The war in Iraq overshadowed everything on television in 2003.
Locally, some may cling to the idea that Canadian Idol was the year's biggest TV event. And others may believe that the failure of the second Joe Millionaire was significant because it heralded the death of gimmicky reality TV, but 2003 was a year dominated by the war and everything the war signified about American culture.
Whether it was powerful images on TV or the power of an entrenched Republican regime emboldened by the war, the war's influence was obvious on-screen and off-screen. Otherwise, everything was about money.
The year began with Joe Millionaire, who, it turned out, didn't have any money. Then there was the war, which cost a lot of money and lives. Then came the crisis with the Canadian Television Fund, an outfit that didn't have any money. And that became a political issue.
Summer brought a wave of new reality TV shows, which didn't cost much money to make but, it turned out, didn't generate much interest. In August, a movie star went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and announced his candidacy for governor of California. What unfolded was American politics, TV-style, a story of power and money.
When fall arrived, the new American TV season was imbued with piety and sobriety -- a fallout from Sept. 11 and a symbol of the politics of George W. Bush's America. The new, even tackier Joe Millionaire tanked. CBS reacted with panic to the political implications of airing a miniseries about Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
Here in Canada, it was the year of reports. A half-dozen reports and inquiries into the state of Canadian television production poured forth from Ottawa. Politicians wrote some, but all were political in nature. There were more reports than there were new Canadian productions of any significance. At the end of the year, the most compelling Canadians on TV were the two prime ministers who seemed to rule simultaneously.
Everything happens on TV, so that's the kind of year it was -- 12 months of politics, money, piety, war and petty feuds.
In retrospect, January of 2003 looks like a period of innocence. Fox's Joe Millionaire was attracting tens of millions of viewers. The final episode, when Evan Marriott revealed to his chosen woman that he was a dirt-poor deceiver, attracted roughly the same number of viewers as the Academy Awards. Every other network paid close attention to the show's success. ABC, a network in deep trouble, announced that it would air more than 10 new reality series this year. In Los Angeles, TV critics listened in astonishment as an ABC executive admitted that TV execs are addicted to the buzz of reality TV in the way that some people are addicted to crack cocaine. In the context of Joe Millionaire 's stunning success and the social buzz the show created, one could hardly blame ABC for jumping on the bandwagon and trying out the wonder drug.
But a different sort of reality was hanging over everything in television. In retrospect, it turns out that Joe Millionaire was a hit because it was a frivolous distraction from the still-echoing fallout from Sept. 11, and a real, looming threat of a war in Iraq. The approaching war meant that broadcasters in Canada and the United Stars were preparing for expensive war coverage -- money was being allotted and plans were being made to put TV dramas with gruesome images on the shelf. In early March, everybody knew what would happen. George W. Bush went on TV and gave his ultimatum to Iraq. Looking medicated rather than resolute, he set in motion events that would overshadow the Oscars and reality TV with a new reality.
On March 20, when U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq, a televised war was under way and even the vocabulary used on television changed. The term "bunker-buster" was used with abandon and "embedded" became the most popular word on TV news. It was days before the so-called "shock and awe" assault on Baghdad, but it finally happened and, when it did, most TV anchors simply shut up and let the explosions speak for themselves. The alleged end of war was itself mainly a TV event. Only a few hundred Iraqis and a few hundred American troops witnessed the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in person, but it was live on every TV channel and, as such, a richly symbolic and cathartic end -- the presence of TV cameras meant the message was clear.
Spring brought a long-simmering crisis in Canadian television to the boil. Lack of funds in the pot of money controlled by the Canadian Television Fund meant that some important shows faced cancellation, including CTV's The Eleventh Hour and CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Strangely, the crisis revitalized the Canadian TV industry, bringing well-known actors out to protest and harry politicians. By year's end there was some hope that all the talk could lead to a more stable financing situation for 2004, but the ominous decision of Alliance Atlantis to retrench put that faint hope in jeopardy.
Summer meant a slew of cheesy new reality series on American and Canadian channels, but only two really mattered -- Canadian Idol in Canada and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in the U.S. Canadian Idol, relentlessly promoted and devoted to the worst sort of mediocre pop music, had a startling impact in Canada all summer long. While the concept is borrowed, CTV succeeded in attracting hordes of teenagers to Canadian TV in mid-summer and created a base of younger viewers that it is now building on. The winner, Ryan Malcolm, proved to be a less-than-charismatic new pop star, but that wasn't the point. The point was to pluck a person from among the hordes of the ordinary, and engage Canadians while doing it. In that, Canadian Idol succeeded.
The first full season since Sept. 11 began with a plethora of shows that reflected a new mood in American culture -- a mood of piety, niceness and worry about the lack of spirituality in the U.S. It was, and remains, an immensely conservative TV season. The iconic show was Joan of Arcadia, which featured a teenage girl conversing with God and helping spread His goodness. In fact, the theme of helping others has been dominant -- in Miss Match, Tru Calling, The Handler, 1-800-Missing and Cold Case.
Those shows sold to the public as more salacious -- shows such as NBC's Coupling and Fox's Skin--failed to find any audience at all.
The conservatism that was evident in the batch of new American shows was also at the root of the most significant TV event after the war in Iraq. And it was indelibly linked to the war and its meaning. When CBS buckled under political pressure and refused to air the miniseries The Reagans, it acknowledged that network television is nervous and malleable in a Republican-dominated era. In a postwar period of triumphalism, dissent -- even in the lowly form of a quickie TV movie about Ronald Reagan -- is difficult. In fact, as far as CBS was concerned, it just wasn't worth the trouble.
The last striking TV image of 2003 and the one that will linger long after the sitcoms and the dramas are cancelled, was the captured Saddam Hussein looking like a bewildered vagrant. George W. Bush got his man and the pictures on TV proved it. Nobody is going to mess with Dubya now, or the cronies around him and the mood he has created. In images, the war was won and the images of the war beat out everything else for importance on TV in 2003.
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