September 26 1994
TVOntario Kicks Off New Information Hour
Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star
TVOntario's Studio 2, the new daily information hour that debuts tonight, isn't much of a threat to other shows at 8 p.m. - Melrose Place and Fresh Prince.
If 50,000 people tune in to Studio 2, that's okay with TVO honcho Peter Herrndorf.
He's after quality more than quantity.
At a cocktail launch last Thursday, Herrndorf swept his long arms around the boardroom - where political types such as Premier Bob Rae rubbed elbows with media types such as CBC's Wendy Mesley - and said: "This is the audience I'm looking for, an eclectic group like this. There are lawyers here, architects, politicians . . . ." But Herrndorf never did finish his sentence. He was interrupted by the test run of Studio 2, which introduced the show to the crowd.
On giant screens, Studio 2 co-hosts Steve Paikin, a TVO fixture since he left CBC News three years ago, and Mary Hynes, who quit CBC Radio for the terrors of pancake makeup and live TV, showed off their new facilities. Trouble was, Hynes and Paikin looked a tad green - and it wasn't because they were nervous performing before this chi-chi live audience.
"Our technical people are working on it!" somebody shouted.
In fact, the color of money wasn't entirely inappropriate. Rumors of Studio 2 having sucked resources from the rest of TVO have swirled since the program was first announced last year.
Because other TVO shows - the weekly Between The Lines and Prisoners Of Gravity among them - were cancelled, some disgruntled staffers believe that the budget for Studio 2 had gone through the roof.
Which is kind of hard to believe once you tour the ground-floor studio, which used to be a bank. True, it's spacious, but it's modest, creatively put together on the cheap.
"It's half the price!" barked director Allan Myers, doing his best Ed Mirvish imitation.
The black and tan Biedermeyer-style chairs, picked up from a discount warehouse, were ' 'half the price!" of similar chairs at the poo-poo furniture store across the street from TVO. The muslin backdrop, the moveable walls, the fluorescent lighting, the cameras - everything is ' 'half the price!" of most other big city news sets.
"It's the basic stuff we need to put on a professional-looking program," said Doug Grant, head of current affairs programming. "On the one hand, we want to do it cheaply. But we don't want to look cheap.
"People are very media literate. If we look like a cheap cable production, people won't watch us."
Asked if the show - a nightly hour of mostly talking heads looking at local and world events, economic and social issues, entertainment and the arts - costs a rumored $5 million a year, Grant insisted that's too high and, in any case, all the numbers aren't in yet.
What has come in however is every pundit and pundit-wannabe in town.
All through the summer, Studio 2 auditioned people for a variety of panels - politics, media, you name it - to be led by Hynes, Paikin and, sometimes, Allan Gregg, former Tory pollster and political strategist.
Twice a week, Gregg will front a feature "tracking political, social and cultural change in society," Grant said.
But the show won't be all talk, talk, talk - not that that's a problem with Herrndorf, the genius behind CBC's The Journal and the fifth estate. He likes talk. And, more than anything, he'd like Studio 2 to be, if not the top-rated show, at least the most talked about.