'Mosque' debuts to 2.1M viewers
TORONTO (CP) - Zaib Shaikh, the star of CBC's "Little Mosque on the Prairie," couldn't contain his glee Wednesday after learning the internationally hyped sitcom pulled in 2.1 million viewers for its premiere.
"It's fantastic for Canadian culture, it's fantastic for Muslims and non-Muslims and their perceptions about one another, it's fantastic for the CBC, it's fantastic for Canadian television," said the Toronto-born Shaikh, who plays the progressive young imam on "Little Mosque."
"The fact that so many people seemed to want to watch it, that so many people actually did watch it and that a Canadian show is getting this much international attention - it's quite surprising and unbelievable."
An audience of more than a million is considered a huge number for a Canadian show. CTV's "Corner Gas," the private broadcaster's big sitcom hit and one of the country's highest-rated shows, pulls in close to 1.5 million viewers a week.
American powerhouse shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "House" routinely get just over two million Canadian viewers a week.
Initial numbers suggested "Little Mosque" won its time slot Tuesday.
"We are thrilled and ecstatic," said Kirstine Layfield, CBC's director of network programming. "Not only did the number astound us, but the response to the show has been very positive. Three-quarters of the people who phoned in about the show loved it, and the only people who had anything negative to say just didn't like that we ran commercials."
"Little Mosque" has been getting buzz for weeks, with everyone from the BBC to CNN running items on the comedy, the creation of Muslim filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz. Much of the attention has focused on the fact that the show is a comedy about Muslims set in a post 9-11 world.
The CBC, struggling terribly in the ratings, had a lot invested in the show and promoted it with uncharacteristic cash and vigour, including an event at downtown Toronto's Dundas Square last week that featured free chicken shawarma and a bunch of friendly camels.
"I've got to say I didn't expect it to become the global phenomenon that it has become when I started writing it three years ago," a giggling Nawaz said Wednesday after getting word about the ratings. "But the comedy does live up to the hype, and future episodes just get funnier and funnier while at the same time delving into some deeper issues."
The question now, of course, is whether viewers will continue to tune in or whether Tuesday's ratings bonanza was due to the novelty factor.
The show moves to Mondays at 9 p.m. EST and Wednesdays at 8 p.m. following its Tuesday night debut this week - something that makes Nawaz nervous that the show could lose viewers.
"Our only concern now is that it's moving to a different time slot, and we hope people will find us," she said.
Shaikh, for one, thinks there is reason to be optimistic.
"My friends in Vancouver were in a bar and there was a group of Caucasian guys there, like 25 to 32, who saw the trailer and were laughing their heads off and saying they were going to get into the show," he says. "It is just meant to be funny, not political and not educational, and I really believe Canadians are going to continue to watch it and to like it."
CanWest, Goldman Sachs buy Alliance Atlantis for $2.3B
CanWest Global Communications Corp. and the private equity firm Goldman Sachs Capital Partners confirmed late Wednesday that they are buying Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. — one of Canada's biggest entertainment companies.
The CanWest and Goldman Sachs groups will pay $53 for each Class A and Class B share of Alliance Atlantis. The companies say that values the deal at $2.3 billion.
The takeover offer is less than the price Alliance Atlantis stock closed at Wednesday. The Class A voting shares ended the trading day at $54.18, while the Class B non-voting shares closed at $53.61.
Shareholders owning 80 per cent of the Class A shares have committed to tender their shares to the offer, the companies said. Holders of the Class B shares will be asked to vote in favour of the deal at a meeting to be held in the spring.
"The combined expertise of CanWest and Alliance Atlantis will enable us to produce even better Canadian content, promote it more effectively, and provide greater access to more viewers across more platforms," said CanWest CEO Leonard Asper in a release.
A CanWest company will be the controlling shareholder of Alliance Atlantis once the deal is finalized by mid-2007. CRTC approval will be required for the deal to proceed.
