The Gazette du lieu suivant : Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 43

C7 Itt (gazette EITAOMM ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR: LUCINDA CHODAN 987-2568 THE GAZETTE. MONTREAL, THURSDAY. MAY 8. 1997 CAMERA READY CanWest Global snags Benoit Aubin "TVA is a private network that has learned to do things in a modest and ef- ficient fashion," Aubin said. "Bernie' and I may have different opinions about what is needed to achieve our goals." Hiring Aubin will reinforce cooperation between the Global and TVA newsrooms.

The English and French networks currently share news footage, an agreement that let TVA telecast Global's pictures of the Manitoba floods a year after Global's national newscast used flood footage TVA had shot in the Saguenuay. "We won't share reporters," Aubin said. "We'll have our own staff and our nl fcJLfel Dennis Hopper and Uma Thurman arrive at the Palais des Festivals for the opening ceremony of the 50th Cannes International Film Festival yesterday. The Fifth Element, by French director Luc Besson, starring Bruce Willis opened the festival on the French Riviera. Story, Page C9.

No Doubt not too serious Success a long time coming for sometimes fluffy band 7 ft i MIKE BOONE Gazette TV Critic CanWest Global has hired Benoit Aubin to run its Quebec television newsroom. Aubin, 49, is one of the province's most experienced and respected journalists. He has been a reporter for La Presse (where he began his career 25 years ago), a columnist for L'Actualite, The Gazette and the Globe and Mail, managing editor of Le Devoir and, for the last two years, news director of TVA, Quebec's pre-eminent private TV network. In joining CanWest Global, Aubin won't have far to move. The new network in town will run its news operation out of the Tele-Metropole building that houses Aubin's current office.

Aubin and Glenn O'Farrell, president of Global Quebec, finalized a deal late last week. Because Tele-Metropole is a minority partner in CKMI, the Quebec City station that will be Can-West Global's flagship (with repeater stations in Montreal and Sherbrooke), O'Farrell had notified Aubin's employers that he was interested in their news director. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Aubin said yesterday. "I'm going to be involved in building a news network from scratch. It has fascinating possibilities." Aubin added that he was attracted by "I'm going to be involved in building a news network from scratch." the challenge of building a newscast from the ground up.

He is anxious to turn "a kind of unfocused vision of what this could be" into the reality of a nightly newscast. "Television is fun," Aubin said. "Starting from scratch, picking people, designing the whole thing, drafting job descriptions, making the best use of the most modern technology this is absolutely compelling." "This was an important position to fill," said O'Farrell, "and we have someone with credentials and an understanding of the market. Benoit has the vision to take this forward." But will he have the dollars? Bernie St. Laurent, the veteran CBC journalist who had been on O'FarreU's short list of potential news directors, had expressed some concerns about whether CanWest Global was prepared to commit the kind of resources needed to mount a competitive Montreal newscast While Aubin acknowledged that news directors are never satisfied "if you don't have a helicopter, you insist that you need one; if you have two satellite trucks, you want three" he expressed confidence that Global Quebec's news operation will have adequate bucks and bodies.

"We want to bring everybody together, to the same building." That building, on the northwest corner of Bleury and Ste. Catherine conveniently equipped with 5,000 square feet of wall-to-wall street-level windows will also be home to Musimax, a brand new music channel targeted at an older audience, that will feature videos, live concerts and music documentaries by light rock and new country acts as well as jazz, blues and world-beat artists. MUSIC AND MOVIES Material by the Beatles, Enya, Van Morrison, Susan Aglukark, Loreena McKennitt, Leonard Cohen, Luther Vandross, and Eric Clapton is all lined up and ready to go, as well as generational cult flicks like Easy Rider, Saturday Night Fever, Tommy, Woodstock, Fame, and American Graffiti. "We've found that because of the kind of music that we play at MusiquePlus trendy, young stuff it's been hard to keep the older viewers faithful and tuned-in," Marchand said. "People in their 30s and 40s just sort of abandon the station and don't watch it like they used to.

"We hope Musimax will be a nice compliment that should reflect the tastes of this demographic," Marchand said. "And by blending the two together, we'll be able to reach a very large MARK LEPAGE POP MUSIC es and flirts. She is a star. She is a blonde star, whose elastic singing and pouting in the Just a Girl single led to her quick dismissal by serious music fans, and prompted immediate comparisons with her apparent model. Surprisingly, in the decade since that blondie Madonna burst the bra-straps of fame, the world still hasn't made the link between sexuality and substance.

Ten years ago, Like a Virgin turned precocious provocation into its own female empowerment for millions of "We'll recruit staff with the chemistry to create something new and different." own thinking, but there will be cooperative use of some resources." Aubin said it was too early to discuss specifics of the kind of newscast he plans to put on the air when Global Quebec launches in September He expressed admiration for Montreal's current English newscasts, Pulse and Newswatch, while predicting that viewers will benefit from another alternative in television news. "There is less English TV available in Montreal than there is in Halifax and Winnipeg, where the markets are much smaller," Aubin said. "There's a lot of room for us to play in, find a niche of our own and add something to the mix." Aubin said there is a stack of videotapes and CVs awaiting his perusal. He plans to proceed quickly toward hiring a producer, a show producer and other people who will fill out executive positions on the new Global news team. "Television is all about planning," he said, "and we have to start laying out how things are going to work.

