Category: CBC

Veteran CBC anchor dead at 48
TORONTO (CP) – Veteran CBC news anchor Lorne Saxberg died Saturday in a snorkelling accident while on vacation in Phuket, Thailand, CBC News reported on its website.
“We’re shocked and very, very sad that this has happened,” CBC spokeswoman Ruth-Ellen Soles said Sunday.
“He was part of our family of journalists and reporters and newsreaders.”
Saxberg had a 27-year career with the country’s public broadcaster and was a widely recognized news anchor on both television and radio.
The 48-year-old broadcaster was one of the original anchors when CBC’s all-news channel Newsworld was launched in 1989, CBC News reported.
He was recently awarded an Edward R. Murrow Award for a documentary he wrote and hosted on the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, CBC reported.
Saxberg grew up in Thunder Bay, Ont., and graduated from Confederation College’s broadcasting program before joining CBC Radio as an announcer in his hometown.
He later moved to Toronto where he joined the roster of anchors at Newsworld.
Saxberg took a leave from CBC two years ago to work as an announcer and trainer with NHK Japan in Tokyo.
“He was the consummate pro and an exceptional journalist,” said Ken Becker, a Newsworld producer who worked with Saxberg for many years.
“When he was in the anchor chair, you knew you could throw Lorne any story – from the outbreak of war to the birth of a panda at the zoo – and he’d deliver it to the viewer with exactly the right tone.”
“He brought to every story a vast knowledge on nearly every subject, a reporter’s curiosity and an appreciation of fine writing.”
Despite Saxberg’s international success as a broadcast-journalist, he never strayed far from his northwestern Ontario roots.
Along with his family, Saxberg bought and restored a dormant 130-year-old mining shop near his hometown to create the Silver Islet General Store and Tea Room, where he served as harbourmaster and returned every summer to work at the store.
“I know he was looking forward to coming home this summer,” said Shane Judge, a radio reporter with CBC Thunder Bay who worked with Saxberg years ago. “He just loved it on the North Shore. He made sure he came here every year.”

More favourite CBC Radio shows move onto podcast
CBC has launched 22 radio programs on podcast as part of a major expansion of podcasting by the public broadcaster.
CBC Radio began podcasting ó that is provided recordings of its radio programs that could be downloaded to a digital player or computer ó last April. Shows are available free through iTunes, over CBC.ca and from other download services.
Initially four shows went on air ó the science show Quirks & Quarks, a column called The Mood and selections of Radio Three and Metro Morning.
On Wednesday, CBC began offering a greatly expanded podcasting service, with selections of popular national shows such as As It Happens, The Current, Sounds Like Canada and DNTO, as well as some regional selections.
CBC decided to expand its service because of huge demand for CBC podcasting and the results of a recent survey of podcast users, Bob Kerr, director of business development and digital programming at CBC, said in an interview.
“The most popular podcasts were Radio Three and Quirks & Quarks ó they went through the roof,” Kerr said. “They have become the most popular podcasts in Canada.”
About one quarter of podcast listeners download programs and listen to them en route to work, but most listen at home, or in a single spot like a workplace, he said. Podcast listeners tend to be younger than regular CBC Radio listeners, with more falling in the 18-to-39 age group.
They’re spread right across the country, with the greatest number, 35 per cent of listeners, in Ontario and 18 per cent in British Columbia. U.S. residents make up six per cent of podcast listeners; a further four per cent live in other countries.
The 22 CBC shows available on podcast are updated regularly, and often are different from the original radio programs, Kerr said, with some, like World at Large, being compilations of several shows.
CBC plans to monitor demand for the new service and then decide on how to further expand its podcasting project, Kerr said.
“There’s the whole world of video as well,” he said. Apple’s iTunes music store does not yet offer video in Canada, but there is potential for CBC television to be made available once it does, he said.

CBC-TV Toronto laying off employees
TORONTO (CP) – Seventy-nine CBC employees – including workers who build sets, style hair and apply makeup – received layoff notices Thursday, a move critics called “the end of a television era” at the public broadcaster.
