There's a great initiative afoot to change the CRTC's Canadian Content regulations to give radio stations more incentive to play indie artists. I think it's a wonderful idea.
If you agree, and you're Canadian citizen, drop by the website and sign the petition.
Let's Fix CANCON
Monday, May 16, 2005
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Flux On, Flux Off...
Normal business hours where I work start at 8:30 a.m., but because I have a long commute by public transit, I come in around 9:00, and my boss is okay with that. Lots of other people come in for 9:00 as well. Tuesday morning, as I strolled in at the stroke of 9-ish, I saw everyone--and I mean everyone--from our 2nd floor marketing/creative services/repertoire/business analysis/web area assembled in the open-concept meeting room affectionately called "The Pit", with our Exec VP addressing the group.
My spidey senses were telling me that something was up.
I dropped off my stuff in my office and made my way to The Pit. I idled up next to one of our graphic artists who was standing near the back of the pack and hushedly asked for the scoop.
"We've been bought by BMG," he said.
Always trust your spidey senses.
We spent the rest of the week getting dribs and drabs of information about what it all means. Here's a little article on the subject.
Usually these kinds of mergers/acquisitions result in job losses--"efficiencies"--and that may very well be the case with this one, especially when it comes to the redundancies in the call centres both companies have in North America. Both companies have distribution facilities and call centres in the mid-west USA. I doubt they'll keep all of them operating as is. Both companies also have head offices in New York City. Word is they'll move both into a new building.
It's scary stuff, but the possible blessing for us in Toronto is that BMG doesn't have a presence in the Canadian market. BMG Canada was operating a music club here, but we successfully shut them out 6 or 7 years ago, and they pulled out of Canada. So, assuming the new company (BMG-Columbia House, or whatever it's to be called) will want to maintain a presence in this market--and I can't see why they wouldn't--they'll need our office. Plus, not to sound like a company man, but we've been doing some very good work recently, making some very bold moves to rethink our business and reach out to our customers. I think--hope--that when our new BMG overlords finish examining their new assets and start deciding how to best integrate the two companies, they'll recognize that we've been a very valuable part of the CH business.
It's still early days in terms of knowing how it'll all shake out, but it may be a very positive move for the business. BMG is strong in its music club, and CH is strong in DVD, so the merging of the two brands could create a very powerful entertainment direct seller, as they are saying. Plus BMG also owns Book of the Month Club and several other large publishing companies, as well as other interests, so the cross-selling possibilities are there.
I think it's also better to be owned by an entertainment company once again. The Blackstone Group, which had bought us a couple of years ago, is an investment firm. They were only interested in "flipping" their investment. BMG is in the same business we're in, and they apparently see this acquisition as a strategic move to expand their business. They see value in adding us to their group.
At least that's what I can glean from the press and from what we've been told through the message coming down from the company execs. I was impressed that Stuart Goldfarb, the CEO of BMG Direct, spent all day Thursday travelling around North America, visiting every facility the two companies own around the continent, to talk to the employees and answer questions. I was also impressed that he showed up in a sweatshirt and jeans! As someone at our office said afterwards, he looked like a roadie for a rock band. It's true: 40-something, beard, sweathshirt, jeans, running shoes. He said that's just how he's most comfortable, and he does his job well, so his bosses leave him alone. He didn't have all the answers as to what's going to happen, because, as he explained, they simply don't know yet themselves. But he seemed like a pretty straight-up guy.
So, all that can be done is to wait and see how it all shakes out. Government approval for the sale won't come through until at least July 1.
The more immediate good news for me is that we're bringing in the new copywriter on a short-term contract, to get around the two-week hiring freeze. (Turns out the freeze was a result of the impending announcement of the sale to BMG--so that explains that.) Plus we're bringing in the other guy on a contract as well. He'll come in for 20-25 hours a week to work on certain projects. So relief is in sight for me. I can actually look at working normal hours and doing a nornal work load again--and taking some time off in the not-too-distant future. Woo!
