Global TV’s Fall TV Schedule
CanWest Brings You More American Shows More of the Time

August 4, 2004TelevisionRaymond Tomlin

Come this fall, Global TV intends to play much the same game with their schedule that Fox, south of the border, announced a couple of months back. Which means that, from week-to-week throughout the fall and winter, you won’t be able to count on finding many of your favourite television shows in the same spots they were the week before.
As the Globe and Mail’s Guy Dixon wrote in his piece on Global’s upcoming fall 2004 television schedule …

The old idea of a network simply débuting a fall lineup of programmes, which then repeats in the summer, has been laid to rest. In its place is a complicated schedule of show premières stretching into January.

As is the case with the two other private Canadian broadcasters — CTV and CHUM — Global’s fall schedule is heavily laden with American imports.

As you’ve seen in the endless ads for Global’s upcoming season, Friends spinoff Joey (Windows Media Player required); the new Heather Locklear – Blair Underwood airport drama, LAX; The Practice spinoff, Boston Legal; the John Goodman comedy, Center of the Universe; the hour-long drama, The Mountain; House, an ensemble hospital drama about doctors at a Boston medical clinic; Jonny Zero, a drama from ER and The West Wing-producer John Wells about an ex-con with ambitions of becoming a private investigator (January to June); and summer try-outs North Shore and One Tree Hill are among the 40 new shows that have made Global’s fall schedule.

The Apprentice will anchor Global TV’s Thursday nights when the new television season begins this fall.
In addition to The Apprentice and the similarly themed The Billionaire, Global will unveil a pair of boxing-based reality series over the coming year: The Contender, from Apprentice and Survivor producer Mark Burnett and Sylvester Stallone, and The Next Great Champ, featuring champion boxer Oscar De La Hoya and a roster of unknown prize-fighting prospects.
An ever-shifting TV landscape means changes for both Global and CH’s (the latter, Global’s regional network designation) primetime schedules.
Will and Grace and Malcolm in the Middle will return but at new times and, in Will & Grace’s case, on a new day: Wednesdays at 8:30.
24 will return in January, when it will move to Mondays at 9.
Returning shows on familiar nights and times: The Apprentice, Crossing Jordan, Everybody Loves Raymond, Fear Factor, Gilmore Girls, JAG, Judging Amy, King of the Hill, Las Vegas, NYPD Blue, The Simpsons, Survivor, That ’70s Show, Two and a Half Men and Without A Trace.
Returning Canadian shows include Andromeda, Doc, Mutant X, Train 48, Zoe Busiek: Wild Card, and the Burnaby-based Stargate SG-1.
Global’s new Canadian reality series include The Block, a home renovation series based on a popular Australian original, featuring four couples competing to see who can best renovate a run-down apartment; Last Chance for Romance, a relationship dating programme set at a Caribbean resort hotel; and The Temps, a hidden-camera series about unsuspecting office temps compelled to cope with bizarre workplace situations.
And given the recent success of the documentary form, Global has announced that it will produce and air 30 new homegrown documentaries, including a profile of Canada’s women’s Olympic soccer team, a look at the Vivendi-Universal media merger between Jean-Marie Messier and Edgar Bronfman Jr., and a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of Vanity Fair, O, Playboy and Macleans magazines.
As for the remaining Canadian television network schedules: here’s a peek at CBC’s, CTV’s and CHUM’s fall television schedules.
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.

Tech Tuesday: Focus on Security

August 3, 2004Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

Scan Your Computer for Trojans, Worms and Viruses, For Free
The Japanese antivirus company, Trend Micro, has come up with an effective online virus scan, called Housecall. Just click on the following link, and Housecall will scan your computer for intruders. Depending on the size of your hard drive(s), and the relative power of your computer’s CPU, the process should take anywhere from about half an hour to an hour. Trend Micro updates the virus definitions each time you activate the scan.
You can also run Trend Micro’s Hackercheck, simultaneously, to check for possible hacker intrusion points, or open (which oughta be closed) ports.
In addition, the company offers their Damage Cleanup Engine.
Here’s how to set it up: Create a folder called sysclean on your C:\ root directory. Click here to download the Sysclean package (bottom of the page), and save the sysclean.com file to the C:\sysclean folder. Next (and this is important), click on latest pattern file. You’ll be taken to a new page. Scroll down and click on HTTP, and save the file to your sysclean folder.
You’ll have to unzip this file, and extract it to your sysclean folder. Finally, click on the sysclean.com file; the engine will start. The Sysclean package:

terminates all malware instances in memory
removes malware registry entries
removes malware entries from system files
scans for and deletes all malware copies in all local hard drives

The Damage Cleanup Engine will take about an hour, or so, to run.
While you’re at it, you might as well download the latest version of Network Associates’ McAfee Stinger to scan your computer for the 45 newest Trojans and worms. McAfee Stinger 2.3.7 installation instructions are here.
Of course, scanning for viruses using Housecall and Hackercheck, and running the Damage Cleanup Engine does not obviate the need for an effective, always on, antivirus programme. Grisoft continues to offer AVG as an effective, free, antivirus programme for non-commercial users.

All the Right Moves: How Conservatism Won

August 2, 2004PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

In a new book titled The Right Nation: How Conservatism Won, written by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Oxford-educated American correspondents for The Economist, the two Brits present a vividly detailed study of why conservatives rule American politics (and, by extension, set the agenda for Canadian politics).
The authors trace the history of the conservative movement from the McCarthy era, when ‘conservatism was a fringe idea,’ to the second Bush administration and the ‘victory of the right’. They dissect the new ‘conservative establishment’, which combines the intellectual force of think tanks, business interests and sympathetic media outlets, and argue that continuing Republican hegemony is likely.
Why? Three simple reasons explain why conservatives keep defeating the left, the authors suggest: The right wins the battle of ideas, has a more determined and focused army of activists, and is reaping the benefits of long-term changes in American society.
And, lest you think that Micklethwait and Wooldridge are themselves conservatives, they take pains in the introduction to disclaim any allegiance to either of America’s “two great political tribes.”
In his review of the book for Mother Jones magazine, Michael Kazin accepts the cogency of the arguments made by Micklethwait and Wooldridge, and writes that if the left is to succeed in reclaiming the hearts and minds of the American people …

“ … they (must) rid themselves of a nagging contempt for the unhip, the poorly educated, and the God-fearing. If the left is not a movement of and for working people — blemishes and all — then it has little chance to regain its previous influence.”

Micklethwait and Wooldridge limn a powerful dynamic that unites the Burkean philosophy of the right-leaning think tanks with the moral passion of religious activists and the entrepreneurial energy of small-business owners. Whether this fusion of interests will disintegrate amidst its own internal contradictions or whether the left will come to reclaim the activist and collectivist agenda of working people remains to be seen.

Under The Volcano Celebrates 15 Years of People’s Struggle

August 1, 2004BC PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Celebrating 15 years of cultural resistance, Canada’s largest political arts festival, the Under The Volcano festival of Art & Social Change, will be held again this year at Whey-Ah-Wichen (Cates Park), in North Vancouver, on the traditional territory of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, Sunday, August 8th.
A child of Vancouver’s active indie music scene in the late 1980s, and largely youth-oriented in it’s early days, Under the Volcano has emerged as a successful and enduring cultural tool to educate and inspire alternatives to the overwhelmingly oppressive forces of patriarchy, racism, and capitalism.
For those living in, or near, Vancouver, see ya there next Sunday …