“CBC Television continues to face significant financial pressures and we must continue to reduce spending in order to fund programming priorities,” said a memo from Fred Mattocks, executive director of regional programming and television production and Doug Broadfoot, director of the Toronto production centre.
“At the end of the day, we faced a tough business decision: not one we wanted to make, but one that was necessary.”
The layoffs, planned for mid-August, will affect set design, set decoration, carpentry, paint shops, special effects, hair, costumes and props.
In addition, there were 20 “voluntary layoffs” and seven other vacant positions that will not be filled, says network spokeswoman Ruth-Ellen Soles. That brings the production centre’s staff down to 432 from 538, she added.
Mattocks estimates the savings at a minimum of $1 million a year.
The memo noted that few major public broadcasters around the world – including the BBC – still maintain substantial in-house design teams. From now on, independent producers and co-producers will be required to handle all design needs, the memo added.
The Canadian Media Guild, which represents most of the affected employees, said the layoffs wipe out almost the entire TV design department, leaving only a few makeup people for news and current affairs.
“What it means is the CBC will no longer be able to fully produce its own shows inside,” said Lise Lareau, the CMG’s national president.
“It’s the end of a television era at the CBC.”
Lareau says producers of shows like the Royal Canadian Air Farce and even The National will have to outsource any new sets they want built.
“There’s not going to be anybody who can do sets left, or do carpentry to create sets, or paint.
“The CBC is essentially announcing it will not do any other kind of production, other than news or current affairs, internally, ever again.”
Air Farce cast member Don Ferguson characterized the move as “the end of a dream.”
“They all got called to a meeting this morning at 9 o’clock and were told ‘That’s it’, they’re closing the whole operation down and they’re all out of here by August the 11th.”
Ferguson said the Farce gets scripts Monday morning, then the sets are designed Tuesday and delivered to the studio by Wednesday for rehearsals. The show is taped Thursday in front of a live audience.
He’s not sure how things will work after the layoffs.
The latest cutbacks follow on the heels of a CBC move a year ago to drop more than 30 in-house publicists in favour of contracting out the work. The majority of those jobs lost were in Toronto and some of the people landed work with Media Profile, a public relations company hired to promote CBC programming.
Those layoffs came after CBC’s communications department was asked to cut $1.7 million, to be funnelled back into programming.
At the time, savings from the outsourcing were expected to amount to $864,000, but Guild officials have disputed that claim.
The announcement also comes amid reports that the new Heritage Minister Bev Oda wants a thorough review of the public broadcaster’s mandate.

‘Prairie Giant’ stirs memories in Saskatchewan
Residents of Regina and the town of Gravelbourg, Sask., got a sneak preview Monday evening of the CBC miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story.
For some people, it brought back memories of the fiery former Saskatchewan premier and his legendary fight with the doctors.
For the residents of Gravelbourg, it was a chance to see themselves and their town on the big screen.
“It doesn’t often happen that a little town like this can get this kind of recognition,” said Cyriel Poirier, who saw the film at Gravelbourg’s Gaiety theatre.
About 500 residents of the town participated in the filming of the two-part miniseries, to air Sunday, March 12 and Monday, March 13 at 8 p.m. on CBC-TV.
The town was a stand-in for Depression-era Saskatchewan, reflecting the poverty and hardship, but also the sense of community that shaped Douglas’s ideas.
The movie spans nearly 50 years of Douglas’s life, from his arrival in Weyburn, Sask., as a young Baptist preacher in 1931, to his reign as premier, his pioneering role in universal health care, and his time as the first federal New Democrat leader.
Producer Kevin DeWalt says the movie is really more about the man than his politics.
“He was very tough when he had a vision and he wanted it to be rammed through. He didn’t put up with any incompetence around him, and if you were incompetent you didn’t last very long, and I don’t think that’s something the public knew very much of,” DeWalt said in an interview with CBC News.
The aim was to depict Douglas, chosen as the Greatest Canadian in 2004, with his failures as well as his victories, he said.
