I am late to this news, as I haven’t seen mention of it at TV, Eh? or other Canadian television sites, but Pure Pwnage has been officially cancelled by Showcase.  Pure Pwnage co-creator/pwnerer Jarett Cale first broke the news with this January 19, 2011 posting.  On January 25, the Showcase Facebook wall confirmed the show’s cancellation.

Reasons given by Cale for the show’s cancellation include “poorer-than-expected ratings, a new direction for [Showcase]…and poorer-than-expected web traffic.”  Pure Pwnage‘s web series is also on hold, perhaps indefinitely.

The most interesting thing about Cale’s post is the announcement of a Pure Pwnage first-TV-season DVD set, due March 2011.  Unfortunately, the set is for Australia, on the ABC DVD label.  It will contain the as-aired shows, as well as supplemental web material.

The Pure Pwnage fans are fairly active in defending the TV show.  There are pro-Pwnage, anti-everything-else ravings on the Showcase Facebook wall, which is to be expected for any cancelled show with a vocal fanbase.  More encouragingly, the fans are actively campaigning for the show to find a new network.

The most logical prospective network for Pure Pwnage is G4 Canada, which hardly produces anything aside from Reviews on the Run and EP Daily.  Pure Pwnage is most likely dead, in both television and webseries forms.  Then again, Kenny vs. Spenny moved from CBC to Showcase.  Paradise Falls managed to drag on until 2008.  Carla Collins still manages to find work.  Hardly anything works the way it should in Canadian television.

Yes, it’s another round of Alliance Home Entertainment’s Canadian TV-on-DVD releases.  There’s an increased reliance this year on relatively obscure shows with one-or-two-season runs.  The Adventures of Sinbad, The Outer Limits and other well-known CanCon quota quickies have been burned through, so Alliance has to reach deeper into its barrel.

With that in mind, here are Alliance’s February 2011 releases, plus a March 2011 release that hasn’t been formally announced:

Dead Man’s Gun: Season 1 (February 15, 2011) | Season 2 (March 15, 2011)
La galère: Season 3 (February 8, 2011)
Amazon: Complete Series (February 22, 2011)
The Adventures of the Black Stallion: Season 3 (February 22, 2011)
The Crow: Stairway to Heaven: Complete Series (February 15, 2011)
Total Recall 2070: Complete Series (February 22, 2011)

The packaging for Dead Man’s Gun is encouraging.  Alliance has finally realized how awful the six-disc Digipak it’s been using since 2010 is, and has opted for a multi-disc keepcase.  I hope this is a permanent change.

If you’ve been keeping score, Night Heat and Da Vinci’s Inquest haven’t been touched yet, while Total Recall 2070 and Amazon (a/k/a Peter Benchley’s Amazon) have.  Eventually, Alliance is going to have to get to Night Heat, just so I can end this running joke.  You can’t hide from the 1980s forever.

Fugget About It is the first show greenlit under the auspices of the Teletoon Pilot Project.  As per the press release, Fugget About It will be showrun by Jeff Abugov, writer and/or producer for shows like Two and a Half Men, Grace Under Fire, Roseanne, Caroline in the City and That’s So Raven.  Fugget About It is scheduled to debut for the Fall 2012-13 season.

Fugget About It is focused on teenaged nobody Petey Falcone.  His father Jimmy was once the head of a large crime syndicate, but Jimmy just couldn’t whack his Uncle Cheech.  The Falcones are now in witness protection, living in Regina, Saskatchewan as the MacDougalls.

I still don’t understand this choice, even after a few hours.  I get that 9 Story Entertainment has a prior relationship with Corus Entertainment, having made the upcoming Almost Naked Animals for YTV.  Teletoon aired another 9 Story property, Best Ed, in 2008.  Does anyone remember Best Ed?  Exactly my point.

Seriously, Teletoon, is this the best you can do?  I thought Angora Napkin, Dunce Bucket, Ninjamaica, Nerdland and Space Knights Go! would be greenlit before Fugget About It.  The show’s premise – Mafiosi in small-city Canada – isn’t unworkable, but I don’t understand what Teletoon sees in it.

I think this is a bad decision by Teletoon.  If Teletoon had greenlit Angora Napkin or Ninjamaica first, I would have been fine with the Teletoon Pilot Project, but Fugget About It?  I already have.

