Welcome to the first instalment of VanRamblings’ new Wednesday night TV feature. Each week, we’ll publish the latest television news, hot watercooler gossip, as well as seek to provide insight into the role of TV in our culture.
Throughout the month of July, VanRamblings will publish the upcoming fall TV schedules for each of the Canadian networks (the fall 2004 schedules for the American networks were published earlier, in Television — all you have to do is scroll down). This week, we begin with an introduction to the CBC’s fall television schedule, to be followed by CTV, Global and CHUM.
CBC Hopes For A ‘Must See’ Fall Line-Up … shyeeah, right
Here it is, the beginning of summer and the Canadian television networks are just getting around to announcing their fall television schedules.
Decidedly less exciting that the American fall television schedules (because Canadian TV, for the most part, acts simply as a re-broadcaster of American sitcoms, dramas and specials), there are nonetheless a few pleasant surprises, particularly on the CBC 2004 TV schedule.
Even so, Canada’s public broadcaster has unveiled a rather ho-hum fall schedule featuring familiar faces in unfamiliar places, a pair of new reality-based series, and an ensemble family comedy titled Ciao Bella (Adobe Acrobat required), about the trials and tribulations of an Italian-Canadian family in Montreal, from Mambo Italiano-writer Emile Gaudreault.
Something to look forward to: CBC will air a series of dramas, movies and miniseries this fall, titled High Impact, including a prequel to the successful miniseries Trudeau (Trudeau: The Prequel), and a sure to be groundbreaking, four-hour miniseries based on the life of five-time Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas (The Tommy Douglas Project).
CBC will also broadcast a drama based on the illegal trade in human trafficking across Europe, titled Sex Traffic, and H20, a futuristic political thriller. The British soap opera Coronation Street is scheduled to air four nights a week this fall, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
CBC’s Sunday Report will expand to a full hour come September, will go by a new name, Sunday Night, and have as its new hosts, Evan Solomon and Carole MacNeil. The much-praised Marketplace and the watchable and intriguing business programme, Venture, will kick off CBC’s Sunday evening programming this fall, at 7 and 7:30, respectively.
CBC’s award-winning drama, Da Vinci’s Inquest will move to Tuesdays, where it will follow Making The Cut, a reality TV series — a nationwide talent search for six of the best unsigned professional hockey players — at 9.
Returning series include The Nature of Things, the fifth estate, Royal Canadian Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, On the Road Again, Just for Laughs Gags, The Red Green Show, Rick Mercer’s Monday Report, The Wonderful World of Disney and Mary Walsh’s Open Book.
Tom Stone and the investigative news programme Disclosure have been cancelled. The powers that be at the CBC ought to have cut the execrable This Is Wonderland from their schedule, but apparently this laughably awful programme will be returning after Christmas.
As for the remaining Canadian television network schedules: here’s a peek at CHUM’s fall TV schedule, as well as a glimpse of CTV’s fall 2004 schedule.
For the major U.S. networks fall television schedules, click on the following direct VanRamblings’ links: ABC, NBC, the WB, Fox and UPN, and CBS.

Daniel Pollera, Summer Place

Of late, what with the blog and all, VanRamblings’ regular television-watching has tended to fall by the wayside. Not everyone, though, sits around in their underwear surfing the Net, hour after hour, in search of stories to post, or reflecting on issues of the day about which to blog. And, thank God for that, eh?
So, maybe, as was written mid-week last week, Fox’s proposed programming schedule isn’t all that confusing after all. As Alex Strachan wrote in the Vancouver Sun yesterday (and damn CanWest for not making The Sun available online to non-subscribers), “Summer used to be a time of reruns and low viewership, but the TV model has changed in recent months to a year-round schedule.”
How so? Well, take The Jury, for example. A new drama from Oz and Homicide: Life on the Street-producers Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson and Peabody Award-winning writer James Yoshimura, which was originally set to air in the fall. Instead, it will d�but next Monday, June 7th, on Global (in Canada) and Fox (in the U.S.).
Other new series include:

• North Shore, a Fox soap set in a Hawaiian resort, featuring Brooke Burns and James Remar. It débuts Friday, June 18th.
• Good Girls Don’t, a comedy from the creator on That 70s Show, about five 20-somethings who will go to any lengths to find love and affection. Due in Canada on June 24th.
• Touching Evil, the made-in-Vancouver USA Network series, which Gillian Flynn in Entertainment Weekly recently called “brilliant.” Set to premiere on Global, June 27th.
• The L-Word, an ensemble drama about the lives and loves of a group of lesbian friends living in Los Angeles, featuring Jennifer Beals, Toronto-born Mia Kershner, Karina Lombard and Vancouver’s Robyn Ross and Lauren Lee Smith. The L-Word will arrive on Global sometime in August.

Other summer programming includes a new airing of the Emmy Award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers, which will air on CBC beginning on June 22nd.

Click on the graphic above for more info on FOX TV’s 2004-05 programming schedule.

Talk about confusing. In announcing their fall TV schedule this morning, Fox TV jettisoned the whole “gee shucks, here are the great programmes we’ve lined up for you this fall” mantra, in favour of offering three different, and dare we say confusing, programming schedules — June til October, November to January, and January to June — all of which you’ll find here.
And, yes, there will be a test — so study Fox’s programming schedule well.
Daniel Fienberg, at Zap2it.com, tries to make some sense of Fox’s schedule for all seasons, as does David Bauder at Associated Press.
The Futon Critic weighs in, as does a beleaguered Gary Levin at USA Today.
The Mini Network: UPN’s Fall Programming Schedule

Click on the graphic above for more info on UPN’s fall programming schedule.

Update, at 6:30 pm.: The mini American network, UPN (owned by Viacom / CBS) released its none-too-thrilling fall schedule today. Zap2it.com offers network info here, as well as a link to UPN’s fall programming schedule.
The Futon Critic offers insight, while USA Today’s Gary Levin is excited. Well, not really.
For the remaining fall television schedules for the major U.S. networks, click on the following direct VanRamblings’ links: ABC, NBC, the WB, and CBS.

CBS Fall Schedule, 2004-05. Click on the graphic above for more info.

Having excised middling fare, and middling actors, like David Morse in Hack, Craig T. Nelson in The District, and Dabney Coleman in The Guardian from their current schedule, this fall CBS introduces the tried-and-true, with more middling actors, like Emmy award-winner Rob Lowe in dr. vegas, John Goodman in Center of the Universe, and Gary Sinise in CSI: NY.
Otherwise, weighing in on CBS’ fall 2004 schedule are Michele Gershberg and Steve Gorman, writing for Reuters; The Futon Critic; Rick Porter at Zap2it.com; and Andrew Wallenstein at The Hollywood Reporter.
Update, at 7:40 p.m.: Seems that, earlier today, the only Net-based info the CBS network could seem to muster, given their obvious paucity of intellectual and creative resources, was this Associated Press story by David Bauder. As of 1:24 p.m., CBS seemed never to have heard about the world wide web, and must have figured their audience hadn’t heard anything about it, either (thus, up until only a few minutes ago, CBS had posted no schedule grid, or programme links). That circumstance, fortunately, has changed. You can see the CBS schedule grid above, or click here for more information on the depth and breadth of CBS’ fall programme schedule.
For the remaining fall television schedules for the major U.S. networks, click on the following direct VanRamblings’ links: ABC, NBC, the WB, and FOX.