Have you heard the rumors about what a fiasco the Rogers takeover of the Citytvs has been? Terrible!

Well, if you haven’t, here’s the buzz.

Staffers top to bottom have been jumping ship; the feature film programming department, once an indie film Mecca, has been gutted; and programming itself has been culled and ‘Torontalized.’

‘Sadly, everyone was so excited about going to Rogers and being part of that family,’ says one well-connected insider. ‘On the programming side, when the transition actually occurred, everyone found they had little to do…Apparently [Rogers] didn’t listen to the basics on how to run a channel…[It’s] putting lame-ass U.S. programming on the air. Was this what the CRTC wanted?’

Hold back, why don’t you.

It might be worth a mention that this complainant has good reason to feel some loyalty to the old Citytv. And whatever your reflections on that institution, Citytv today is rapidly losing any resemblance to what it once was.

From Jay Switzer to Paul Gratton to Stephen Hurlbut, the City lifers have most definitely left the building. And that, increasingly, goes for on-air, too: Marilyn Denis, who’s developing a new daytime series for CTV, Peter Silverman (unceremoniously shown the door two months before his contract was to expire, 19 years in), even Ed the Sock…No more Speaker’s Corner, no more Great Movies, no more 299 Queen Street, even – and that’s just in Toronto.

For those who grieve the demise of the City of their youth, bear in mind that there are some hard realities at work here. Switzer himself acknowledged as much on his way out. ‘There were things we had to do during the tough recent years that, stroke by stroke, take you off the brand,’ Switzer told Playback upon his departure in July 2007.

Certainly, Rogers knew from the get-go that it would have to wrestle those same alligators – and to heck with the brand.

‘There’s a reality in terms of what happened,’ says Alain Strati, VP of specialty TV and development for Rogers Media. ‘The old City wasn’t working. Citytv had some severe financial problems, so you look at that and say, what can you do? Citytv was born and raised in a different time. If you started Citytv with the same people and mindset [today], they’d do something different. The distinctiveness of City was it delivered different programming to audiences that weren’t getting programming from other sources, but now it’s such a crowded and fragmented market.’

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting front man Ian Morrison has watched a lot of this kind of business over the years. ‘They’re no better and no worse than their competitors,’ he says. ‘It’s only been one year. There may be doubt about it, but we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt.’

FCB did, in the name of diversity, support the Rogers City purchase, so he acknowledges that it has some motivation to look on the bright side. But, he adds, ‘They call us ‘the watchdog.’ We’re watching.’

So what is that distinctive Rogers stamp going to look like? So far it’s nothing too special.

Great Movies, which aired in primetime during the week, was the first thing to go. ‘[Early on,] we decided the City stations would not be a movie station on a daily basis,’ says Rogers Media EVP programming Malcolm Dunlop. ‘The money invested in movies would be better spent in the direction of scripted comedies and dramas, and in getting more into the reality genre.’

This does not affect the Canadian feature picture, he says, noting that one of the conditions of licence is to run 100 hours of Canadian movies per year in primetime, albeit in the Siberia of Saturday night.

And so this year Rogers went to the L.A. Screenings shopping for the Citys for the first time, pockets bulging, and brought home 18-plus new series for fall.

‘They’re picking up the bad habits of the other private broadcasters – overspending on their American programming,’ sighs Kim Hume, ACTRA’s outgoing director of public policy and communications. And so you’ll see fare like Easy Money, Glam God with Vivica A. Fox, Celebrity Fit Club, 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Nip/Tuck and Law & Order: SVU gracing your screens this fall. Hardly innovative, but these shows will likely provide more stable audiences than movies.

On the Canadian end, the caster has a few things going on – so far mostly hand-me-downs. Murdoch Mysteries has gone to a second season. There’s Less Than Kind, a quirky Winnipeg-produced comedy (Buffalo Gal Pictures/Breakthrough Films and Television) inherited from CHUM, that – somewhat incongruously, as it stars Maury Chaykin – Strati plays up as warm and familial. And there’s Kaya, an ‘out-of-the-box’ Canuck-made rock-star drama picked up from MTV.

There’s also a benefits package worth more than $37.5 million that has to be spent over seven years. Strati says Rogers is looking for series that have a strong connection with the City centers of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto. Less Than Kind is a good example of that, he says, adding that the Toronto-based Murdoch Mysteries this time around is doing some shooting in Calgary and Vancouver.

‘This doesn’t preclude other things,’ Strati adds, noting that it’s also looking at ‘docu-soaps’ and local-based reality programming.

And then there’s the drama series Crusoe – which started out as a project for Rogers-owned OMNI Television – that qualifies as an international copro à la Tudors and Jozi-H, and Rogers hopes to do more of that as well. ‘We do look and are looking for interesting coproduction opportunities,’ Strati says.

The hope was that Rogers could swoop in and become a third private national network to relieve the duopoly that is CTV/Canwest, and although, as Strati puts it, you plan for success, the stars have to be aligned to get there. The lack of national distribution continues to limit what Rogers can do for ratings numbers and, by extension, in ad dollars.

‘No matter how great a show is, we’re not going to have the same distribution as CTV, CBC and Global, so strategically, we’d like to bring something different,’ Strati says. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean edgy or innovative, just something that resonates with audiences. We’d like to be a hit in the five cities we’re connected to. That’s our objective.’

So producers, you can just go ahead and strike ‘edgy’ and ‘innovative’ from your lexicon while honing your pitch. Yes, the old Citytv is well and truly gone. Let’s raise a toast and hope that this new incarnation will survive, thrive, and in time, make a mark that is as unpredictable as its predecessor’s was.

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With this I bid you adieu. I’m taking a break from journalism to do some work for the non-profit sector. I want to thank the folks at Playback for being an absolute pleasure to work with: Michelle Hille, Marise Strauss, Suzan Ayscough, Sean Davidson, publisher Pete Vamos, and editor Mark Dillon.

It’s been 11 years now that I’ve covered film and TV, and if I know more than when I started, it’s on account of those of you in the industry who have taken my calls – too often on little or no notice – patiently walked me through your world and trusted me with your thoughts and opinions. Thank you. Keep up the good work. And happy trails.