My spidey senses were telling me that something was up.
I dropped off my stuff in my office and made my way to The Pit. I idled up next to one of our graphic artists who was standing near the back of the pack and hushedly asked for the scoop.
"We've been bought by BMG," he said.
Always trust your spidey senses.
We spent the rest of the week getting dribs and drabs of information about what it all means. Here's a little article on the subject.
Usually these kinds of mergers/acquisitions result in job losses--"efficiencies"--and that may very well be the case with this one, especially when it comes to the redundancies in the call centres both companies have in North America. Both companies have distribution facilities and call centres in the mid-west USA. I doubt they'll keep all of them operating as is. Both companies also have head offices in New York City. Word is they'll move both into a new building.
It's scary stuff, but the possible blessing for us in Toronto is that BMG doesn't have a presence in the Canadian market. BMG Canada was operating a music club here, but we successfully shut them out 6 or 7 years ago, and they pulled out of Canada. So, assuming the new company (BMG-Columbia House, or whatever it's to be called) will want to maintain a presence in this market--and I can't see why they wouldn't--they'll need our office. Plus, not to sound like a company man, but we've been doing some very good work recently, making some very bold moves to rethink our business and reach out to our customers. I think--hope--that when our new BMG overlords finish examining their new assets and start deciding how to best integrate the two companies, they'll recognize that we've been a very valuable part of the CH business.
It's still early days in terms of knowing how it'll all shake out, but it may be a very positive move for the business. BMG is strong in its music club, and CH is strong in DVD, so the merging of the two brands could create a very powerful entertainment direct seller, as they are saying. Plus BMG also owns Book of the Month Club and several other large publishing companies, as well as other interests, so the cross-selling possibilities are there.
I think it's also better to be owned by an entertainment company once again. The Blackstone Group, which had bought us a couple of years ago, is an investment firm. They were only interested in "flipping" their investment. BMG is in the same business we're in, and they apparently see this acquisition as a strategic move to expand their business. They see value in adding us to their group.
At least that's what I can glean from the press and from what we've been told through the message coming down from the company execs. I was impressed that Stuart Goldfarb, the CEO of BMG Direct, spent all day Thursday travelling around North America, visiting every facility the two companies own around the continent, to talk to the employees and answer questions. I was also impressed that he showed up in a sweatshirt and jeans! As someone at our office said afterwards, he looked like a roadie for a rock band. It's true: 40-something, beard, sweathshirt, jeans, running shoes. He said that's just how he's most comfortable, and he does his job well, so his bosses leave him alone. He didn't have all the answers as to what's going to happen, because, as he explained, they simply don't know yet themselves. But he seemed like a pretty straight-up guy.
So, all that can be done is to wait and see how it all shakes out. Government approval for the sale won't come through until at least July 1.
The more immediate good news for me is that we're bringing in the new copywriter on a short-term contract, to get around the two-week hiring freeze. (Turns out the freeze was a result of the impending announcement of the sale to BMG--so that explains that.) Plus we're bringing in the other guy on a contract as well. He'll come in for 20-25 hours a week to work on certain projects. So relief is in sight for me. I can actually look at working normal hours and doing a nornal work load again--and taking some time off in the not-too-distant future. Woo!
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Life is Hard, Then You Blog
I've been really feeling the strain from covering two jobs at work for these past three months. Haven't really been able to have much of a life outside work. Get home around 8 p.m. or later some nights. Get a bite to eat, often a slice of pizza from down the street, read some e-mail, maybe watch the news, then try to get to bed at a decent hour, which is often hard to do when I eat late.