The companies say Alliance Atlantis' specialty television business and CanWest's Canadian television business will be combined, but not before 2011.
A Canadian partner of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners will ultimately control Alliance Atlantis' Motion Picture Distribution business, which is a major distributor of motion pictures in Canada.
The GS group will also own Alliance Atlantis' stake in the highly lucrative CSI television franchise. Alliance Atlantis now co-produces the various CSI dramas with CBS.
Confirmation of a deal came just hours after the companies acknowledged they were in exclusive takeover talks. That acknowledgement followed media reports earlier in the week that said CanWest and Goldman Sachs had teamed up to make a run at Alliance Atlantis.
Toronto-based Alliance Atlantis said on Dec. 20 that it was exploring its "strategic alternatives," and said it had sought expressions of interest from selected potential buyers.
Alliance Atlantis owns 13 specialty television channels, including Showcase — which airs the Trailer Park Boys series. It also owns Discovery Health, the Food Network, HGTV, History Television and the Life Network.
`Munsters' star Yvonne De Carlo dies
LOS ANGELES - Yvonne De Carlo, the beautiful star who played Moses' wife in "The Ten Commandments" but achieved her greatest popularity on TV's "The Munsters," has died. She was 84.
De Carlo died of natural causes Monday at the Motion Picture & Television facility in suburban Los Angeles, longtime friend and television producer Kevin Burns said Wednesday.
De Carlo, whose shapely figure helped launch her career in B-movie desert adventures and Westerns, rose to more important roles in the 1950s. Later, she had a key role in a landmark Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim's "Follies."
But for TV viewers, she will always be known as Lily Munster in the 1964-1966 slapstick horror-movie spoof "The Munsters." The series (the name allegedly derived from "fun-monsters") offered a gallery of Universal Pictures grotesques, including Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, in a cobwebbed gothic setting.
Lily, vampire-like in a black gown, presided over the faux scary household and was a rock for her gentle but often bumbling husband, Herman, played by 6-foot-5-inch character actor Fred Gwynne (decked out as the Frankenstein monster).
While it lasted only two years, the series had a long life in syndication and resulted in two feature movies, "Munster Go Home!" (1966) and "The Munsters' Revenge." (1981, for TV).
At the series' end, De Carlo commented: "It meant security. It gave me a new, young audience I wouldn't have had otherwise. It made me `hot' again, which I wasn't for a while."
"I think she will best remembered as the definitive Lily Munster. She was the vampire mom to millions of baby boomers. In that sense, she's iconic," Burns said Wednesday.
"But it would be a shame if that's the only way she is remembered. She was also one of the biggest beauty queens of the `40s and `50s, one of the most beautiful women in the world. This was one of the great glamour queens of Hollywood, one of the last ones."
George Barris, who created the ghoulish "Munsters" car, equipped De Carlo's Jaguar with spider web hubcaps, a gargoyle hood ornament and a glossy black sunroof.
"She was a wonderful lady and a car buff. She loved the show so much that she incorporated it into her life, her own car," Barris said Wednesday.
De Carlo sustained a long career by repeatedly reinventing herself. When movie roles became scarce, she ventured into stage musicals. Her greatest stage triumph came on Broadway in 1971 with "Follies," which won the 1972 Tony award for best original musical score.
Over the years, De Carlo augmented her stardom by shrewd use of publicity. Gossip columnists reported her dates with famous men. In her 1987 book, "Yvonne: An Autobiography," she listed 22 of her lovers, who included Howard Hughes, Burt Lancaster, Robert Stack, Robert Taylor, Billy Wilder, Aly Khan and an Iranian prince.
The Canadian-born De Carlo began her career with a parade of bit parts in films of the early 1940s, then emerged as a star in 1945 with "Salome — Where She Danced," a routine movie about a dancer from Vienna who becomes a spy in the wild West.
