A Triumphant Return To TV: Fiona Forbes and Michael Eckford

July 8, 2004Media, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Mike and Fiona: ‘Happy Together’

By far, the single most frequent Google search bringing visitors to VanRamblings concerns longtime Urban Rush, and recently deposed CITY-TV Breakfast Television, hosts Fiona Forbes and Michael Eckford.
In a Vancouver Province e-entertainment news story published today, columnist Dana Gee reports that “Fiona Forbes and Michael Eckford have agreed to terms with Shaw TV and will return in October to host Urban Rush, a show they last helmed almost two years ago.”

“It’s great. I won’t have to get up in the middle of the night,” says Forbes, referring to the 19 months the pair spent on Citytv’s BreakfastTelevision. “When we met with our old bosses (at Shaw) and they made us an offer, Mike and I left the meeting and looked at each other and immediately high-fived. We really are excited about this.”

Forbes and Eckford will replace current UR hosts Erin Cebula and Russell Porter, whose contract expires July 16th.
The new Urban Rush will remain a one-hour talk show, and will be broadcast from the almost completed Shaw Tower in Coal Harbour, affording viewers a background vista (and here) of Vancouver’s magnificent harbourfront.

B.C. Liberals’ Popularity Continues To Plummet

July 8, 2004BC PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Mustel Group polling data, released July 8 2004

With only 313 days to go to the next election — May 17 2005 — just released Mustel Group polling figures for the popularity of provincial political parties show that the British Columbia Liberals are in freefall, having dropped 24 points, from 57% to 33%, since the last provincial election.
In other figures released by the Mustel Group, the polling firm reports that for the first time in several years, men tend to support the NDP rather than the B.C. Liberals (44% versus 36% supporting B.C. Liberals). Among women, 45% would vote NDP and 28% would support the B.C. Liberals.
Geographically, the NDP leads in every region of the province except the Lower Mainland suburbs (outside the City of Vancouver), where support for the B.C. Liberals and NDP is almost equal (38% BC Liberals, 40% NDP).

In more heartening news for those of us who would like to see the B.C. Liberals consigned to the dustbin of history, Premier Gordon Campbell’s approval rating remains at only 28%, with a full 60% of the province’s electorate finding fault with his performance and that of his government.
According to a story posted yesterday at Public Eye Online, editorial director Sean Holman wrote that the Ipsos-Reid polling company will also set about to publish B.C. voter intention and leadership approval numbers shortly.
Update: The just-released Ipsos-Reid poll states that “with 10 months to go until the next British Columbia provincial election … the NDP (38%) and B.C. Liberals (37%) are in a statistical dead heat among decided voters. The NDP is down 6 points since May, with all of the benefit going to the Green Party (18%, up 7 points). The B.C. Liberals are unchanged from May.”
According to the poll, leadership disapproval ratings for Premier Gordon Campbell continue to fall, with 62% of British Columbians either moderately or strongly disapproving of the Premier’s performance, as compared to a 54% approval rating for New Democratic Party leader Carole James.
Still, if the Ipsos-Reid poll results hold up, and the B.C. Green Party is in fact resurgent, the Greens look to re-elect the B.C. Liberals.

The CBC Fall Television Schedule

July 7, 2004TelevisionRaymond Tomlin

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.

Tech Tuesday: Security, Shutdown and Service

July 6, 2004Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

This week, a potpourri of items, mostly revolving around PC security issues, everything from security flaws in Internet Explorer to the latest variant on the Bagle / Beagle worm, and what Microsoft is planning to do about it.
U.S. Steers Consumers Away From IE

Was reading fellow Vancouver blogger Darren Barefoot the other day, and ran across this EE Times story in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) “recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer.”
Whether the forthcoming release of Windows Service Pack 2 (Windows Media Player video) will resolve the IE security flaw is yet to be seen.
In the meantime, as Darren suggests, you might consider downloading the latest version of the Firefox browser, which among its other features offers pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing (an amazing and addictive innovation), as well as, with its Thunderbird add-on, a next generation e-mail client that makes “e-mailing safer, faster and easier than ever before with features such as intelligent spam filters and a built-in spell checker.”
VanRamblings employs Firefox parent Mozilla as our default browser.
An Oxymoron: Microsoft Customer Service?
Allison Linn, an Associated Press business writer, in a story titled Microsoft Beefing Up Customer Service, writes that in response to “increased grumbling over its litany of security flaws (Microsoft will be) paying more attention its customers.” About time, wouldn’t you say?
Question of the Week

My PC takes about 5 minutes to shut down. What’s causing the problem, and how can I fix it? — Submitted by: Georgia S., Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia

Remember when turning off an electronic gadget meant flipping a switch? Shutting down a PC is much more complicated. Sometimes Windows takes an extremely long time to close, and too often the operating system doesn’t shut down at all.
First, the more programmes you have running on your system, the longer it takes for Windows to close each one before shutting itself down. You should simply close your programmes manually before exiting Windows.
Second, here’s some general advice: Bugs in hardware drivers cause most shutdown difficulties. Before you do anything else, go to the Web sites of your hardware (i.e. graphics card, network interface card, sound card, modem, printer) manufacturers and look up the latest updates.
Third, you might try restoring your Windows registry to an earlier point, when your computer was functioning properly (you will lose the use all programmes installed since that restore point, but you will not lose data).
Close all programmes, and return to your desktop. Select Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / System Restore. ‘Restore my computer to an earlier time’ should be selected. Click Next. Choose an earlier restore point. Click Next. On the following screen, click Next again. Wait. Your computer will restart in about 5 minutes, and your computer registry will have been restored to an earlier, hopefully pristine, restore point.
Fourth, the root of the s-s-l-l-o-o-w-w shutdown problem could be a software conflict. You might try updating the programmes you use (e.g. Irfanview, Quicktime, RealPlayer, Mozilla, Spybot, Acrobat Reader) to the latest versions. Oftentimes this will resolve a shutdown problem.
Otherwise, you might try this: to verify that you’re not clearing your virtually memory (swap file) whenever you exit Windows. Select Start / Run, type in gpedit.msc, and press Enter. Navigate the left pane as if you’re in Windows Explorer to Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Local Policies \ Security Options. In the right pane, scroll to Shutdown: Clear virtually memory pagefile. If the option is enabled, double-click it, select Disabled, and click OK.
For additional shutdown tricks, surf to PC World for more hints.
Security: Bagle/Beagle Variant Includes Source Code
According to a ZDNet story, “two new Bagle worm variants and the worm’s original assembler source code were spreading around the Internet on Sunday — a dangerous development, according to security experts.”
The gist of the story is this: infected PCs download a Trojan that effectively enlists that computer into the worm author’s Zombie army, which can be used to distribute spam and other malware and to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Because the Bagle worm’s author has included the source code comments, the fear is that several new variants could be authored and distributed, employing tricks to bypass mail filters and antivirus scanners, thus disabling our computers when their nefarious work has been completed.
By the way, Network Associates has just released their version 2.3.0 of McAfee Stinger which will rid you of several of the Bagle / Beagle variants. The latest version of McAfee Stinger is your best defense against Trojans.