Blogcritics wouldn’t publish my Banff awards post because it was too short, and I didn’t feel like taking the time to pad it when I have so many other Banff articles in the works and it wouldn’t be news by the time they got around to posting it, so I Canadianized it and posted to TV, eh? instead:
After hanging with Will and Jill for a bit, I’m skipping the Kim Cattrall session — I’m a weirdo fan who’s more interested in the people behind the scenes — to study for my David Hoselton interview this afternoon. His The Craft session this morning was a cool peek into the House writing process from one-line idea to outline to script, and how things change along the way because of production and budget pressures and input from the producers, primarily showrunner David Shore, as well as the network/studio — though with a successful show, apparently those notes amount to “there should be an apostrophe after that ‘s'”.
By the way, yes, some day soon I will write something interesting instead of telling you about the interesting things I plan to write about.
Ive been in Banff less than 24 hours (got in late-ish last night after spending some soul-rejuvenating time with my old friend in my old ‘hood in Calgary) and yet this morning feels so long ago. I interviewed Martin Wood of Sanctuary, so I’ll have an article and also, provided my recorder captured the conversation decently, a future podcast interview.
Went to Master Classes with Alan Poul (Swingtown, Six Feet Under), Doug Ellin (Entourage), and Hart Hanson (Bones) — all highly entertaining in highly diverse ways — so I’ll have something on some of those at some point. Instead of reports on their talks, though, I’m hoping to eventually connect the dots with a few running themes of the festival and see what various speakers had to say about a subject. That’s the goal, anyway. The other way is easier.
Ran into Will, who’s at least as entertaining as anyone on stage but I’m sure he’ll share his own stories on his own blog.
The keynote speech that feels like days ago but was really this morning was presented by Richard Florida, economist and author of Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City. His thesis (in my layman’s oversimplification) is that the creative class — not just artists, but any industry where the real resource is the innovation of its employees, like the IT sector, or even Toyota — drives economic development of cities, and that particular cities foster the creative class better than others.
I’d love for someone to compare his philosophies with the Canadian television industry’s philosophy of spreading production across the country instead of developing our own “Hollywood.” Doomed to disaster? Though I hope to write something on his speech, that won’t be my article: I don’t have the insight or the research time for that.
Actual Banff-related posts coming soon. Tonight’s the awards, so I’ll do a quick write-up about the winners which should make it up on Blogcritics tomorrow morning. The rest will come when I make time to write about the speakers instead of listening to the speakers. Another full day of sessions and an interview tomorrow. That’s not a complaint – I wasn’t going to come to Banff this year, wanting to horde my holidays this year, until I realized that combined with a trip “home” to Alberta, this is one of the things I wanted to do with those horded holidays.
The Festival has a snippet of Florida’s speech available:
For Blogcritics I wrote a pretty dry overview of the Banff TV festival, which I’ll be covering again this year (hopefully less dryly):
Banff World Television Festival Unites Industry Professionals “The Banff World Television Festival isn’t simply a learning and networking opportunity for those in the television industry. Last year, more than $644 million in business deals were made at the four-day event, which takes place in a spectacular setting at the castle-like Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel surrounded by the Rocky Mountains of Banff National Park.” Read more.
By semi-popular demand – as a follow up to my Ben Silverman post, here’s some of the quotes I had transcribed before abandoning that article. There’s nothing earth-shattering about them since they’re from an event about a year ago and the man is not exactly press-shy so he’s said similar things elsewhere.
On the new job as NBC’s head: “It’s harder than I thought it would be. It’s a big, big ship. I’m in the oil tanker. And to move the oil tanker sometimes takes a mile. And I’m used to driving a fastboat. I definitely want to do a lot. I want to do it fast. But it’s hard. It’s harder than I thought. … I’ve got to stay the course and make sure this tanker turns.
“Everybody gets home after a busy day and the cacophony of their cell phone and their workplace and the amount of messages flooded at them and the despair of what’s going on in the geopolitical environment, and then they got one kid on a Sidekick and one kid around a video game and they can barely wrangle everyone around a dinner table to order pizza let alone cook, and I think television is still the escape. I still think you need to look at how you as a consumer watch television. I like to sit down and watch television. I want to come home and turn on my TV and play with my remote and I will discover something that will arrest me when I’m changing those channels. So I’m going to look to find those kinds of programs. But also that watercooler. Despite the fact that The Office goes onto iTunes the next day … that watercooler conversation is still part of our culture.”
“We believe in comedy in a big way. We have a huge Thursday night comedy lineup. I believe in multi-camera comedy. … Comedy is a great escape but it’s also a great forum to deal with issues that have been swept under the carpet: racism, class, terrorism, great tradition of breaking down walls, new families based around friends and brothers and sisters and single moms and dads.”
“I’m in a rare situation where I didn’t need this job, I wanted this job.”
“I want to create an environment that says this is a place that supports creative people.”
“I’m very conscious of making sure we have multiple genres on air, and great shows. It is easier to jump start with reality and the fact is, getting idea to market is quicker with a reality show than it is with a scripted show. We’ll be looking to get some great reality shows on air.”
“What’s changing is the distribution method. What’s not changing is the desire of the audience to consume high quality programming. And television is still by far the most powerful medium for creating brands, launching brands and influencing consumers, whether it’s to buy soap, watch another television show, or to build a business off your own television show, to extend your show into the online community.”