The kind of set we design will influence the kind of newsroom we have, which will in turn determine our technical set-up. It's a seamless whole." Aubin expects that Global Quebec news will hire approximately SO people "and that could vary, probably upward." "We'll recruit a staff with the right kind of chemistry to create something new and different," Aubin promised. "All the established news organizations are struggling with re-engineering and new ways of doing things. Formerly creative structures are not necessarily adequate. "Instead of struggling with change, we'll start something new.

It's going to be hard work, but it will be a helluva lot of fun." Aubin will work at TVA until the end of next week. He will be succeeded, as the French network's news director, by Real Germain, who has produced TVA's supper-hour and late-evening newscasts. Pierre Marchand looks forward tos move. si New windows on the world for MusiquePlus wanna bes, a kind of Slut Power. Stefani's come-on goes further.

While the Gwennabes nick her fashion and mimic her attitude, they're singing a poppy protest against a world of self-defence classes and safety whistles. "This world is forcing (us) to hold your hand" and they're mad as heck. The substance needn't be overstated. Even Young concedes: "We're not that serious." Somewhere in Pennsylvania, he is audibly rustling a cheat sheet to remind himself of his location. (It's been a long tour).

He later uses the word "fluffy," and doesn't expect No Doubt to main- tain its level of stardom much beyond the tour and one more record. And yet, there is some complexity here, some grit in the meringue. No Doubt survived the romance and breakup of Stefani and bassist Tony Kanal shades of Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac. Please see ROCK TALK. Page CIO VIDEO CLIPS I LAN A KRONICK Naturally, we took this into consideration.

But the big thing for us is to move into the downtown centre of the city. "The corner of Bleury and Ste. Catherine is perfect. Not only is it the site of the Jazz Festival, the Franco-Folies, and the Festival des Films du Monde, it's also near the Spectrum, the Imperial Theatre, les Salles du Gesu simply a more happening area." Of course, the thrust behind MusiquePlus's displacement has as much to do with expansion as it does with location, location, location. The station needs space and plenty of it -to accommodate its ever-demanding production needs and ever-growing number of employees.

"When we launched the station back in '86, we were broadcasting from Toronto for the first two years and at that time there was roughly 30 people working for us," Marchand recalled. "Once we became autonomous, we grew to 65 or 70 and since then have grown even further because of programming demands. "But right now the sales staff are still located across the street and many of our employees are stuck in the "I would say the Spice Girls did it quicker," Adrian Young said. "It took us 10 years." Then again, the Spice Girls do everything quicker. It took the British pop tarts a dirty weekend to straddle the pop charts, something Young's band, No Doubt, worked toward for a decade.

It never looks that way, which is the idea. If the videos for Excuse Me Mr. and Don't Speak scream Overnight Success, credit the aerobic sexuality of singer Gwen Stefani and the bounding energy of the band. In an Ab-Flex world, everyone wants to believe the washboard stomach of fame and fortune is a single sit-up away. No Doubt's 10 million copies of Tragic Kingdom were crunched out over time.

Since its release in October '95, the album has spawned five singles. More immediately, it has propelled Stefani into the magazine-cover consciousness of the sentient pop world. Blondely, she coos. With a cocked shoulder, she teas- TV TONIGHT CBMT-6 screens Mon Oncle Antoine Gazette television columnist Mike Boone picks the best of tonight's programs: Friends (CFCF-12 at Billy Crystal and Robin Williams guest-star. Biography at 8): The great Patsy Cline.

High Incident (Channel 12 at 8): Season finale. Nature (WCFE-57 at 8): Extraordinary Dogs. Poet: Irving Layton Observed (Bravo! at 8): Profile. Suddenly Susan (WPTZ-5 at Season ends. Mystery! (Vermont ETV-33 at 9): The Memoirs of Sherlock HolmesThe Dying Detective.

Les Miserables (Bravo! at 9): 1952 movie version of Hugo classic. Royal Opera House (Channel 33 at 10): Behind the curtain at Covent Garden. Tonight Show (WPTZ-5 at Noah Wyle, Cyndi Lauper and Rebecca Romijn. Mon Oncle Antoine (CBMT-6 at Quebecois classic by Claude Jutra. Prime-time schedule.

Page C8 Have you heard the news? MusiquePlus is moving. At the tail end of their 10th year, Quebec's precious music channel is taking all of its glitzy gear to a bigger, brighter, safer space six blocks west of their original digs at 209 Ste. This means that come September, when you flip to your local video station, you most likely won't be charmed by suction-spandex sporters in 5-inch stilettos, leaning against the 14-foot panes of glass that for the last decade have candidly documented some of our city's seediest daily activity Nor will you have the delectable pleasure of seeing swarms of squeegee-armed kids huddled around the building's snot-smeared windows, staring vapidly at glamourous VJ functions and the daily hustle-bustle of the music biz-employed. COLOURFUL CORNER Undoubtedly, the thoroughly cultural experience of residing in Montreal's red-light district has lent MusiquePlus a certain, uh, grittiness, but for the most part, the east-end corner will not be missed. "It's been very colourful," said general manager Pierre Marchand.

"But obviously, in terms of the quality of life for some of the people working at the station leaving the building at midnight or one in the morning it's not the best place to be around..