“Certainly during the federal election, after he lost the premiership, when he lost in Regina … that was a very big turning point for him, and we have a scene in the movie where Irma basically says, ‘After all he’s done for Saskatchewan and they couldn’t elect him one more time.’ … They put the house up for sale the next day and never came back,” DeWalt said.
Dr. Moulds (R.H. Thomson) leads the doctors strike in Saskatchewan in 1962. (Photo credit: Allan Feildel)
Actor Michael Therriault plays Douglas, Kristin Booth is his wife, Irma, and R.H. Thomson is his nemesis, Dr. Moulds, leader of the doctors’ struggle against medicare.
Written by Bruce Smith and directed by John N. Smith, Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story is produced by Minds Eye Entertainment in association with the CBC.
“I hope that this project about Tommy Douglas will help make known a person who is, in my view, exceptional … when you think about universal health care, the first Charter of Rights and Freedoms, all of his contributions,” says Pierre Letarte, director of photography.
The miniseries was originally scheduled to air in January, but was postponed because of the federal election.
More about Douglas’s life can also be heard Tuesday, March 7 and Tuesday, March 14, on Ideas on CBC Radio One. A two-part series titled Dream No Little Dreams will air both nights at 9.05 p.m.

CBC axes ‘Davinci’s,’ ‘Wonderland’
TORONTO (CP) – Da Vinci’s City Hall, The Tournament and This Is Wonderland, three of CBC’s critically acclaimed but low-rated series, will not be renewed, a spokeswoman for the public broadcaster confirmed Monday.
Da Vinci’s season finale is scheduled for Feb. 28 and Wonderland’s on March 15. The hockey comedy The Tournament has already wrapped up its second year.
“These are three programs that CBC believed in and attached significant resources to,” said Ruth-Ellen Soles. “Unfortunately the audiences for all three have been in steady decline and did not resonate with Canadians. These decisions are always difficult but they had to be made.”
Wonderland kicked off its third season last November with high hopes. Created by George F. Walker, Dani Romain and Bernard Zukerman, it starred Cara Pifko as Alice De Raey, a novice Toronto lawyer who has her eyes opened to the realities of practising law in the crowded, manic criminal courts housed at Old City Hall.
Last October, after seven seasons under the helm of creator-writer Chris Haddock, Da Vinci’s Inquest morphed into Da Vinci’s City Hall.
Nicholas Campbell’s crusading chief coroner Dominic Da Vinci proved he could master the political ropes and won election as mayor of Vancouver, in much the same manner as the series’ inspiration and consultant, former mayor Larry Campbell who is now a Liberal senator.
While the public broadcaster has often indicated that its Canadian cultural mandate is more important than ratings, it’s clear that ratings matter a lot. Soles says Da Vinci had been averaging 394,000 viewers, Wonderland 376,000 and Tournament 268,000.
Da Vinci had lost about 40 per cent of its audience from its high point a few years ago.
ACTRA, the actors union, condemned the cancellations as short-sighted and “a startling display of incompetence by irresponsible CBC brass.”
“CBC management is punishing these shows for a decline in ratings – a decline clearly brought on by its own brutal decision to lock out 5,000 professional workers last fall,” says Stephen Waddell, ACTRA national executive director.
But Soles dismissed any connection to the lockout and subsequent delayed season launch. She said the numbers decline had started well before that.
“It’s a shame because they’re terrific programs. It just doesn’t seem to be what Canadian viewers want to watch,” she says.
“We’re in continuing discussions now regarding all of the arts and entertainment programming, everything.”
The CBC has reportedly ordered 13 episodes of Intelligence, a new series based on Haddock’s recent Vancouver-produced CBC-TV movie. In addition, negotiations are under way for a TV movie spinoff of Da Vinci, similar to what happened when the North of 60 series was cancelled.

CBC Radio blasted over fundraiser
CBC Radio was blasted yesterday for spending an undisclosed amount of taxpayers’ dollars to throw a concert in New Orleans.