I realize the first two pieces are from last week, but news has been slow lately.  CTV announced two pilots and a series order on Thursday, December 9.  The two hour-long CTV pilots are Saving Hope, a medical drama set in Toronto, and Stay with Me, about a lawyer/stay-at-home mother.  Ilana Frank’s Thump Inc. is behind Saving Hope, while Sarrazin Couture Entertainment is behind Stay with Me.

In addition, CTV and MuchMusic have ordered six one-hour episodes of Epitome Pictures’ Highland Gardens, a show about young Canadians trying to make it in Hollywood.  Epitome Pictures is best known for Degrassi: the Next Generation/Degrassi and Instant Star.  The showrunner is Martin Gero, a man best known for Stargate Atlantis, Young People Fucking and HBO’s Bored to Death.

I can safely say I am not interested in the two CTV pilots.  As someone commented at TV, Eh?, they read like St. Elsewhere and The Good Wife.

Highland Gardens sounds similarly generic, but Gero could make something out of the premise.  Likewise, Malcolm MacRury’s attached to Saving Hope, which probably means Cra$h & Burn is dead in the water.

I’m not going to complain about the three new projects, given that they won’t make air until at least the 2011-12 season, but CTV isn’t much for originality.  At least CTV’s not ripping off $#*! My Dad Says yet.

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CityTV’s midseason slate includes the second season of My RONA Home (Sunday, April 3, 2011: 9:00 PM ET) and the fourth season of Murdoch Mysteries (Wednesday, March 16, 2011: 10:00 PM ET.)  Airdates and times are, of course, subject to change.

CityTV’s midseason is stuffed full of American shows and Law & Order: UK.  I don’t want to dog CityTV, but when did it become the most conservative networklet in Canadian television?  Most of the prime-time schedule consists of NBC and ABC shows not nailed down by Shaw Media or CTV.  Murdoch Mysteries is being rerun in two different timeslots.

I’m not going to blame Rogers entirely for the channel rot, as CityTV has been on a slow, steady decline since the tail end of the CHUM Television era.  At the same time…My RONA Home and Out There with Melissa DiMarco reruns?!  I honestly can’t believe we’ve come to this point.

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CTV will debut one show in the beginning of January.  The Marilyn Denis Show‘s first episode will air Monday, January 10, 2011, at 10:00 AM ET/PT.  In addition, The Listener‘s second season will premiere Friday, January 28, 2011, at 8:00 PM ET/PT.

Flashpoint has a “mid-season premiere,” which is a fancy way of saying holiday specials are over for another year.  The show returns Tuesday, January 4, 2011, at 10:00 PM ET/PT.

Not to be outdone in the CanCon department, Global has…given a second window to Haven.  The first-season premiere airs Friday, January 21, 2011, at 9:00 PM ET/PT.  Yes.  One show, and it’s imported from Showcase.

Seriously, news like this makes me wonder why the hell I do URBMN.  I understand the limitations of Canadian television, but Canadian content laws need to be tightened up when networks like Global and CityTV whittle the CanCon stick down to a shiv.  This country is just now inching to the point where our shows are becoming Americanized.

Meanwhile, Shaw Media is continuing the Canwest practice of slapping a show across five or six channels.  It boggles the mind.  Oh, well.  Enjoy Bob’s Burgers and Winter Wipeout.

I can’t say much about CityTV’s Mark Dailey (1953-2010) that hasn’t already been said: transplanted American, crime reporter, news anchor, voiceover actor, Toronto television mainstay, sometime truck driver.  Dailey died December 6, 2010 of cancer at the age of 57.

Perhaps Dailey’s greatest achievement was as CityTV’s longtime announcer.  Few announcers are as synonymous with Canadian channels as Dailey was with CityTV.  Dailey regularly took the piss out of the shows and films CityTV would screen at any given time.  ”CityTV…everywhere” is one of Canadian television’s great catchphrases.

The best way to eulogize Dailey is with a few clips, featuring him in his element.  I don’t even care that this is a Toronto-centric story.  Dailey was to CityTV what, say, Bob Boving was to CBC Television from 1985-2002.  You might not have known his name, but you knew his voice – the difference, of course, being that Bob Boving wouldn’t have panned Happy Gilmore or The Raccoons on-air.  CityTV didn’t care much for reverence back in the bad ol’ days.

This is one of the better stories I’ve posted on URBMN.  A Picnicface television series, imaginatively titled Picnicface, has been added to Breakthrough Films & Television’s website.  Both Breakthrough and The Comedy Network are responsible for the series.

