You might recall a few months ago I mentioned that CBC was going to record and air a special live-audience version of Dimitrios Koussioulas’s Mile End talk show Parc Avenue Tonight.
The show was recorded in front of a live audience on May 15 at Cabaret du Mile End. I was invited to witness the setup, and took a bunch of pictures. I talk a bit about the show for this story in Saturday’s Gazette, which discusses the state of local non-news television in English Montreal.
CBC Montreal presented Parc Avenue Tonight Live Saturday at 7pm as part of its Absolutely Quebec series of regional specials. You can watch it online if you missed it.
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- 5:22pm: Producers hold a meeting to discuss various technical issues. That’s Carrie Haber on the left. She produces the Absolutely Quebec series for CBC.
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- 5:23pm: The room is empty three hours before the show. It will be filled with applause soon enough.
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- 5:45pm: Haber plays with a laptop computer trying to get it to work with the projector so they can show a taped segment. But the audio plug is broken, and they need audio. They try switching to a Mac, but it doesn’t have the right video connector. They eventually use another laptop, but run into colour problems with the projector itself.
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- 5:57pm: Hand microphones sit on the couch. Normally guests for a show like this would have wireless lapel microphones, but those couldn’t work here because of the PA volume. Even Koussioulas would have to hold his own microphone through the show.
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- 6pm: The host’s desk. Koussioulas’s parents bought this from a fish market about 20 years ago, and for some reason Koussioulas likes it.
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- 6:17pm: Koussioulas checks out the applause sign
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- 6:17pm: Koussioulas checks out his cue cards.
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- 6:32pm: Qualifying the microphone situation as a “disaster”, Koussioulas is on the phone trying to arrange for a desk microphone. His attempts to find an alternative solution would eventually fail.
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- 6:45pm: Koussioulas chats with Haber, learning about camera positions. The show was shot with five cameras, one of which was unmanned.
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- 6:46pm: Koussioulas and Haber on stage.
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- 6:56pm: Koussioulas gets a technical briefing from one of the many professionals who will be capturing his show on camera.
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- 7pm: Yet more technical discussions an hour before showtime.
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- 7:06pm: Comedian DeAnne Smith arrives and gets a quick briefing from producer Dan Webster. She had just been on the Craig Ferguson show the previous night.
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- 7:08pm: Crew hoist an old cigarette machine on stage. The machine was converted into an art vending machine by Louis Rastelli, part of the Distroboto project. (Smoking is, for some bizarre reason, a big thing for Koussioulas and his show. But for obvious reasons the CBC won’t show him smoking on air.)
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- 7:11pm: Smith rehearses the musical part of her performance for sound check.
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- 7:25pm: The Monday Night Choir rehearses before the show.
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- 7:33pm: In a tiny room overlooking the main hall, a control room, which will be doing the live-to-tape recording.
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- 7:36pm: Coming back from a smoke break, Koussioulas notices that the stage decorations hadn’t been arranged yet, and volunteers to do it himself.
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- 7:38pm: The technical team breaks for a group photo with the host.
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- 7:48pm: The audience starts filing into the hall and taking their seats.
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- 7:50pm: With minutes to go before the show begins, the stage is ready.
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- 7:54pm: Koussioulas poses for a photo with Gazette photographer John Kenney. The photo wouldn’t be published until two months later.
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- 8:08pm: The audience is in place, with the show about to begin.
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- 8:13pm: Bandleader (well, band) Tony Ezzy does final preparations before the show.
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- 8:21pm: Panos Koussioulas, Dimitrios’s brother, warms up the crowd, which includes their parents.
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- 8:22pm: Laura Dalton Black holds up the applause sign as the show begins
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- 8:24pm: Koussioulas does a brief monologue with the audience.
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- 8:28pm: Koussioulas does his chat-with-the-bandleader bit with Ezzy.
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- 8:36pm: The Monday Night Choir kicks the show off with a song.
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- 8:42pm: Koussioulas chats with photographers the Sanchez brothers. Though he’s a fan of them as artists, the interview is a disappointment.
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- 8:53pm: Cadence Weapon performs.
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- 9:04pm: Smith isn’t just a guest, she’s a fan too.
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- 9:07pm: Koussioulas goes into the audience and chats with the crowd. This segment didn’t appear in the edited version that went to air.
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- 9:09pm: Jonathan Goldstein, host of CBC’s Wiretap, is a surprise guest on the show and the last before intermission.
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- 9:44pm: Smith performs a standup routine.
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- 9:56pm: Smith gets invited to the couch to chat with Koussioulas. Note the mug whose text has been altered to say “FUDGE DEATH”
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- 9:59pm: Lorraine Carpenter, editor in chief of Cult MTL, is another surprise guest. She walks out of her seat in the audience to go on stage.
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- 10:03pm: Carpenter and Koussioulas chat with Ezzy.
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- 10:04pm: Her interview over, Carpenter leaves the stage with a banana in hand. (Giving guests bananas is another one of Koussioulas’s quirks.)
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- 10:06pm: AroarA performs.
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- 10:06pm: AroarA performs.
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- 10:17pm: I really didn’t get this guest. He was a comedian who tried a whole fake-right-winger thing, but it just wasn’t funny, at least to me. (His segment was mercifully cut from the program that aired)
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- 10:15pm: Chatting again with Ezzy.
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- 10:52pm: Show’s over. The crowd is gone and technicians pile up the equipment on stage.
Thanks to Koussioulas, Carrie Haber and others involved with the show for letting me tag along.
Interesting reading with your Gazette article about the sad state of non-news affairs…Louis Douvile hit it right on the head when he alluded to the CFCF glory days of Ogilvy Avenue..They were the busiest CTV affiliate in Canada..He’s also right about corporate control..and their worried about the bottom line and cutting costs and bowing to national sponsors.
Surely an extra couple of hours a week at CTV Montreal won’t hurt them..and I take the position that corporate suits in Toronto don’t realize that the future of TV is local televison. In our 500-channel universe which you can reduce by a few hundred as those few hundred run the same syndicated shows…
But aha, local TV is the key here, and CRTC should take some blame here having reduced local content requirements, which is a shame as the big market could handle a few more hours..
A local music variety/lifestyle/culture type show would seem to be a missing show recorded possibly at a local theatre in a live audience setting…The City Sports show has yet to shine and would shine and grow more without the Sportsnet apron strings aka corporate controlled as Mr. Douville mentions.
I had high hopes for the Whalley-Abbey Only in Montreal show, regrettably I missed the first show but based on your review, unless they change their topics or subject matter tape shows closer to airing, this show will lose steam quickly and it’s already making me pine for the days of McGowan’s Montreal, which if scheduled against this new Rogers offering, Don would be laughing all the way to the bank.
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