The Maple Leaf Mojo benefit concert on Saturday night will feature 14 Canadian artists — including Daniel Lanois and The Mighty Popo — who will fly down to the Big Easy today along with five CBC staff members.
The show, which was originally described by the CBC as a fundraiser for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, will be broadcast live by satellite on Radio 1 from 7:05 to 11 p.m.
With 1,000 tickets selling for $10 each, the $10,000 a sell-out would generate would pale in comparison to the costs of hosting the event, a price the CBC won’t divulge.
“Their lack of accountability is offensive and flippant behaviour,” said NDP MP Pat Martin. “You’d think that after the stink with (Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson’s) junket with journalists to Scandinavia, you’d think that the CBC would be careful about even the perception of a junket such as this.”
Martin, a card-carrying member of the Friends of the CBC, questioned why the same concert couldn’t be held at home and then the money sent to the New Orleans cause.
“Couldn’t they go to The Black Sheep or record portions of the Bluesfest?” he asked. “I recommend they scrap the remote immediately.”
In the crosshairs
Martin went on to predict that if the CBC doesn’t rethink its spending policies, the new Heritage Minister Bev Oda will.
“CBC is in the crosshairs of the Conservative budget trimmers,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Oda’s office said while the minister saw the story about the trip in yesterday’s Sun, she would not be making any comment on it until next week after she gets settled into office.
Ruth Ellen Soles, CBC director of media relations, refused to say how much the trip will cost.
“We don’t discuss budgets of individual programming initiatives. We never have,” Soles said.
No one-off
When asked how much the CBC hoped to raise from the event, Soles responded: “Does any fundraising event cost out how much they’re going to raise before they go?”
Soles said the concert is not a one-off fundraising event but a major investment in future radio programming.
“This concert is a benefit concert, so there will be funds raised, but this is also a programming initiative,” Soles explained. “It’s a part of our regular remote programming budget for the fiscal year.
“What we’re getting is eight hours of live broadcasting on Saturday as well as live concert recordings we can use for one year. There will be news stories, documentaries done, items for Sounds Like Canada and programming for Definitely Not the Opera and Jowi Taylor’s Global Village.
“It’s a very sound programming decision as far as we’re concerned.”
Adam Taylor, a spokesman for the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, was “embarrassed” by the details of the junket.
“How can they justify sending so many people at taxpayers’ expense?” he asked.
“Accountability and transparency are major buzzwords in Canadian politics. It’s the height of arrogance for a Crown corporation like the CBC to spend tax dollars with little to no concern for accountability to the public.
“I’m dumbfounded. We have the right to know (how much is being spent).”

Documentary revisits Cdn. pop from 60’s
Canuck music history doc boasts never-before-seen performances
One of the clips in Shakin’ All Over is an old footage of the Squires with Neil Young, top left corner, jamming together.
You won’t believe the sight of David Clayton Thomas and the Shays performing on American television in 1965.
That’s not the only reason to watch the two-hour documentary Shakin’ All Over: Canadian Pop Music In The 1960s. But the Thomas clip will stick in your noggin because it’s so damn bizarre.
The producers of the NBC musical-variety show Hullabaloo must have thought, “Hell, these guys are Canadian, so let’s go with a hockey theme. Anything else might scare ’em.”
So there’s the group, performing the song Walk That Walk on a ridiculous set that is painted like a hockey rink. Large logos of the six NHL teams that were in existence in ’65 hang in the background, alongside a scoreboard.
The most goofy thing of all? There are some stoic female models — mannequins maybe? — wearing hockey jerseys and posing stiffly with sticks, amid the musicians.
The girl standing guard in front of the net is donning a Maple Leafs sweater, so feel free to make up your own joke about the current quality of the club’s goaltending.
Anyway, it all comes across as comical but slightly demeaning. These days hockey has been romanticized so much that Canadians might take such treatment as a compliment, but that’s a rant for another day.
