Year: 2006

Not about CBC and “The One”, but it could be

News programming used to be a social commitment. Stories would reflect the community and its values, not unlike a politician elected to represent the ideals of his or her voters. A TV station’s identity was forged largely through the faces, attitudes and responsibilities of its news division.

Now, the overriding concern of every TV program is to make money. Cheap syndication replaces more expensive local news content. The ability to reflect one’s community through educating, enlightening stories is tarnished by ratings-driven titillation. New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote of a 20-year trend in which the media … have steadily replaced journalistic standards with those of show business.

Credit where it’s due

One of the guys over at SimplePie recently posted a progress report that also included words of thanks to yours truly. (I’m actually not trying to find all the crazy feeds they mention, it just happens that I’m subscribed to some… interesting… ones. Tim Bray, Jacques Distler, Sam Ruby, Ian Hickson, Donna, I’m looking at you. :))

It occurred after reading Ryan’s entry that I haven’t actually posted anything here about the project, although I’ve been using it for several months and have talked it up a bit around the web. So without further ado I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Ryan Parman and Geoffrey Sneddon for all their hard work at building—and supporting!—a capable PHP-based feed framework. I suspect (hope?) MagpieRSS may not be long for this world once people start to discover SP.

My favourite mistake

I accidentally recorded The Jane Show tonight, expecting to get an episode of the American version of The Office… and for once I’m glad the Zap2It listings are so often wrong for Canadian stations.

I’ve always liked Teresa Pavlinek, who created, produces and writes for the show as well as starring in it as Jane Black. She’s got a dry, sharp sense of humour—which I have a feeling is natural, although it’s certainly been developed through Second City, History Bites, the comedy troupe Women Fully Clothed, and the like—that works well in the (semi-autobiographical?) role. The two other main female characters, played by Patricia Zentilli and Kate Trotter, are also strong and well-written, if tonight’s episode (Thursday Night Rules) was any indication.

As befits its title, the strongest part of The Jane Show is its depiction of Jane: her life, her relationships and, from time to time, her inner thoughts. She’s not wacky, or bigger than life, or too clever for her own good… she’s just Jane, that kinda-cool, kinda-weird, kinda-normal girl that you see on the elevator every couple of days. Off the top of my head I can think of at least ten friends, acquaintances, and co-workers who fit the Jane mold surprisingly closely.

The show is nominally a sitcom, fortunately sans laugh track, that’s centered around an office—I didn’t catch exactly what the company does, but does it really matter?—but I found the scenes set in that environment to be the weakest part of the episode. (I’ll admit I did find some of the copier bits humourous.) I didn’t find the male characters quite as well-formed as the women either, and didn’t really recognize or identify with them, with one small exception that has the feeling of being a running theme.

There’s even an online extra: Jane, the ex-aspiring writer-turned-office-drone, has a blog. So far it’s pretty mundane, but I hope (as with the show) that we get to see a little of Jane’s aspiring writer side. Actually, even more than that I think what I’d really like to see is Teresa blogging as herself, about herself; everything I’ve read about her suggests she’d have a lot of interesting things to say.

By the way, the show is Canadian, top to bottom; with a bit of promotion (and luck) I think it could be Global’s answer to CTV’s Corner Gas. Apparently, also like Corner Gas, The Jane Show was bounced around for a while before finding a home; I wonder who at CBC English Television is kicking him/herself for missing this one too?

The Jane Show is a keeper. Perhaps the best recommendation I can give is to say that I’ve set up my PVR to record The Jane Show whenever it’s on… deliberately this time. 🙂

CBC typos quiz typos

The real error in the quiz has been fixed, so I’ve removed the style that required people to swipe over the hidden answer. Thanks, CBC.ca editors!

There are two more spelling, grammatical, typographical and careless errors in CBC.ca’s You be the editor quiz than the answers indicate. Ironically, one is in the entry that’s purported to be completely correct. (If you’re viewing this in a CSS-capable browser, swipe the empty space below; if you’re not, or if you’re reading the syndicated feed, avert your eyes now!)

  • Question #15 has no opening double-quote (“) for the quotation.
  • Question #20 is more of a think-o, but all’s fair according to the rules: It was the first funeral for any of the victims…. Well, yeah.

Oh, and the answers for #7 and #16 also have typos, although the original questions are correct in this respect: #7 omits the word in in one of its corrections, and there is no opening double-quote (“) for the quotation in #16.

Hey, you make a challenge like that, you’ve got to expect this sort of thing. 🙂

This is why people pirate CDs

You can now PRE-ORDER the brand new “Barenaked Ladies Are Me” CD!

Order before Aug 22nd and receive as a bonus the “BNL: All New Revue (Live from the Glenn Gould Theatre)” disc FREE, which is a live acoustic version of the new album.

[…] These 13 songs will also be available digitally with a bonus of two tracks for purchase of the entire album. In addition, a 25 song package called Barenaked Ladies Are Me: Deluxe Edition, will be available digitally (album only). With the purchase of the Deluxe Edition, fans will be have the opportunity to obtain either two bonus tracks OR four bonus tracks for pre-ordering. Details on the digital pre-order to follow.

In addtion [sic], a USB stick featuring 29 songs plus other special content will be released Sept 12.

That means I can:

  • buy a 13-track CD today and get a CD with the same songs re-recorded live, but miss out on 16 songs plus “special content”
  • buy the same 13-track CD next month, but miss 16 songs, “special content” and the live version
  • buy a 13-track MP3-crippled FLAC version of the CD with two extra songs, but miss 14 songs plus “special content” and live version
  • buy a 25-track MP3-crippled FLAC version of the CD, but miss two songs and special content and live version
  • buy a 25-track MP3-crippled FLAC version of the CD, but miss special content and live version
  • buy a 29-track MP3-crippled FLAC version of the CD, get everything but the live version
  • buy the CD and the second (16-track?) release in 2007, get everything but the live version

Let me recap: in order to get all 42 tracks that are being released, I have to buy the album at least twice, and more than a third of the content will be at inferior quality.

Well colour me a little more pleased. According to their July 21 podcast, there will be a subsequent physical-CD release in 2007 that includes the additional tracks. Thanks BNL!

But wait, there’s more! From the BNLBlog: The best bet, frankly, [is] to download stuff (in high-quality flac format!) from barenakedladies.com… (emphasis mine). Good on you, gents!

Nice goin’, sis!

I would also like to specifically thank a small but remarkable team that managed the project and the production of this Final Report:

[…]

Anne Janes, B.A. (Hons.), M.P.A.
Policy Analyst