Universal Pictures exploited her slightly exotic looks and a shape that looked ideal in a harem dress in such "sex-and-sand" programmers as "Song of Scheherazade," "Slave Girl," "Casbah" and "Desert Hawk."
The studio also employed her to add zest to Westerns, usually as a dance-hall girl or a gun-toting sharpshooter. Among the titles: "Frontier Gal," "Black Bart," "River Lady," "Calamity Jane and Sam Bass" and "The Gal Who Took the West."
In 1956 she veered from her former image when Cecil B. DeMille chose her to play Sephora, wife to Charlton Heston's Moses in "The Ten Commandments." The following year she costarred with Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier in "Band of Angels" as Gable's upper-class sweetheart who learns of her black forebears.
De Carlo was born Peggy Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sept. 1, 1922 (some sources say 1924). Abandoned by her father, she was raised by her mother in poor circumstances. The girl took dancing lessons and dropped out of high school to work in night clubs and local theaters. She continued dancing in clubs when she and her mother moved to Los Angeles.
Paramount Pictures signed her to a contract in 1942, and she adopted her middle name and her mother's middle name. Dropped by Paramount after 20 minor roles, she landed at Universal.
In 1955, De Carlo married Bob Morgan, a topflight stunt man, and the marriage produced two sons, Bruce and Michael. During a stunt aboard a moving log train for "How the West Was Won," Morgan was thrown underneath the wheels. The accident cost him a leg, and for a time De Carlo abandoned her career to care for him. They later divorced.
In her late years, De Carlo lived in semiretirement near Solvang, north of Santa Barbara. Her son Michael died in 1997, and she suffered a stroke the following year.
'Pirates,' Depp lead People's Awards
LOS ANGELES - The movie swashbuckler "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" and its stars Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley led winners during Tuesday night's 33rd annual People's Choice Awards.
Jennifer Aniston, Ellen DeGeneres, Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Nickelback, Justin Timberlake, Eva Longoria and Patrick Dempsey were also favorites.
"If it wasn't for the people, I'd never win an award," Longoria said, laughing as she accepted her award for female television star.
The movies "Click" and "Cars" were also winners.
Depp, appearing by satellite from London, said he was humbled by the honor.
"I know that I've said this before. But the fact that this award comes from the people makes it all the more special," he said. "And thanks for keeping me employed, yeah? You're the boss."
The CBS-TV show from the Shrine Auditorium was hosted by Queen Latifah. Winners were picked by public Internet balloting. The Favorite New TV Comedy and Favorite New TV Drama categories were open for online voting through the first hour of the broadcast.
The list of favorites:
MOVIES
• Female star: Jennifer Aniston
• Male star: Johnny Depp
• Leading lady: Cameron Diaz
• Leading man: Vince Vaughn
• Female action star: Halle Berry
• Male action star: Johnny Depp
• On-screen matchup: Johnny Depp & Keira Knightley
• Movie: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
• Movie drama: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
• Movie comedy: "Click"
• Family movie: "Cars"
MUSIC
• Female singer: Carrie Underwood
• Male singer: Kenny Chesney
• Group: Nickelback
• R&B song: "SexyBack" by Justin Timberlake
• Hip-hop song: "Shake That" by Eminem
• Pop song: "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira
• Country song: "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood
• Rock song: "Who Says You Can't Go Home" by Bon Jovi
• Song from a movie: "Life is a Highway" by Rascal Flatts from "Cars"
• Remake: "Life is a Highway" by Rascal Flatts
TELEVISION
• Comedy: "Two and a Half Men"
• Animated comedy: "The Simpsons"
• Drama: "Grey's Anatomy"
• Competition/Reality show: "American Idol"
• New Comedy: "The Class"
• New Drama: "Heroes"
• Female star: Eva Longoria
• Male star: Patrick Dempsey
• Talk show host: Ellen DeGeneres
OTHER
• Funny female star: Ellen DeGeneres
• Funny male star: Robin Williams