The whole point of Shakin’ All Over is not to demean Canadian music, but to celebrate it. The documentary deals specifically with the era prior to the 1971 Canadian-content laws that force Canadian radio stations to play a minimum percentage of Canadian music.
The great thing about Shakin’ All Over is the rare clips. Even if you’re familiar with standard rock ‘n’ roll archives, there will be dozens of performances here that you never have seen before.
But be forewarned: While there are segments reserved for big-time acts like the Guess Who, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Anne Murray and Neil Young, a lot of this stuff is very obscure. That might turn you off, or on, depending upon your level of fascination with Canuck musical history.
You’ll see a group called the Great Scots, fully attired in kilts.
You’ll see Tom Baird, keyboard player for the Classics, playing solitaire with one hand and piano with the other.
You’ll hear Jerry Mercer, the drummer for Mashmakhan (which had a big hit with As The Years Go By), recalling that the band went from playing in a church basement in Montreal on a Wednesday to a full stadium in Japan on a Saturday. “We were almost like the Beatles there,” Mercer says.
Yeah, almost.
A small criticism of Shakin’ All Over is that it doesn’t end in a particularly succinct way. One minute Crowbar is playing a concert with a stripper, then boom, the closing credits are running.
Overall, though, Shakin’ All Over is a sharp showcase for a bygone era. And whether you’re a hardcore music nut or someone who just likes watching weird archival footage, you never, ever will forget the hokey hockey set on Hullabaloo. Groovy, man.

CBC, Global plan news changes
TORONTO (CP) – A Mohawk haircut and metal studs on Peter Mansbridge are not in the cards.
But CBC News introduces a new look and attitude next Monday on all its platforms in response to demands from Canadians that the public broadcaster try to be hipper and cooler. Global News also plans to leave the status quo behind. Next month Global National with Kevin Newman will move to 5:30 p.m., the beginning of the supper hour, in a tactic that may carry some ratings risks.
CTV News, now leading the network ratings race, is maintaining an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach. But they may be carrying the concept of targeting a younger demographic to extremes in hiring precocious eight-year-old Treehouse TV star Daniel Cook as an election reporter.
The revamping of the CBC’s news operation includes new music and logos.
“We’re not trying to transform the CBC into some kind of contrived hip operation,” assures Tony Burman, CBC News editor-in-chief. “I think our visual look will be sharper and more dynamic and more colourful. We’re experienced TV people and we know how to deal with that.”
The changes at CBC are in response to a sweeping survey completed two years ago. Burman says the survey, in which 1,200 Canadians were interviewed, found that parts of the operation didn’t appeal to young people. He says the network has already acted on that concern by hiring the likes of Avi Lewis and George Stroumboulopoulos.
He adds that the overriding – and encouraging – message was that Canadians want high quality information, more original journalism and more in-depth investigative coverage. Improvements in those areas will be made over the next couple of years, Burman says.
“What Canadians are telling us is go the reverse of dumbing down.”
Beginning Monday, the supper-hour news across the country will begin with half-hour regional newscasts called CBC News at Six, followed at 6:30 by Ian Hanomansing’s Canada Now (except in Newfoundland-Labrador where Vancouver-based Hanomansing will follow one hour of local news).
Meanwhile, CTV news president Bob Hurst says his operation leads the pack because of a commitment to a 30-year-old plan and a belief in consistency.
“Steady as she goes,” Hurst proclaims. “We don’t believe in radical changes. Changes can be disruptive to the audience.”
But he says that doesn’t mean “the big dog” is doing nothing. There are constant improvements in staff and technology, Hurst says.
“The big dog runs harder and faster than any other dog in the race.”
Hurst notes they did hire Daniel Cook who, he admits, is more famous than Lloyd Robertson to pint-sized (albeit non-voting) TV watchers.
“We’re just having some fun with this to try to brighten up the election campaign with a different set of eyes.”
The carrot-topped youngster’s first piece on the Stephen Harper campaign was due to air on Mike Duffy’s Newsnet show Thursday night.