But there's light at the end of the tunnel. We interviewed a candidate for the Junior Copywriter position, and I think she'll be perfect. Fresh out of school and eager, and her writing skills are very good. She's obviously a natural writer and truly lives in the world of the word. And I'm sure she's bright enough to catch on quickly to all the other stuff that comes with working in an office, and having the pressures of production deadlines, etc. I sat in on the her initial interview on Wednesday with our HR guy because my boss was at an off-site meeting. I recommended that we should bring her in for a second interview with my boss. So she came in again on Friday, and my boss loved her. So we were excited that we'd finally found someone to fill the position, someone who seems perfect. Only problem is, as I found out on Friday, the company has just this week put a hiring freeze in place. And this comes after some of the other departments have made several hires in the past few weeks, making their staffs larger. We're just trying fill positions from staff we've lost.
So it's pretty frustrating, especially since it seems to me that there's been some foot-dragging in getting this position filled. All I hear is that there's lots of competition out there for jobs, especially for writing jobs, hundreds of resumes stacked up on HR desks. And we've interviewed a grand total of three people over a period of two or three months? And now we've finally found a perfect hire, and they announce a hiring freeze! I'm told that the freeze will only be in effect for the next two or three weeks though, which is strange in its own right. But my boss says she's working on the higher-ups to try to get things moving sooner, so we'll see how it all shakes out.
The good news is that we are going ahead with bringing in a guy on a short-term contract. He's a former copywriter there, just before my time. We'll bring him in to do some direct mail projects and he can also help me out in the interim. So there is relief in sight. Ideally by the time the new junior copywriter is on board, the contract guy will be able to shoulder some of my load while I spend some of my time training the newbie, and then once she's up and running, I can actually take some time off. What a concept! I dearly need some chill time. You know you need some time off when you're sitting at your desk, staring blankly at the computer screen, whispering Peter Lorre imitations to yourself.
"I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure's return."
"Reeck, Reeck..."
Yes, it's come to that. Life outside of work hasn't been much better. When the weekend rolls around, I'm usually too burnt-out to want to do much. Just sleep in and then chill out at my own pace. Been spending my weekends mostly in my own little cocoon. Hardly even venturing out during the day. The exception was a few weekends ago when we had a beautiful Sunday, 20-some degrees and sunny. People were walking about in T-shirts...and, thankfully, pants.
The day beckoned, so I took a walk up Kingston Road, and, on a whim, decided to turn down a random side street and wander through a Beaches neighbourhood I had never walked through before. I walked southward, making my way through the mostly large, beautiful and certainly expensive houses. I ended up on a street that ran south towards the main strip of the Beaches on Queen Street. On the left was a wooded ravine with a walking trail that followed the course of a stream. One of the nice things about Toronto is the system of ravines that runs throughout the city. Lovely to have access to nature in the middle of a city. Gotta stay in touch with the Mother. I saw a stairway of sorts carved into the hillside, so I descended into the ravine. It felt great traipsing through the shady coolness, hearing the trickling of the stream, the rustle of leaves in the trees, sensing the awakening of spring.
Today is another such day. Twenty-three degrees and sunny. People walking around in t-shirts. And pants. I probably won't get out today though. Gotta do my taxes. And my laundry situation has gone Code Red. I'm down to the third-stringers in my underwear-and-socks drawer. The bench-warmers that never get to play in the big game because I rely on my quality guys to carry me through. As they call it in the hockey world, playing a shortened bench. But now I'm calling upon socks I don't even remember owning. Underwear that now prompt me to question my initial purchase decision (ultra-briefs? What was I thinking?).