“The shows where audiences watched commercials the most were the high end upscale shows. The Office in fact was the number one show in which the audience watched the commercials, which I thought was kind of fascinating because I don’t think you would have expected that. … You’d think they’d be the ones most driven to DVRs … I think that has to do with engagement, and the fact that they are more engaged with shows that they think are more challenging.”
On finding out NBC had two executives dedicated to Second Life – they’d recently had a Christmas tree lighting in the virtual world: “After I discovered we had two execs I asked how many pepole did the tree lighting and it was something like 4,000 whereas 10 million watched the TV show. The reality is the numbers are not quite there yet. We’re looking at creating audience and building community in a more profound way and hopefully those numbers will continue to increase. “
Consider this like the blog version of scenes from an episode that was never finished. With NBC unveiling their next season’s plans in a scaled-back presentation to advertisers today, I was reminded by a post on Time’s Tuned In blog about my impressions of NBC head Ben Silverman. He was supposed to attend the Banff World Television Festival last year as the successful producer behind Ugly Betty and The Office, among others. Two weeks before the festival, he was given the top job at NBC, but he wanted to honour his commitment so he appeared via satellite instead.
I always regretted not finishing this post for Blogcritics. Even though he didn’t appear in person, the session moderated by the New York Times’ Bill Carter was one of my favourites that year, plus Silverman was big news at the time. But I didn’t have time to write it up while I was in Banff, I was burned out and then busy with the day job when I got home, and the moment passed me by.
There were lots of articles in the Canadian media coming out of it anyway, which also led to my hesitation. They tended to make the most of his comments that he liked Little Mosque on the Prairie and was coming to Canada with his shopping cart – none of those articles quite connected the dots that Silverman is known for remaking foreign shows, not importing them wholesale. NBC did pick up the Canadian series The Listener during the mini fire sale that happened during the strike — before it started production, so there’s still time for NBC to put their stamp on it — but Little Mosque remains on the shelf.
Anyway, here’s the rough draft beginnings of my Silverman post from June 2007, for what it’s worth. Don’t expect a lot of flow from one idea to the next – it’s a very incomplete draft.
New NBC Co-Chair Ben Silverman Inspires … and Frightens a Little
Ben Silverman makes me feel like a slacker. I’m sure he accomplishes more before breakfast than I possibly could in an entire year. It would probably be more accurate to say “lifetime,” but that’s just too depressing to admit. At the age of 35, he’s now one of the most powerful men in television thanks to his new title as co-chair of NBC, in charge of both the network and the studio.
If I worked for NBC, I’d be quaking after hearing him say, “I’m definitely the last person to leave the building, which is a culture I want to change.” I don’t think he meant he’s going to start going home earlier. “I place the highest expectation on my self, and then in turn I hope that rubs off on people around me,” he added.
Yet after listening to him for an hour via satellite at the Banff World Television Festival, I have a feeling that if he asked me to drink the Kool-Aid, I’d have a hard time resisting. He came across as a charismatic, inspirational leader, the kind of person who can say things like “I believe in karma and goodness” without sounding the slightest bit corny. His appearance at the festival – albeit not in person, as originally intended when he was “just” the CEO of Reveille Productions a mere two weeks before he was to come to Banff – is a testament to that philosophy, since it would have been difficult to blame the man for cancelling after his work day suddenly got a whole lot busier.
Reveille is the production company behind Ugly Betty, The Office, Known for reality but also successful in scripted, reputation for finding the best international and remaking them for an American audience.
So as head of all that, why accept a job taking over a struggling, fourth-place network? “Even a Golden Globe award-winning producer is still Willy Loman,” Silverman said. And even the head of a fourth-place network – who also has control over the studio – is more than Loman. “There’s a saying that it’s the seat, not the person, meaning as long as you’re in this chair they love you,” he explained. “It’s transparent and obvious – in a town that stabs you in the front while massaging your back, it’s clear this holds a lot of power in this community.”
That wasn’t the only appeal. Silverman’s father was a musical director at the Stratford Festival, while his mother was an opera singer and theatre producer before becoming a television executive who subscribed her eager 12-year-old son to Variety. After interning with Warner Brothers, Silverman worked for Brandon Tartikoff. He thinks his background as head of a successful production company, knowing all aspects of the business, rather than the usual ladder up the network is a huge advantage in an industry that’s facing upheaval.
“I grew up watching NBC. My mentors were from NBC,” said Silverman. “I feel like I am the perfect storm to do the job.”
His vision might be to challenge top-rated CBS, but it’s definitely not to become the next CBS. “I’m not into violence, I’m not into pedophilia, I’m not into serial killers.” Fortunately for Chris Hansen, among others, he’s not in charge of Dateline NBC, which falls under the news division.
Before he signed off, he thanked the crowd in Canada and added: “I have to give a shout out to Little Mosque on the Prairie. I think you guys are creating awesome television there as well. No stone unturned: I’ll be coming up with my shopping bag soon.”
[At the end, as usual when I’m drafting something, I stuffed all the raw quotes I was thinking of using in the article. It’s too much to summarize here, as I didn’t have much focus, just wanted to dump a lot of what he’d said out there. I was going to come back to the drinking the Kool-Aid thing — about his untested, sometimes wonky ideas for turning the network around contrasting somewhat with how inspiring he is in talking about them.]
I’m working on a meatier article about the Banff session with Ben Silverman, the new chairman at NBC, but in the meantime I tossed up this fluffier fare. It’s about a theme that came up in both Silverman’s session and Chuck Lorre’s Master Class – he’s the creator of Two and a Half Men and the upcoming Big Bang Theory.