Global TV plans a rebranding of its image next month, beginning during the Super Bowl Sunday Feb. 5. and followed by a major change in Global National with Kevin Newman the following Monday.
As part of what may be a risky positioning strategy, Newman’s newscast will not only unveil a new set and logo but move up an hour to 5:30 p.m. in all time zones except the Maritimes.
“There’s a huge audience available at the supper-hour period,” says Steve Wyatt, senior vice-president of news at Global, dismissing suggestions that many news viewers may not even be home from work at that early hour.
“We want to be first out of the gate with a big picture,” he says. “The Kevin Newman fans that are home at 6:30, a whole bunch of them are home at 5:30, too.”
Global will use the popular daytime soap Young and the Restless as a lead-in to Newman who will then hand off the audience to locally produced news, then an hour of Entertainment Tonight leading into prime time.
Unlike CBC and CTV, Global will continue to leave its end-of-night newscast to local affiliates.
Newman says it’s a coincidence that the changes are being introduced shortly after CBC’s TV news makeover, that they’ve been in the works for several years. He says they have more to do with creating a consistency across the country where, until now, supper-hour news has been at different times in each region.
“Now we will be able to promote Global National at 5:30 on a national scale, 6:30 in the Maritimes,” he says.

CBC-TV documentary lets viewers listen to Mulroney audio tapes
TORONTO (CP) – It’s one thing to read them.
But it’s quite another to actually hear the words of Brian Mulroney in those audio tapes compiled by author Peter C. Newman and which formed the basis of Newman’s provocative summertime book The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister.
On Monday night, CBC-TV airs a feature-length documentary version, and for the first time Canadians will actually hear the former PM in all his profanity-laced glory, usually in phone calls to Newman in which he appears to be trying to dictate his own place in history while summarily denouncing his political rivals.
“I was a fly on the wall for the conversations,” says producer-director Mike Sheerin about listening to the tapes early this past summer. “It creates a mood. It’s theatre of the mind, even though it’s television.”
The listener is struck first by the breadth of the obscenities, not always provoked by passion but clearly a staple of the rhetoric of a private personality far different from the public one.
But Sheerin doesn’t think Mulroney swears all that much, or that it’s a big deal.
“He uses it to punctuate certain sentences here and there. I do that. … It’s just sort of normal talk.”
The former prime minister displays a loathing for members of the parliamentary press gallery, who trigger the strongest obscenities during the 90-minute film.
Beyond that, the tapes prove equally remarkable for revealing Mulroney’s apparent disdain for his opponents, from Pierre Trudeau to Jean Chretien, and even for his own party colleagues, from Joe Clark to Lucien Bouchard, who he insists did not quit the Tory cabinet in 1990 as history has recorded.
“I fired him,” Mulroney says bluntly, although the revelation was not included in Newman’s book. Sheerin doesn’t know why except that Newman may simply have forgotten with the mountain of material he had to work with.
The sound clips, chosen from hundreds of hours of phone calls and in-person interviews taped over two decades, are married to relevant newsreel clips of the day, interspersed with on-camera comments by Newman himself. There is no narration.
Sheerin says he befriended Newman two years ago when he was producing a CBC Life & Times biography on him. He was one of only a handful of people who were aware at the time that Newman was working on his book, and that led to Sheerin assembling this companion documentary in secrecy under the rather melodramatic code name Project X.
“I don’t feel I betrayed Brian Mulroney,” Newman declares in the film, conceding, however, that he was seen as the prime minister’s “pet journalist.”
But when the book was published in September, news reports said Mulroney felt devastated and betrayed, and that he had been unaware he was being taped in most of his conversations with Newman. The phone calls were supposed to be off the record, said Mulroney’s spokesman Luc Lavoie.
Mulroney was not planning any legal action over the book, Lavoie said at the time. And last weekend he said Mulroney would be unlikely to comment on the tapes.
Sheerin says the friendship between the two men soured in 1995 when Newman wrote a book that was harsh on Mulroney’s legacy.