Anyway, I'm feeling a bit too cerebral to indulge in the simple pleasures of a sunny day. Not that they're mutually exclusive, but I just feel the need to write and cogitate. It's been a rare feeling lately. And I've been feeding my head with some good things. This past Tuesday was the "company store" day at work (a phrase that tickles me to no end: "You take 16 DVDs and waddya get..."), where I get to redeem the voucher that accompanies my pay cheque once a month. They set up a corner of the warehouse with about a dozen large tables of returned product, mostly DVDs, and we get to pick one DVD or two CDs. This time around I chose a 2-disc deluxe edition of the "Magnolia" DVD. I try to pick films that I'm likely to want to revisit at some point. That's my philosophy of having a DVD collection. Why have a bunch of films you'll watch once and then they just sit on your shelf? For those kinds of films, there's rental. I guess I see DVDs more like CDs than books. Oddly, I'm okay with having lots of books that I'll read only once and then they just sit on my shelf. Perhaps that's an issue to be more fully explored at some other time, but maybe it has something to do with the perception that books are more "permanent", an older technology. Or maybe it's that I've grown up conditioned to accept the logic of libraries, with no similarly popular concept of film libraries?
Anyway, I watched "Magnolia" Friday night, staying up way too late to do so. In fact, I couldn't finish watching it because I was just to tired, it was getting on to 3 a.m. or thereabouts--it's a long film--so I watched the last 45 minutes or so last night. It's the first re-viewing of the film for me since I'd seen it in the theatre, and it certainly is one of those films that rewards multiple viewings, if only just to get a clearer picture of all the characters and their various relationships to each other--literal and metaphorical.
[I interrupt this narrative with an announcement. I have decided to forgo doing laundry until tomorrow! I'm working from home tomorrow, so I'll be able to get that done while I work, just as long as I get it done before I have to leave for my dental appointment in the afternoon. Getting a crown done. Yay. So it looks like maybe I'll be able to get out and catch some of the Sunday sunshine after all. Me and my third-string socks and my ultra-briefs. And pants.]
The bonus disc has some interesting stuff on it. A bunch of outtakes which are quite funny. Some scenes that didn't make it into the movie. The complete T.J. Mackey seminar that Tom Cruise delivers ("tame the pussy!"), as well as the T.J. Mackey infomercial that plays mostly in the background on television during the scenes with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jason Robards on his death bed. There's also Aimee Mann's video for "Save Me" and a making-of documentary that chronicles the process as the film goes over schedule and over budget, and then wins a bunch of awards and film-festival honours.
I'll say this though: Paul Thomas Anderson is one hyper dude. Made me wonder what it'd be like to be in a room with him and Quentin Tarantino. Give them some speed and then watch them explode like frogs in a microwave.
"Yesbutitreallyharkensbacktofritzlangsmetropolisandntherereallyhasntbeenapropernoirstoryline
sinceimeanimeanlikelookatdarkcity..." *BOOM!*
Odd thing was, as I was about to pop in the DVD to watch the last bit of "Magnolia", I channel-surfed across "Six Degrees of Separation", which had just barely begun. I had never seen it before, and it captivated me, so I settled in to watch that. A fascinating film, though it didn't take long to realize that it was adapted from a play. Great dialogue, but I find it detracts from the effect when you can practically see the playwright writing the words, watch the actor on screen turning into a mouthpiece for an offscreen presence. Stage dialogue doesn't always survive the transition to celluloid, no matter how brilliant it may be. But it was brilliant writing. Will Smith's discussion of his thesis on the death of the imagination was spellbinding and inspiring. But I say it was an "odd" thing to stumble across this film on TV because it certainly has some thematic commonalities with "Magnolia", chiefly the interconnectedness of lives and stories.
And then, today I finally got around to listening to Ryan Adams' new CD, "Cold Roses". I dropped the laser on the first disc without even looking at the names of the tracks, and the first line I heard was "I want to go to Magnolia Mountain..."
And the Narrator from the movie says...
And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just "Something That Happened." This cannot be "One of those things..." This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This Was Not Just A Matter Of Chance. Ohhhh. These strange things happen all the time.
I think I'll go take that walk now. Twenty-three degrees and sunny. Chance of frogs.
I'll leave you with some more memorable quotes from "Magnolia".
