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I am more than half way through my time off and thinking “Holy Cow, I had all this time and how much of my To Do List have I done?” This is exactly what I projected I would do. Maybe the projecting part is what did me in. I am a perpetual victim of my own expectations. Ugh.

Anyway, I am going to forgive myself and let it go. Er, well, I’ll try anyway.

It is nearing the end of summer and I sure don’t like letting summer go. Spring and summer are the months that I feel like I come alive. On the wetcoast (no, that’s not a typo), we live through months of grey and rain which to those who are not used to it, can be very depressing. Well, even those who ARE used to it get pretty grumpy after weeks of misery.

It is also nearing the end of months of wondering what is going to happen to the Little TV Station That Could. 

Some of you will remember that months ago I talked about my husband being laid off from his television job of 29 years. So far, we have survived it. He has picked up some independent production work, and has spent the last month working at a television station in Vancouver just as a fill in. But the station where he used to work is going to permanently shut its doors on August 31st, which to many of us is unbelievable.

There are a group of people at work trying to save it, consisting of employees, former employees and other investors. And there is great hope that somehow it will survive, but even if it does, it’ll be a long, hard road ahead to make it viable.

Television is not what it used to be to most of us who grew up with it. Remember when there was only one TV in the house, it might still have been black and white, and when a certain show came on, the whole family would gather to watch? Most families have more than one TV these days, and nobody is watching…and when they are, it is not together as a family. Many kids growing up now were told by their parents NOT to watch TV, that it’s bad for them. So what have they migrated to? Computers and hand-held game devices. Yeah, much better!

In some ways, I don’t blame people for moving away from television. There is a LOT of crap on TV these days. Much of it is due to some know-it-all TV execs somewhere trying to lure younger people to the set, or to hang on to the “National Enquirer” types. I’m talking about the people who watch reality shows. Cookie cutter television shows abound. Once something succeeds, everybody tries to reinvent it and as a result, you get the same show over and over, but with a different name. You know, reality television has probably driven as many people away from television as it has kept others around. But I’ve already written a blog railing at reality television, so enough of that. 

The one thing that many television stations have lost is the “local” aspect. Once a station gets swallowed up by a big conglomerate (this is also true for radio), these big companies do their best to get rid of anything local about it. The company that my husband worked for tried to ask the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), to allow for LESS local programming, because they didn’t want to pay for it. It’s cheaper to run a bunch of crappy, US-bought shows than to pay local people to write, create and produce local television. But what is the point in having a local television station if there is nothing “local” about it? This is what has driven many people away from watching.

I don’t think that because a company is BIG that it has to be BAD. Unfortunately, however, it becomes easier for a big company to “streamline” certain aspects of its organization to save money, which in turn means job losses due to centralization. Centralization leads to loss of individuality…and let’s face it, people in Winnipeg don’t care what’s happening to people in Victoria unless it’s something REALLY BIG like an earthquake or an invasion of some sort! And vice versa.

Okay, it’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we would rather know more about ourselves than we would about somebody else. And that’s where, in many instances, television has lost out in the last few years.

Except for local news, many TV stations don’t have the budget or the creative minds to develop local programming. And the creative minds who used to have these ideas, have been told to do something else. Although I realize that C.S.I. and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire are far beyond what any small local television station can produce, I do believe that there is a desire by television viewers to see and hear more about themselves and their communities, and not just in a news-type show. And as a result of trying to lure younger people to the TV set, television executives have actually driven many away who were actually DEVOUT television viewers…people of my generation and older. Television was, and is, our habit. Why encourage us to turn it off?

Okay, I don’t really know anything. These are all simply my opinions and I have never run a television station. But I did work at one for eight years, my husband for 29 years, and we might soon become part owners of it. Some might say that television is dying. But they said that television would kill radio, and it didn’t, and I doubt that the internet will kill TV. However, we have to take the best parts of it and create a model that helps it to succeed. And if anyone can do it, we can. 

Winter is coming, and possibly, a LOT of hard work.

Wish us luck!

IJ