The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 78

VjMfl BBPfo. JH a Ittfl aKawSGaSssKS- 73ef By SCOTT MACRAE When the licence for a third Vancouver television station cams up for grabs, the Western Approaches applicants dazzled the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission with indigenous charm. One of the Western Approaches mouthpieces was Daryi Duke, the film director, who spoke of "barbecue smoke rising among the evergreens" In Kvs, nightly two-hour "free-form magazine The Vancouver Show, then, would waft that aroma out over the airwaves seven nights a week not too loose, not too tight, just right. Not that you ooukf seriously believe it. could point out that the other local stations blitzed through their "community'' programs by 7 or 7:30 in order to put on something that wouldn't get clobbered by U.S.

game shows. Lure the folks on with some American flash and hops that nobody has the energy left to crawl out of the reiaxa-tounger and turn the dial for the rest of the night; If cynical and therefore It probably works. There is the whole risk ares of Nve te-tevison: the pressure on the hosts, the kooks calling in, the guest who freezes Faux Pas City. Then, assuming a newborn independent station, with alt the lack of resources implied, ooutd pud off the technical requirements, the most nagging fear of aft remained: would it be worth ON CAMERA: hours toffil television. They are two entirely different techniques and I'm learning a new trade.

Now, I don't have to leave the city to team Learning how to do "ft" is a common expression around the station, "stepping-stone" and "network" are others. Niceness "reigns supreme at CKVU. Duke brings up the criticism over Pia Shandel's kid-glove handling of Justice Minister Ron Basford on the show's debut fast September. "We told her before the interview not to ask all the usual questions. Then she gets knocked for asking him about his family and that sort of thing in other words, for revealing him in a different way than everybody else does.

Look, he was paying a courtesy visit on our opening night there was no reason to grill him." Ah, but Vancouver can be tough as nails; when the case of Canadians serving time in feetthy Mexican jails came up, the ranting and raving, the tough posturing in defence of the motherland's wronged citizenry, the attacks on those corrupt federates any more indignation and you could see Wtnlaw pulling rescue missions from helicopter. Closer to home, though, Vancouver doesn't Nke to offend on an issue unless maybe you nave, say, a greedy landlord pistol-whipping a tomato pensioner for the rent money, on camera, with witnesses, preferably lawyers. Duke speaks of the paramount importance of the hosts' "Nkeability." That responsibility fairs primarily on Mike Winlaw Winlaw says: "I think it's a mistake to think you can always get to the bottom line." The fact of the station's strained resources and overworked researchers is usually evident in the approaches taken by the on-air personalities. (Excluding Fotheringham and the ever-curious Davis.) "We probably get by with a lot toss research than other stations," Winlaw concedes. "That might be bad, but you can research yourself to death.

I mean, we're not producing half-hour documentaries." Pis Shsndel, well, she's improving. Everybody at the station says so. Let her left it: "I feel Nke I had been looking Nke this (makes a tunnel of her hands and looks through It for the last 10 years snd I just didn't realize there was a world besides the theatre out there. I was caught up in a fantasy before. This, this is real, tough business Lots of people would like to be doing this and I'm just so thrilled.

"I'm learning. I sort of feel this is Nke the university of the air or something. I'm grateful that Norm and Daryi have put up with my mistakes. But, on any issue, it doesn't take you very long to find out everything you need to know about it." Well, the Vancouver Show doss deliver prntormmnc Duke says the show is not "loss leader" designed to satisfy the CRTC, that there is "chunk of ths Lower Mainland audience interested in Ms own affairs," albeit a smsN one. He speaks of "kind of magazine that is more relaxed, more broadly-based, less married to the boundary lines of ths legislature and downtown Vancouver; The original concept was to show people where to be and when a kind of calender and than to give exposure to such other categories as theatre, music, ballet, poetry, film and politics.

It is doing ths job we set out to do. It just hasn't reached the ability to accurately hit the target every night" But can it ever hit the target? With two hours to fill, with scant resources snd personnel, with the best intentions will it ever hit the target? To its credit, the Vancouver Show is as dose to the elusive "community" television as anybody has reached yet. They are giving exposure to the arts community in an unprecedented way for local television, even if it is pure puffery. In their own way, they do get out snd took at the city. But is the city, as they are presenting it, worth looking at for two hours a night? VU VIEW The barbecue smoke is thin but a whiff is there And when it wasn't wouldn't the CKVU brass soon be knocking on the CRTC's door, ratings and deficits in hand, saying "Yes, we know we promised you two hours of barbecue smoke but, please release us from our commitment.