At 76 and his reputation established, Newman himself may not care that he comes across in the documentary as a fawning yes man to the leader of the country, there to apply salve to his political wounds during late-night phone calls that Newman insists were not off the record.
Still, in terms of the traditional media-politician arm’s-length relationship, there’s something unseemly about the Newman-Mulroney relationship as it evolves on tape.
“Mr. Newman? The prime minister is on the line …” the voice of the PMO operator says, and from there it’s Brian and Peter and evidence of an intellectual cosiness that went back for decades.
Sheerin says it’s an oral history as told by Mulroney and there’s no attempt to portray a black hat or a white hat.
“This isn’t a political film. This is a character film. We don’t judge at the end of the day. The viewer will have those biases and judgments already.
“I don’t think it’s going to change your opinion, at least it’s not designed to change your opinion of Brian but just to get a better sense of who he was as a character, as a human being.”
On Tuesday Newman was served with a statement of claim from Conrad Black alleging that the writer libelled him in his 2004 book Here Be Dragons.
Sheerin says no attempt was made to contact Mulroney for the documentary due to the secret nature of the project, but he does not expect any legal challenges against himself or Newman for broadcasting the tapes.

Rick Mercer’s Report is back
Rick Mercer’s topical report shifts to Tuesday night on the CBC
Mercer drops out of the sky tonight as The Rick Mercer Report returns for a third CBC season (8 p.m.) A few weeks ago, the comedian humped it up to the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ont., for a little aerial acrobatics. “It was terrifying,” Mercer told the Sun last week on the phone.
The comedian, who has twice entertained Canadian troops in Afghanistan, had become chummy with fellow Newfoundlander Rick Hillier, who just happens to be Canada’s chief of defense staff. “He’s the only Newfoundlander who has his own army,” Mercer cracked.
Hillier challenged Mercer to skydive with Canada’s elite paratroopers. Before he could say “Geronimo,” Mercer was hurtling toward the Earth at 150 miles an hour.
Then again, some people will do anything to promote the shift of their show from Monday to Tuesday night. Mercer had to junk heaps of Rick Mercer’s Monday Report hats, T-shirts and mugs in the move, but feels confident his audience will find him on this new night.
He has no plans to goof on CBC’s recent lockout. “It’s too inside and it’s over,” he says. The labour dispute pushed his season launch a week or two, but Mercer’s just glad to be back at work.
The show will remain topical, with Mercer travelling from one end of the country to the other in search of comedy gold. “It’s very much me talking to Canadians,” he says. Former Buzz stooge Daryn Jones files the odd field report, including tonight’s take on the Canadian Classic Bodybuilding Championships.
Also on tonight’s opener, Mercer pedals around T.O. on a bicycle built for two with New Democratic Party leader and potential government plug puller Jack Layton. It is part of a new weekly “riding through My Riding” segment.
Even though Report now airs on Tuesday, it still tapes on Friday. Doesn’t the four-day delay kinda take the steam out of the headlines? Look how fast that whole Gomery deal blew over.
Mercer insists that the new schedule can work. When pushed he simply responds with a prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
ALSO TONIGHT: Scott Thompson is the queen of the scene on Pop Up Royals (8:30 p.m., CBC). It’s the latest initiative from CBC’s Retro Production Department, a group assigned to come up with inventive new ways to use old CBC footage (as they did with the wonderfully silly summer series Jimmy Macdonald’s Canada).
As host, Thompson dusts off his tiara and frumpy frock as Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. He makes with the shtick as clips roll of the various members of the Royal Family parading around Canada throughout the 20th century.
Billed as “an affectionate look at a dysfunctional family,” it’s more of a wacked history lesson, with info-bites about Liz and Phil and all their nutty progeny popping up on screen just like on Pop Up Video. (Example: which Royal brought his mistress with him to Canada?)
Sounds promising, except Thompson and Co. don’t ever take off the kid gloves. This needed a chatty and catty Joan Rivers, can-we-talk approach. Instead of a Royal roast, this is a bland sop to Coronation Street fans. Pity.