Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 57

Section The Chemical Brothers get back to their DJ-mix roots on new disc PageF2 Spielberg film makes us confront moral paralysis PageF5 i A 1 ERWNMEN CALGARY'S A-CHANNEL Photos: Dean Bicknell and Dave Lazarowych, Calgary Herald Quotable Just ask yourself this: Can you imagine Calgary now without A-Channel's Dave Kelly, one of The Big Breakfast hosts (left), celebrates the station's first anniversary. A-Channel? Hosts Kurt Stoodley and Tara McCool (below) frame anchor Glen Carter during the Live 5 show. 99 CBC JOURNALIST if I 4J 1 LL movative station kstas mniversary IMdLL BOB BLAKEY Calgary Herald 1 ne year ago today, Calgary's A-Chan- Iff nel switched on its TV transmitter at the high point of its boisterous downtown launch party. It was supposed to be the beginning Mr 1 in 1 r-i Witt "It's great to have another competitor in the city," Long says. "Any increase in competition makes us all better because an added voice makes all three of the existing stations a little keener." "Competition is healthy for all of us," echoes Vos, but he says A-Channel hasn't directly affected life at CFCN, the city's news leader in TV ratings.

"We don't look over our shoulder." WIC Alberta president Jim Bagshaw, the boss at Calgary 7, says A-Channel's target audience makes the news ratings less of a head-to-head contest "They appeal to a different demographic than we do, and that's fine. They're after a young mar- ket," Bagshaw says. "They are very aggressive and I think they're doing a good job at that Everybody finds their place." But A-Channel's place quickly turned out to be right up there with everybody else in the ratings. After fewer than eight months on the air, a Bureau of Broadcast Measurement spring survey showed the new station in third place during the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

period, behind CFCN and Calgary 7 close behind and ahead of CBC Calgary, which opened shop in 1975. The 6 p.m. news show audience was just fewer -than 12,000 this spring. The next significant rat- -ings period will begin in late October. Kelly and Fink were buoyed by the Big Break- fast's ratings, which showed an audience of while Calgary 7's Breakfast Show numbers dropped to 10,000, from 20,000.

Calgary 7 soon overhauled its morning show, scrapping the comfy couch and making it much more news-oriented. "We're very happy where we are" with audiences and ad revenues, says Drew Craig. "Calgary is a great place to do business." A-Channel's pursuit of news results in five hours of local coverage a day. And while the "youth-oriented" tag is often applied, news director Mark Campbell and his team keep older viewers in mind, too. One recent story explained the merger of two local law firms, which the other stations ignored.

"It wasn't a sexy story, but it's part of life in Calgary," Campbell says. Anchor Tara McCool, a former Calgary 7 reporter, says she believes A-Channel has already entered a new phase in its development one of self-assurance. "We're feeling much more confident now. I think that shows on the air." Co-host Stoodley agrees, and wonders aloud, "Where did that year go?" According to the CBC journalist who asked not to be named, it went into carving out a niche for the newcomers. "Just ask yourself this," he says.

"Can you imagine Calgary now without A-Channel?" of a new era in local broadcasting brimming with enthusiasm and optimism. But the festive whirl soon wobbled to a halt. Technical problems caused pre-recorded news segments to evaporate. Veteran anchor Glen Carter blinked into the camera on his first shift like a Wall Street stock broker caught in the midst of the 1929 crash. He was calm and a pro at every moment but there was nothing he could do to disguise a disaster of no small proportions.

But at a rate that startled even the optimists, A-Channel mopped up the electronic mess. Within a week, the station began to look like a serious broadcasting contender. Today, A-Channel's competitors see it as a force to be reckoned with. As the ratings attest, viewers have taken in healthy numbers to the station's menu of nightly movies and syndicated sitcoms. A-Channel's news shows have yet to score strongly against the competition but they aren't being ignored.

The station's youthful reporting team, agile camera operators, unconventional formats and dogged determination to be Calgary's local station have won A-Channel many friends. Dave Kelly, co-host of The Big Breakfast, remembers when he had to explain to people who he was and what A-Channel was all about. "Now they know who we are," he says. On the news side, A-Channel's 14 reporters are hot in pursuit of the day's top stories and oddball tales. "They're everywhere," says a CBC journalist who asked not to be named.

"A-Channel will chase down every press release, good or bad." Mark Kennedy, A-Channel's chief assignment editor, is more proud of that "everywhere" comment than almost anything else. "I hear that all the time," Kennedy says. "It makes me know I'm doing my job and the reporters and shooters (photographers) are doing theirs. We're like the little engine that could." The engine is building steam. Program director Jodi Craig, wife of A-Channel president Drew Craig and the woman in charge of ordering movie packages and series reruns, says as A-Channel racks up mileage in the broadcasting world, it's able to negotiate better choices in entertainment This coming season, for example, syndicated episodes of Friends, Frasier and The Simpsons will be joined by reruns of The X-Files, Fresh Prince of Bel Ak and three separate Star Trek Se- the company's own coffee shop.

Rejecting the standard desk arrangement, the suppertime and late-night news shows track anchors walking around the newsroom, occasionally throwing to meteorologist Darr Maqbool near the LRT rails outside. Unexpectedly, Maqbool has built a kind of cult-following among viewers because of his quiet, unpretentious manner. Like Carter and 5 pm anchor Kurt Stoodley, Maqbool is part of a seasoned crew that balances the roster of young, eager but relatively inexperienced A-Channel journalists. "Let's face it, they've got a youthful energy," says CBC Television's Laurie Long, a senior producer in Calgary. "It's no secret what kind of market they're going after, and I think they're doing a pretty good job of it." Calgary 7 reporter Rick Castiglione, a 20-year news veteran, says it's hard to keep track of the new names turning up on A-ChanneL "The best way I'd describe them is youthful exuberance," says Castiglione.

"Certainly they lack the experience that we have and that CFCN has. But they've made the market more competitive. That's made it more fun for us." CFCN's Brian Vos and CBC's Long agree on that point. ries after the midnight airing of Jerry Springer. Stampede Wrestling, once a kind of heritage site in the local TV landscape, is being revived.

"I think we're a little more innovative, a little fresher" than the competition, she says. "People in Calgary aren't shy to calL They say, 'Keep up the good Besides committing $14 million to movie production over seven years, A-Channel also promised innovation, at two fiercely contested hearings in Calgary held by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Canada's broadcast regulator. TV licences in Calgary and Edmonton were also being chased at the time by Can West Global, run by Izzy Asper, who, like the Craig family, built a broadcasting dynasty in Manitoba. The CRTC liked the Craigs' application better than Asper's and rejected the petitions of existing broadcasters that the market couldn't handle more competition. The Craigs set up shop along the LRT line at 5th Street S.W.

and knocked out walls to create a big-window storefront presence for the only TV station in Calgary's downtown. Faced with Calgary fs Breakfast Show, A-Channel created The Big Breakfast, televised live out of.