Posts Tagged ‘Wonderfalls’
A lesson on the history of Hollywood
Thursday, 19 January 2012 | Author Jessica
Before you read the below and think it all total bullshit lies let me remind you that BBC broadcast a documentary series by Paul Merton last year entitled The Birth Of Hollywood. You can find it all over the interwebs. The first episode in particular addresses much of the matters alluded to below.
From The Folk At ThePirateBay.WHATEVERWORKSINYOURCOUNTRY
INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.
PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.
The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.
And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.
CanCon Cons …. and a few Pros
Tuesday, 10 May 2011 | Author Jessica
While i have found myself enjoying many of the new shows put out by Shaw, most of which were conceived by Canwest, i am not the only person to notice a few things with how they are treating their new CanCon shows. And it is not always with the open arms friendly hug one would think an in-house production would receive.
The most recent of these is XIII, a continuation of the 2008 mini-series that is based on the Belgian comic series that was started in the mid-1980s. There are some rather big names in the show, particularly Stuart Townsend who portrays the titular character XIII and Aisha Tyler, whom many know and loved on the first season of Ghost Whisperer. The series was filmed in and around Toronto and Paris in the autumn and winter of 2010-11. That is the good. The bad comes in the broadcast or more specifically the promotion of the broadcast. As far back as the announcement of the commissioning of the series it was part of the collection of shows slated for Global & Showcase. All of the dramas ended up going to Showcase while the comedies varied somewhat. On 15 March Shaw announced the premiere date of XIII in Canada as 20 April on Showcase.
TORONTO, March 15, 2011 – This spring Showcase entices viewers into the ultimate conspiracy theory with the new drama series XIII, starring Stuart Townsend (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Queen of the Damned). The all-new suspense thriller centres on XIII (Townsend), a skilled and lethal former secret agent who can’t remember his past and sets out on a quest to uncover his true identity. XIII premieres Wednesday, April 20 at 10 p.m. ET/PT exclusively on Showcase.
Somewhere between 9 July 2010 and 19 April 2011 it was decided that XIII would not actually premiere on Showcase but that they would still promote it as such. XIII actually premiered on Tuesday, 19 April 2011 at 10am ET on MysteryTV. It was then repeated at 11pm that same night before making its ‘exclusive premiere’ on Showcase the next night. The pattern of unmentioned broadcast on MysteryTV the day before each episode ‘premieres’ on Showcase has continued through the fourth episode being broadcast this morning and scheduled for repeat tonight on MysteryTV before being shown tomorrow on Showcase.
Posted in ABC Studios shows, CBC shows, CTV shows, E1 shows, Rogers Media shows, Shaftesbury shows, Shaw Media shows, Take 5 shows | 
Tags: ABC, Being Human, CanCon, Citytv, Comedy Now, CTV, Detroit 1-8-7, Doctor Who, Endgame, Flashpoint, Global, king, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Murdoch Mysteries, MysteryTV, rookie blue, Shattered, Showcase, Skins, The Borgias, The Kennedys, The Listener, The Pillars Of The Earth, Wonderfalls, XIII | No Comments »
Thrice more, with feeling
Monday, 25 April 2011 | Author Jessica
If you thought it would end you were wrong.
The local media in Dallas sang the realistic praises of The Good Guys but when the show was cancelled they accepted the decision.
The fine folk of Detroit are still clinging to hope. And so they should. The ABC up-front presentation, where the fall schedule of new and returning shows is announced, is about 3 weeks from today. Detroit 1-8-7 does have a chance though it is not a good sign that they gave up their studio lease.
What did i find whilst reading through random news? A bloke at the Chicago Sun-Times is on the local wagon over The Chicago Code. Mark Konkol might have been a little to exuberant in some of his claims and comparisons. Such is the plight of those on the campaign to save a show. Even WXYZ, the Detroit ABC affiliate, got on its ‘save our show’ with the late night news immediately following the season finale of Detroit 1-8-7 so one can hardly fault a bloke at the Chicago Sun-Times from wanting to advocate in favour of The Chicago Code.