But there's light at the end of the tunnel. We interviewed a candidate for the Junior Copywriter position, and I think she'll be perfect. Fresh out of school and eager, and her writing skills are very good. She's obviously a natural writer and truly lives in the world of the word. And I'm sure she's bright enough to catch on quickly to all the other stuff that comes with working in an office, and having the pressures of production deadlines, etc. I sat in on the her initial interview on Wednesday with our HR guy because my boss was at an off-site meeting. I recommended that we should bring her in for a second interview with my boss. So she came in again on Friday, and my boss loved her. So we were excited that we'd finally found someone to fill the position, someone who seems perfect. Only problem is, as I found out on Friday, the company has just this week put a hiring freeze in place. And this comes after some of the other departments have made several hires in the past few weeks, making their staffs larger. We're just trying fill positions from staff we've lost.
So it's pretty frustrating, especially since it seems to me that there's been some foot-dragging in getting this position filled. All I hear is that there's lots of competition out there for jobs, especially for writing jobs, hundreds of resumes stacked up on HR desks. And we've interviewed a grand total of three people over a period of two or three months? And now we've finally found a perfect hire, and they announce a hiring freeze! I'm told that the freeze will only be in effect for the next two or three weeks though, which is strange in its own right. But my boss says she's working on the higher-ups to try to get things moving sooner, so we'll see how it all shakes out.
The good news is that we are going ahead with bringing in a guy on a short-term contract. He's a former copywriter there, just before my time. We'll bring him in to do some direct mail projects and he can also help me out in the interim. So there is relief in sight. Ideally by the time the new junior copywriter is on board, the contract guy will be able to shoulder some of my load while I spend some of my time training the newbie, and then once she's up and running, I can actually take some time off. What a concept! I dearly need some chill time. You know you need some time off when you're sitting at your desk, staring blankly at the computer screen, whispering Peter Lorre imitations to yourself.
"I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure's return."
"Reeck, Reeck..."
Yes, it's come to that. Life outside of work hasn't been much better. When the weekend rolls around, I'm usually too burnt-out to want to do much. Just sleep in and then chill out at my own pace. Been spending my weekends mostly in my own little cocoon. Hardly even venturing out during the day. The exception was a few weekends ago when we had a beautiful Sunday, 20-some degrees and sunny. People were walking about in T-shirts...and, thankfully, pants.
The day beckoned, so I took a walk up Kingston Road, and, on a whim, decided to turn down a random side street and wander through a Beaches neighbourhood I had never walked through before. I walked southward, making my way through the mostly large, beautiful and certainly expensive houses. I ended up on a street that ran south towards the main strip of the Beaches on Queen Street. On the left was a wooded ravine with a walking trail that followed the course of a stream. One of the nice things about Toronto is the system of ravines that runs throughout the city. Lovely to have access to nature in the middle of a city. Gotta stay in touch with the Mother. I saw a stairway of sorts carved into the hillside, so I descended into the ravine. It felt great traipsing through the shady coolness, hearing the trickling of the stream, the rustle of leaves in the trees, sensing the awakening of spring.
Today is another such day. Twenty-three degrees and sunny. People walking around in t-shirts. And pants. I probably won't get out today though. Gotta do my taxes. And my laundry situation has gone Code Red. I'm down to the third-stringers in my underwear-and-socks drawer. The bench-warmers that never get to play in the big game because I rely on my quality guys to carry me through. As they call it in the hockey world, playing a shortened bench. But now I'm calling upon socks I don't even remember owning. Underwear that now prompt me to question my initial purchase decision (ultra-briefs? What was I thinking?).
