August 4 1989
TVOntario Plans More "Hard Stuff"
Greg Quill, Toronto Star
TVOntario wants to be "a stronger, more reactive voice in the community and a forum for contemporary and local points of view," says Daniel Richler, the new arts-programming chief for the province's educational TV service.
"We want to emphasize the educational value of our programs, but without appearing dull and academic, without making viewers feel as if they're in school."
TVO's fall arts schedule will include a sci-fi comedy series starring former Frantic Rick Green, a literary review/interview show hosted by novelist Paul Roberts, and two new weekly features showcasing popular music through the ages and new or rarely seen TV dramas and specials, Richler said yesterday.
The channel's top-rated show, Saturday Night At The Movies, with host Elwy Yost, will be revamped to make way for a second movie feature "with more contemporary impact and packaged in a magazine- style context that also surveys modern film, videos and the TV medium itself," he added.
The Saturday Night At The Movies Too segment will be co-hosted "by two women in their 30s" who will deal with their subjects "in a different way from Elwy's nostalgic, archival approach."
Their names will be announced when contracts are finalized.
TVO is under increasing pressure to distinguish itself, particularly in the arts area, from the American Public Broadcasting System and from programming on some of the new Canadian and American specialty and pay-TV channels, Richler admitted.
Formerly host of The New Music, CITY-TV's music/lifestyle magazine, and of The Journal's Friday Night Arts Report on CBC, Richler was appointed TVO's arts chief at the end of last season. Since then, he completed his first novel, a social and political satire involving the music business, to be published by McClelland & Stewart next Spring.
A confessed "child of the TV age," Richler believes the medium has neglected its capacity to instruct, provoke and inspire young people.
"Arts, at their best, should be disturbing, should shake things up," he said. "The point I hope our new programs will make is that education empowers you, that reading great literature, understanding good music and the secrets of the physical world only make life richer, easier, happier.
"There's very little hard stuff on TV these days, very little that prompts serious thought or discussion."
The new shows Richler has helped create are designed, he said, to heighten TVO's profile in the TV jungle, and to add new meaning to the channel's educational mandate. They include:
- Imprint, hosted by Roberts, with commentary from Jennifer Gibson (from CBC's What's New) and reports "from the literary field" by Leila Heath. Richler, via a deal pending with CBC that may also put Imprint on Newsworld, will have access to CBC's vast video literary arts library archive.
- Prisoners Of Gravity, in which comedian Green plays a disillusioned and mildly crazy scientist trapped in an alien space craft in orbit a mile or so above the earth. Enraged by the insanity he sees below, he uses humor, comic strips, books, video games and computers to instruct his young viewers in the physical, social and moral laws that govern humanity. Pisoners Of Gravity starts Sept. 11.
- Full House, hosted by Richler, is a "two-hour Tuesday night grab bag" containing arts documentaries from all 'round the world, "dramas of enormous size, including (British stage director Trevor Nunn's production of) Three Sisters, Ruth Taylor's Not Dead Yet and a series of 4-minute dramas from Britain's independent Channel 4, made by first-time directors."
- TVO's Music Works, a Wednesday night showcase and analysis of popular music "ranging from Eric Clapton to 19th-century Viennese waltzes." In subsequent seasons, the focus will shift to art and architecture, then to dance.
- Hands Over Time, an expanded version of Joan-Reed Olsen's travelling documentary series, which examines arts and crafts traditions in rural Ontario, "but with more emphasis now on the historical and cultural context" in which these skills were developed.
- Saturday Night At The Movies Too, assuming the second half of Yost's long-running Saturday night spot, will screen more contemporary movies (Blow Up, Yellow Submarine, A Private Function, Vigil and Women In Love are on the schedule) and offer commentary on new and "more difficult" films.