Mosque... coming to the U.S.?

Well, I had the utmost respect for CBC's sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, but all that was lost when I visited their website and found it made heavy use of the Comic Sans font. Come on guys, Comic Sans? Let's get with the 21st Century...

Comic Sans loathing aside, this CBC sitcom is another example of how Canadians do an excellent job at creating television programming that contatins a clear message. In case you don't know exactly what I'm talking about here, Little Mosque follows a group of Muslims living in a small Saskatchewan town as they start their own mosque and struggle for acceptance. While the bigotry the group faces is used as a comedic device in each episode, the show's message of tolerance resonates soundly.

It's clear that Canadians are watching, too. The series premiere attracted more than 2 million viewers--in Canada, a show that draws in 1 million viewers is considered a huge success.

While 2 million viewers doesn't exactly spell success for shows on American television networks, its success north of the border has caused networks here to stand up and take notice. Fox, interestingly enough, has picked up the rights to develop a U.S. version of Little Mosque. When, or if, this show will ever make it to air here in the U.S. is pretty uncertain. If the Canadian version is any indication, Little Mosque will need to make a few improvements--namely in the acting and storyline--if it is to prove popular with American audiences.

But Little Mosque isn't the first "show with a message" that has proven popular in Canada. Over on CBC's rival network, CTV (who successfully wrestled the Canadian rights to air the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games from CBC), Degrassi: The Next Generation is one of Canada's highest-rated dramas that frequently addresses issues like coming out, teen pregnancy and more. Issues that, until recently, American shows didn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Degrassi has enjoyed moderate success south of the border in the United States, where it is the highest-rated show on The N cable network.

The Fox deal doesn't rule out the possibility of the orginal Canadian version of Little Mosque ending up on American cable TV, however, so it is completely possible that we might see an American version competing with the Canadian version for the attention of U.S. television viewers.

"The Magic of Satellite Radio"

Those words are frequently spoken by one of my favorite hosts, Frank DeCaro, during his weekday talk show on Sirius OutQ, one of over 100 channels available on Sirius Satellite Radio. I've been a Sirius subscriber for the better part of three years now, and I must say, it's been a great three years. I don't spend an extremely large amount of time in the car, but when I am in there, I'm grateful I have the selection of entertainment that Sirius offers.

In my opinion, I equate satellite radio with cable television in that satellite radio channels are more targeted toward a certain audience, much in the same vein that a channel like Lifetime is targeted towards women, aged 18-49. Just like you have to pay a monthly fee for cable TV, you have to pay for Sirius, which currently goes for $12.95 a month. On the flipside, however, while you pay for cable TV, you still have to wade through the same amount of commercials as there are on over-the-air, free TV; Sirius features around 100 music channels that are around 100 percent commercial-free.

Channels like Sirius OutQ are the reason why satellite radio, while it has yet to turn a profit, will eventually succeed. OutQ is the only radio station in the country that targets its programming to gays and lesbians, all the while bringing in a sizable straight audience as well. Besides OutQ, Sirius also has several channels targeted toward women (Lime and Martha Stewart Living Radio) and even has a channel for truckers. Over on the music side, there are four channels dedicated to dance/electronic music, and around eight channels for fans of rock. (I have the dance channel sitting right next to the alternative rock channel in my presets.) Satellite radio is perhaps the only place outside of the Internet where you can find niche programming like this, and as readily accessible on a mobile platform.

As far as the Sirius-XM merger is concerned, it's about time the Federal Communications Commission went ahead and gave its final seal of approval. While I am an ardent Sirius fan, there is some content currently available exclusively on XM that I wouldn't mind having access to--namely Major League Baseball broadcasts. Plus, I've found the sound quality is slightly better on XM's music channels than Sirius', so that would be a definite plus.

I still find myself listening to terrestrial radio, mostly KCBS for traffic information as I find Sirius' traffic/weather channel pretty worthless when it comes to reporting stuff I need to know. I also routinely listen to Gary Radnich over on KNBR, a show that will forever have a home on terrestrial AM radio.