Anyway, I'm feeling a bit too cerebral to indulge in the simple pleasures of a sunny day. Not that they're mutually exclusive, but I just feel the need to write and cogitate. It's been a rare feeling lately. And I've been feeding my head with some good things. This past Tuesday was the "company store" day at work (a phrase that tickles me to no end: "You take 16 DVDs and waddya get..."), where I get to redeem the voucher that accompanies my pay cheque once a month. They set up a corner of the warehouse with about a dozen large tables of returned product, mostly DVDs, and we get to pick one DVD or two CDs. This time around I chose a 2-disc deluxe edition of the "Magnolia" DVD. I try to pick films that I'm likely to want to revisit at some point. That's my philosophy of having a DVD collection. Why have a bunch of films you'll watch once and then they just sit on your shelf? For those kinds of films, there's rental. I guess I see DVDs more like CDs than books. Oddly, I'm okay with having lots of books that I'll read only once and then they just sit on my shelf. Perhaps that's an issue to be more fully explored at some other time, but maybe it has something to do with the perception that books are more "permanent", an older technology. Or maybe it's that I've grown up conditioned to accept the logic of libraries, with no similarly popular concept of film libraries?
Anyway, I watched "Magnolia" Friday night, staying up way too late to do so. In fact, I couldn't finish watching it because I was just to tired, it was getting on to 3 a.m. or thereabouts--it's a long film--so I watched the last 45 minutes or so last night. It's the first re-viewing of the film for me since I'd seen it in the theatre, and it certainly is one of those films that rewards multiple viewings, if only just to get a clearer picture of all the characters and their various relationships to each other--literal and metaphorical.
[I interrupt this narrative with an announcement. I have decided to forgo doing laundry until tomorrow! I'm working from home tomorrow, so I'll be able to get that done while I work, just as long as I get it done before I have to leave for my dental appointment in the afternoon. Getting a crown done. Yay. So it looks like maybe I'll be able to get out and catch some of the Sunday sunshine after all. Me and my third-string socks and my ultra-briefs. And pants.]
The bonus disc has some interesting stuff on it. A bunch of outtakes which are quite funny. Some scenes that didn't make it into the movie. The complete T.J. Mackey seminar that Tom Cruise delivers ("tame the pussy!"), as well as the T.J. Mackey infomercial that plays mostly in the background on television during the scenes with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jason Robards on his death bed. There's also Aimee Mann's video for "Save Me" and a making-of documentary that chronicles the process as the film goes over schedule and over budget, and then wins a bunch of awards and film-festival honours.
I'll say this though: Paul Thomas Anderson is one hyper dude. Made me wonder what it'd be like to be in a room with him and Quentin Tarantino. Give them some speed and then watch them explode like frogs in a microwave.
"Yesbutitreallyharkensbacktofritzlangsmetropolisandntherereallyhasntbeenapropernoirstoryline
sinceimeanimeanlikelookatdarkcity..." *BOOM!*
Odd thing was, as I was about to pop in the DVD to watch the last bit of "Magnolia", I channel-surfed across "Six Degrees of Separation", which had just barely begun. I had never seen it before, and it captivated me, so I settled in to watch that. A fascinating film, though it didn't take long to realize that it was adapted from a play. Great dialogue, but I find it detracts from the effect when you can practically see the playwright writing the words, watch the actor on screen turning into a mouthpiece for an offscreen presence. Stage dialogue doesn't always survive the transition to celluloid, no matter how brilliant it may be. But it was brilliant writing. Will Smith's discussion of his thesis on the death of the imagination was spellbinding and inspiring. But I say it was an "odd" thing to stumble across this film on TV because it certainly has some thematic commonalities with "Magnolia", chiefly the interconnectedness of lives and stories.
And then, today I finally got around to listening to Ryan Adams' new CD, "Cold Roses". I dropped the laser on the first disc without even looking at the names of the tracks, and the first line I heard was "I want to go to Magnolia Mountain..."
And the Narrator from the movie says...
And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just "Something That Happened." This cannot be "One of those things..." This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This Was Not Just A Matter Of Chance. Ohhhh. These strange things happen all the time.
I think I'll go take that walk now. Twenty-three degrees and sunny. Chance of frogs.
I'll leave you with some more memorable quotes from "Magnolia".
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