Canada gets more interested in star-gazing
We’re taking our lead from the States Celebrity news flourishing on TV
It’s 10: 30 a. m. A half- dozen editors for eTalk Daily, CTV’s nightly infotainment show, pull chairs together in a corner of their newsroom to discuss the lineup for that evening’s show. An item on Paris Hilton is rejected. But one on David Suzuki is considered. Around them, some of the show’s 80- plus staff toil away in the high-ceilinged room that was once the site of the mystical traditions of the Masons. Ben Mulroney and his eTalk co- host Tanya Kim will be along later to go over the story ideas being thrashed about at the editorial meeting.
“ We’re No. 1, we’ve been the leader and remain the leader,” boasts executive producer Jordan Schwartz about eTalk.
“ We’re No. 1 in every key demographic that matters,” counters Zev Shalev, Schwartz’s counterpart at rival Entertainment Tonight Canada
on Global. “ And we’re thrilled with that.”
ETalk launched in 2002 in the afternoons and then moved to the supper hour in 2003 with the advent of CTV’s Canadian Idol. But two months ago it began to face stiff competition in the celebrity journalism arena from such upstart rivals as ET Canada and Star Daily on the CHUM channels. CHUM also has a whole specialty channel devoted to the subject. Even the local Sun TV, formerly Toronto 1, has a suppertime entertainment news program in the running. And while the patrician Saturday Night magazine may be biting the dust, last month the gossip- minded, TorstarWeekly Scoop hit newsstands, promising the lowdown on stars. (Torstar also owns the Star.) The genre even has its own parody now in Popcultured with Elvira Kurt.
Still, Schwartz says roughly two-thirds of the content of eTalk’s half- hour is Canadian. Shalev says ET Canada wraps itself in the flag.
Schwartz says we always had a star system here in Canada, but it’s been in Quebec where the arts and entertainment scene thrives thanks to the culture’s linguistic insulation.
“ Instead of looking to the States, eTalk has looked to Quebec as our model to create that,” he says. But Schwartz doesn’t see the genre’s growing popularity as the result of viewers needing a diversion from bad news.
Rather, he notes, a lot more stars these days are getting involved in causes and issues outside of show business.
“ It almost seems like you could trace it back to 1995 and the O. J. Simpson trial,” says James Wood, director of production for CHUM Television. “ When legitimate news kind of crossed into tabloid journalism. It seems like there’s this demand for everything that is salacious and celebrity- driven.”
Shalev says the public doesn’t choose between serious news and entertainment news but rather consumes it all.