Ptoses tot us run stuff from the Big Smoke, Toronto at toast for the second hour?" hasn't happened, yet Which is not to say that the Vancouver Show is nightly two-hour extravaganza of wit, wisdom and the Vancouver way of Life. Instead, we have a program that looks very much as If Is struggling to this Immense two-hour void; studio audiences fuft of cheerleaders and cubs and their parents; 'Tel me, Mr. Merchant are the goods in your shop not onfy of an extremely high quality but available at very reaeonable prices?" "Oh, "And now fsacteattng took at a man who makes baskets out of old penes shavings." In short. If you were a con man and wanted a forum for your con, you ooutd do a tot worse than going on the Vancouver Show. They'd just be so damned happy to have you there whittling away a chunk of those 96 tong minutos.

Material starts pouring into the void at a meeting the "rundown" in Daryi Duke's ofnos around noon. The president of Western Approaches Ltd. wears tosns. With boyish face and hair that doesn't know If if blond or grey, he might be 36. But his biography says he Is older: graduated from UBC in 1950.

CBUT In mid '50a (he was in at ate beginning of one competitor, Hourglass), CBC dramas and documentaries in the "60s (Bob Dylan's first time on television), U.S. series, features and rnade-for-TV movies In the 70s. Duke's office is in the top-floor comer of the converted wsiehouss on West Second. To be invited to the rundown Is status symbol at CKVU. The meeting Is relaxed, superficially democratic.

The same optimism and enthusiasm which the lower-downs exhibit Is present among Ste higher asmeat hare ate talk la wittier ki a kind of glib, inside ehowbiz way. The producer for this Friday Is Anton Oetrand-er, who radiated keen youth when he was on the BCTV ftewshour test year and who now looks a Httto oktor than he should. "Ifs funny," he says, "but with this Job, reel life has almost become dull." Ho works about 12 hours day, five or six dsys week, ft lent an unusual work schedule for the Vancouver Show staff and the frazztod-nsrve commotion that surfaces in tne downstairs offices appears to bathe show's principal energy source. Ostrander throws out items for the night's show and bounces them off producer-' personality'' Chuck Davis, programming vice -president Norm Ktonman, writer-'personaMy" Richard Ouzounian snd of course Duke, toward whom all eyes gaze tentatively. Ouzounian has expanded from delivering his on-high thsstrs reviews to "personality" duties snd writing introductions snd continuity.

He contributes a kind of manic New York Ism. He is less pompous in person. Davis, of course, doss not know the meaning of the word mundane. One suspects there is no subject in the universe so emaft that It doesn't rate at reset an earthquake of enthusiasm from Chuck Davis. thought I was enthusiastic Davis talks In ttailca.

"You should ses me now that I'm proctudnff, I find I remty have a faefe for Davis, everyone at the station agrees, has been a godsend. "Greenpeace invited me to a showing of their new seal film and it Ktonman, ths programmer, makes quick decision. ''Okay, use two minutes of Greenpeace as a teaser for Sunday, ft looks Nke rough weekend coming up. Pay $100 for It If you have to." (They did not negotiate successfully for the film.) Visual material the stills, tapes snd fHm that an oktor or network -affiliated station would have at its disposal is virtually non-existent at CKVU. So, for an item on the new B.C.

Lions coach, they are stuck with running a series of meaningless team pictures. Or, for an Hem on the Concorde's first year, they run slick Concords promo flick, which Davis had the on-air grace to attack as propaganda. Compromises have to be made sH the time. For instance, one of ths participants In the meeting is Tom Butter, the PR man. Butter has very clear view of ths world; in guiding the visitor around the place, he speaks not of producers but of "top producers," not of studio but of the "second-largest studio ki Western Canada, not of Roots being a bestseller, but a "towering bsitssltsr." When Ouzounian mentions that Jeff Gtoberman had suggested comedy piece about Howard Hughes, Butter Who is at the meeting because our presence dsmsnds, according to CKVU policy, buffer jumps in with the suggestion that Groberman spend a weekend at certain hotel that Hughes visited.

By sheerest happenstance, Butter is PR for that hotel. That kind of boosterism doss nothing for credibility, although ths Vancouver Show cannot be taken certainty not by most of those who work on it as an exercise in journalism. Ths Vancouver Show is something else. "This doesn't claim to be a journalism show," says Allan Fotheringham, between mutterings of "incest." "I'm a hired gun who does interviews or editorials. Someone else comes on and introduces the jugglers and the cheerleaders.

I do the only thing I can, which is journalism. "My interview technique for the pencil press is to sit down with a guy over lunch or drinks and after two hours you see a crack into the guy's furtive soul. There's no way you can do that in 12 minutes on 2A THE VANCOUVER SUN: JANUARY 28, 1977.