These are three shows from the 2009-11 seasons that have been or are considered likely to be (regrettably) cancelled in the next few weeks. All are filmed on location and those locations are not Los Angeles or New York City. They are Dallas, Detroit, and Chicago.
The bloke from the Chicago Sun-Times compares The Chicago Code to Early Edition (the show with Kyle Chandler as a guy who got tomorrow’s newspaper and tried to help people not become tomorrow’s tragic headline) and to The Beast. The first issue with this bloke’s credibility comes from him calling Early Edition a short-lived series. It is 4 seasons totalling 90 episodes. Not exactly the ’10 episodes or less’ one thinks of when hearing “short lived tv show”.
Posted in FOX shows | Tags: BSkyB, Detroit 1-8-7, Early Edition, FOX, Global, Sky 1, The Chicago Code, Wonderfalls | 1 Comment »
WXYZ Keeping 1-8-7 Alive in the D
Sunday, 27 March 2011 | Author Jessica
It is no secret that almost every “Save Our Show” campaign is unsuccessful. If it were not so there would be many times more shows than there is time in a day to broadcast them. Still a few campaigns do work. Jericho got a short second season. Wonderfalls was released on DVD. The Listener is back with a second season after a year off. Firefly got a DVD release and then a theatrical movie follow-up. Damages and Friday Night Lights were picked up by satellite serivce provider DirecTV for their own channel. The Warner Bros. production Southland was rescued by fellow WB subsidiary TNT after NBC spontaneously cancelled the show. Just the other day FOX granted an extension to the life of sci-fi hit FRINGE when compared to non-sci-fi programming FRINGE doesn’t measure up. Then there are the slightly more effective campaigns – the ones which are proven in the numbers. Take for example Republic Of Doyle. While not expected to be a huge hit on CBC it fit nicely and was given a 12 episode order for the 2009-10 season. The ratings for its first season were competitive. It’s facebook listing has now well over 50000 fans. Most American shows don’t get that much “like” on facebook. CBC gave the show a second season to see what would come of the little show that could. A few weeks in to broadcast of the second season CBC renewed the show for a third season. The second season is almost done and at a quick rough estimate the ratings are up somewhere about 20% from season 1. Republic Of Doyle is the little show that did. The campaign was waged in-season with friends, family, co-workers, and strangers.
What makes the “Save Our Show” campaign for Detroit 1-8-7 a little different is that the local broadcaster is in on the campaign to have the network renew the show. The season 1 finale of Detroit 1-8-7 was bumped to Sunday, 20 March 2011 thanks to Poor Charlie’s #WINNING on 20/20. On the late night news immediately following “Blackout” the Detroit ABC station WXYZ included the following in their news broadcast.
Posted in ABC Studios shows | Tags: ABC, Detroit 1-8-7, FRINGE, Poor Charlie, Republic Of Doyle, Save Our Show, The Listener, Wonderfalls, WXYZ | No Comments »
Made Elsewhere
Wednesday, 12 January 2011 | Author Jessica
With the series premiere of InSecurity and the return of Flashpoint to tv last week, albeit only in Canada, and the struggling/demise of some other shows not set in the major cities i thought to compare North American drama shows not made in Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, or Toronto. How many of these shows are there? How many of them make it to a second season? It is a bit hard to pick out the shows not made in those four cities as most of the time even if they are set in Maryland & Virginia (as NCIS is) they are made in the Los Angeles area.
The following list is far from complete. I did set a few limitations, the most significant being that the show has to be set on this planet, at least in part. Inclusion in the list when a show has filmed in one of the 4 cities only happens when there is significant and recognisable use of the actual setting of the show for filming (such as with Wonderfalls). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in CTV shows, FOX shows, General, Muse shows, NBC Universal shows, Shaw Media shows, Showtime, WB shows | Tags: Being Human, Canadian, Charmed, Detroit 1-8-7, Everwood, Flashpoint, Haven, Journeyman, ratings, rookie blue, The Good Guys, The Pillars Of The Earth, Wonderfalls, young americans | No Comments »