Breakthrough announces Picnicface as “in keeping with the great tradition of Canadian sketch comedy shows like SCTV or Kids in the Hall.”  While I’m not sold on Breakthrough’s hype, Picnicface have gained their own measure of notoriety.

It’s been a while since I posted anything about Alliance Home Entertainment’s Canadian TV-on-DVD releases.  This listing consists of five new releases, two box set repacks, and one oft-delayed title.  To wit:

Andromeda: Season 5 (January 4, 2011)
C.A. Conseil d’administration: Complete Series (November 9, 2010)
Passe-Partout: “Coffret” (November 16, 2010)
TekWar: Complete Series (?)
The Adventures of Sinbad: Season 2 (January 4, 2011)
The Adventures of the Black Stallion: Season 2 (November 9, 2010)
Trailer Park Boys: “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys” DVD | Blu-ray (December 7, 2010)

You will notice Passe-Partout‘s box set listed as “Coffret.”  From what I can tell, Alliance Vivafilm is re-releasing its Passe-Partout volume sets, packaging them as a collection.  At around $200, I can’t see a market for the set, even though Passe-Partout is encoded into the DNA of every French-speaking Quebecer born in the late 1970s and 1980s.

I question the wisdom of Alliance releasing the TPB special two years after its airdate.  I see no point in releasing Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day before the special that preceded it.  I guess Countdown to Liquor Day is a bigger commercial lure, being the third TPB film.  I don’t know.

As for The Adventures of Sinbad and Andromeda, they finish their runs on January 4, 2011.  This begs the question: which shows will Alliance mill through next?  I mean, the world is at the point where Airwolf‘s fourth season is worthy of release.

Seriously, the Vancouver season of Airwolf!  A lot of Airwolf fans count the fourth season as a separate show, but here we are.  It’s 2011 and you get to see tons of stock footage of a Bell 222, plus Barry Van Dyke!  Night Heat can’t come to DVD why?

Since Ed the Sock’s This Movie Sucks! debuted on May 28, 2010, the show has been a popular search topic for URBMN.  Channel Zero recently announced a “renewal” of sorts for TMS!, in this press release for CHCH’s second year under Channel Zero ownership.

The show will have two new episodes in the coming weeks, according to Channel Zero’s Sonya Davidson.  August 28, 2010 will be what Davidson terms an “E3 Special,” which I assume means TMS! will visit/make fun of the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

September 18, 2010 will be the “season premiere,” though it’s really the seventh episode.  The schedule since c. July 2010 has been one new episode followed by two to three reruns.  There have been re-edits of the Attack from Space and Bride of the Gorilla episodes, as well as new opening credits.

At this point, This Movie Sucks! is definitely not as slick as Mystery Science Theater 3000 in its prime.  I’m not aware of MST3K in its KTMA days being as sloppily-edited as TMS! often is.  At least Charlene Zacks was turfed after the initial outing.

Ron Sparks’ involvement with This Movie Sucks! varies by episode, and Andrew Young is now well-established as chief butt monkey.  I don’t know what kind of a budget TMS! has to work with, but it certainly isn’t playing with CityTV scratch.

The show’s still a “find out at midnight Saturday to see if it’s a new episode” affair, but that’s due more to lack of publicity than anything.  At least TMS! actually re-edits weaker episodes.  You would not believe how much the Bride of the Gorilla episode has improved with actual riffing.

With this and CHCH’s new version of Sportsline, it’s like CHCH wants to assemble some weird amalgamation of “classic” Toronto television.  I mean, Mark Hebscher‘s hosting nü Sportsline.  Now all we need is a Just Like Mom revival…oh, shit.

Addendum (September 19, 2010 – 12:28 AM) | According to Channel Zero’s Sonya Davidson, new episodes of This Movie Sucks! will now air September 25, 2010.

I’ve known about this change since September 17.  I decided to wait until shortly after This Movie Sucks! aired in its usual time, just to see if CHCH would air yet another rerun.  It has.  As of the time I write this, the second version of Attack from Space is being rehashed.

I’m not even expecting a new episode for September 25, the way things are going.  I apologize for being late with this news, but I just don’t understand the show’s production schedule.  I’ve given TMS! a pass for a few months, but come on.  Geek-O-Rama just doesn’t cut it.