, "like his desire to do everything now. He had a real sense of urgency with his life and no side-view business plan. If you got plans, we'll do them now."
The Croc Hunter's other half said that she is coping with her husband's death "one minute at a time, sometimes an hour at a time."
"With great faith, great determination," she said. "I have two beautiful children. And they really are my strength."
Eight-year-old Bindi told the crowd at her father's public memorial service that she plans to carry on his conservationist efforts and promote his love for nature. The little girl's speech, which she studiously read from a piece of notepaper, prompted a standing ovation from the thousands in attendance.
Bindi, who also has a two-year-old brother, Robert, is already making good on her word, hosting a series on the Discovery Network called Bindi the Jungle Girl.
"Bindi has a spirituality about her that I've seen with Steve," Terri Irwin said. "She has unbelievable sensitivity. She has an uncanny connection with wildlife. She has a love for them that was just like her dad's."