Water for Elephants

Sara Gruen's book Water for Elephants is on this summer's RTVF 110 required class reading list (it's also the San Jose State Campus Reading Program selection for 2008), and after reading it this past week, I must admit that it has earned itself on my list of highly recommended books. That's not easy for a selection that I've been required to read, as these are typically your standard-issue dry, unentertaining fare. Water for Elephants, on the other hand, is something that is engaging and hard to put down--I found myself reading it in increments of 70 pages or more.

The book is set in the early 1930s, when the Great Depression was at its height. The main character, Jacob Janikowski, was just about to graduate from the prestiguous Cornell University's veterinary school and join his father's veterinary practice in Connecticut. Just as Janikowski is about to start studying for his final examinations of his senior year, he gets the terrible news that not one, but both of his parents have been killed in an auto accident near their home.

News like this would naturally turn anyone's life upside down. Janikowski is excused from his final weeks of classes to return home to Connecticut to make sure all of his parents' affairs are in order. When he returns, Jacob is dismayed to find out that his parents had to mortgage their home in order to finance his Ivy League education, and a significant amount of money is still owed to the bank. Jacob inquires about using the money from his father's practice; but the county sheriff informs him there is none--his father had been performing his services in exchange for goods and other services because his clients did not have any money to pay him.

To put it simply, Jacob was seriously up a creek. Here he is, just a few weeks and exams away from a veterinary degree from Cornell, and now he has nothing. His room and board at the unversity is paid through the end of the semester, but after that, he will be joining the thousands of homeless people out on the streets. Returning to school but finding it impossible to study, Jacob simply walks out of his final exam and continues walking for miles, into the night until he stumbles on a train and hops aboard.

Jacob, who was days away from a veterinary degree from Cornell, has just hopped a circus train. Not knowing anything else to do, he joins the circus staff at its lowest position--cleaning up after the animals.

In setting this book during the Great Depression, Gruen casts a critical look at the area of social classes. The argument can be made that social classes in America were never more front and center at any time than they were during the economic disaster of the 1930s. All but the upper classes had any form of economic stability during this time, and even the relatively secure middle class fell upon extremely hard times following the boom of the Roaring Twenties. Reflecting that sort of fragile stability is our protagonist--Jacob Janikowski--who experiences what he percieves to be relative economic stability snatched away in the when his parents are killed in an auto wreck. In the blink of an eye, Jacob has gone from studying at a prestigious Ivy League university to working for the circus as a college educated pooper scooper.

Gruen shows that social classes are with us in every area, in society as a whole and even in different sectors of society, such as our jobs. The circus is an excellent example of this phenomenon, where the circus animals are on the lowest rung of the circus social ladder, followed by the circus hands, performers and managment. When it comes out that Jacob is in fact a college-educated veterinarian, even if he did not take his final exams, his status immediately rises up a rung. He is bunked with a performer, Walter, who is not so keen on the idea of rooming with someone he considers one of the circus hands. Jacob becomes a friend of the equestrian manager, August and his wife, Marlena, who rides a liberty horse during the circus' main event. He is frequently invited into their stateroom on the train to dine with them and experiences how the upper echelon of the circus lives.

When the circus is ultimately raided in its waning days, it's the circus animals who are first to go as the result of a mass stampede, followed by the circus hands, some of which are unceremoniously red-lighted, or tossed off the train. This harkens back to the society's feelings at the time that these people were disposable, wait long enough and another unskilled, unemployed worker will come along willing to be paid even less than the last.

Water for Elephants is an important book that should be read just to understand what role social classes play in our overall society. I highly encourage you to pick up a copy and make it part of your personal reading program.

New banner

Your surly author finally got around to dabbling around in Photoshop CS3 Extended long enough to churn out the promised flashy new header. Not bad for a little experimenting on my laptop in a Starbucks cafe, if I do say so myself... 

The birth of a television station

My journalistic background is in television news, and many of my friends know me as something of a "television geek." I tend to know a lot of things going on in the TV industry, and something very fascinating is happening down in San Diego. The Tribune-owned CW affiliate KSWB successfully wrestled the Fox network affiliation away from Televisa-owned XETV (yes, that's a Mexican station). The big swap is going to take place on August 1, and the KSWB creative services department has done a great job in creating some interesting promos to let people know about the switch. Thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, you can view some of the better ones after the jump.

Not fiction, not nonfiction...

For many Oprah Winfrey fans, James Frey may be the anti-Christ. He is, after all, one of the few people in the world who can say they have successfully, and very publicly, duped Oprah.

A Million Little Pieces is Frey's hybrid fiction/nonfiction memoir detailing his youth as an alcoholic and drug addict who had frequent brushes with the law. A 2006 Smoking Gun special report showed that Frey had indeed fabricated and embellished parts of his drug abuse and criminal convictions for the book. In 2005, Winfrey selected the book as an "Oprah's Book Club" book, which authors can fairly adequate to hitting the lottery. Millions of dedicated Oprah viewers flock to their local Borders, Barnes & Noble or other book warehouse to buy it the day after it's announced as a selection.

Combine Oprah's Book Club with a little controversy, and you have quite the recipe for success.

As an aspiring journalist, I personally believe that publications that claim to be nonfiction--as A Million Little Pieces was purported to be--should indeed be nonfiction. However, I freely admit that I had absolutely no interest in reading Frey's book until well after these allegations surfaced, after Doubleday, the book's publisher, included a disclaimer in the front of the book calling out the fact that the truthfulness of some of the book's details were in question.

Of course, the backlash that followed was warranted. After all, Frey did lie to millions of people and he should be held accountable. He came back to the Oprah Winfrey show for a public scolding from Winfrey herself, and the spectacle was repeated throughout the following days on cable news shows and national network newscasts. Not only was Frey a former alcoholic, drug addict and criminal, but he was also now known as a first-rate liar.

Is that punishment enough? Frey still gets to keep all of the money earned from the contract he signed with A Million Little Pieces' publisher, and here we are, two years later, still talking about him.

A Song Falls Flat

When Song, Delta Air Lines' experiment at operating an "airline-within-an-airline" failed in the latter part of 2005, it did not come as much of a surprise to many airline industry analysts or enthusiasts like me. Let's face it - these sorts of ventures don't exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to success: someone only has to look at the failures of Shuttle by United, Continental Lite, US Airways' Metrojet, and, most recently Ted (the successor of Shuttle by United).

PBS's Frontline newsmagazine took an in-depth look at the behind-the-scenes workings of Song when the founding team was putting together the brand prior to the airline's launch in 2003. Hindsight may be 20/20 in these situations, but as self-described "marketing medic" John Moore wrote in his blog Brand Autopsy back in 2005, that time spent on developing the Song brand might have proven to be the airline's downfall.

To use a musical analogy (as Song was wont to do), Song was trying to sing too hard and outstretched its vocal cords to the point of permanent damage.

"Song was too busy creating a brand to think about being a business," Moore wrote. The by-product of that brand, he says, was the creation of a weak business. Companies like Starbucks, which let the way they did their business build their brand, succeeded because of this mentality. The central value that Starbucks instills in its partners (not employees; your surly editor knows this because he himself was a Starbucks partner for the better part of three years) is the creation of a "third place," a welcoming place between home and work.

Starbucks accomplished that not by putting big banners in Manhattan proclaiming that a neighborhood Starbucks is your "third place," but by instilling business practices that enabled their customers to perceive this for themselves. "The business creates the brand," wrote Moore, and few have followed that philosophy as well as Starbucks.

P.S. Through the research for this post, Brand Autopsy has won itself a place on my blogroll. There's lots of fascinating stuff on there for the branding enthusiast, I encourage you to check it out.