SEE Magazine
Issue #393: June 14, 2001
Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved

In Print PREVIEW by Kevin Wilson "So far, it’s Daniel Television." But not for long. Daniel Richler rhapsodizes at length – but without repetition – over the possibilities at hand when you’ve got a new television station to play with. The station in question is Book TV, a new offering this September. You may not get to see it right away – it will only be available on digital cable – but Richler, author, broadcaster, and now the new station’s editor-in-chief, is sure that you’ll want to. Suggest that perhaps there are too many channels already and his ardour warms. "If you look at that plethora of channels, you’ll see that very few have book offerings. If there are book shows, they’re one-size fits all. They only touch the suËrface of things. Or, if they please one person, they’ll bore another, because reading is a very tribal activity. "So, the wonder of a book channel is that sooner or later, we’ll have tooled a show to each type of reader. There will be shows about French decontructionism and shows about science fiction and mystery and erotica and business and all the rest of it. In fact, the channel is about the whole wide world, but it’s refracted through the corrective lens of reading and writing." And reading and writing, for Richler, are broadly defined. "It’s spoken, written and wired, so it’s also about hip hop and the popular lyric, it’s about political speechwriting and the state of websites. It’s a licence to talk about everything. When people wonder how we can fill 24/7 and their eyes glaze over at the concept of Book Television, that’s just a failure of their imagination. They’re only thinking about the artefact that is a book." Where artefacts are dusty, the EIC intends Book TV to be firey.ì It may be Daniel Television today, but Richler envisions a cadre of hosts to fan the flames. "Bravo is host-free because their approach is one of art for art’s sake. Our’s is quite different from that. Ours is about argument, controversy, criticism reaction. "People, I think will be surprised to see how CNN-like the channel will be, because they don’t really think of writing as being a matter of urgency." CNN? For books? The news, says Richler, will be the station’s unique and most exciting component. "Take the format that you are accustomed to in the world of news broadcasting and talk about J.K. Rowling and Fred Stenson and Tupac Shakur. It’s amazing. It’s hilarious. We’ve been practising for a while. You begin to take on the cadences of news – you do the newscaster thing. And yet it’s true. This is news. ‘In England this week, the Literary Review announced its Worst Sex Scene in a Novel Prize, wor´th £15,000...’ Richler admits that he’s taking the long view, yet he anticipates filling a tall order. "I believe that you could watch Book TV and nothing else and get a complete picture of what’s going on out there." "There’s another factor. Because we’re a digital channel, were going to be able to fulfil the promise of interactivity." Screens will be annotated. You’ll be able to request further information. You’ll be able to take note of a book and buy it later. It sounds like an info-junkie’s dream on screen, but the promise is also imperative. "That’ll be our commerical saviour. Because so few people are watching digital television right now that we can’t make money by selling time to advertisers.Ò Admittedly, there will be an infomercial element to it, but I think that’s unavoidable in the digitial world. But if you’re going to do an infomercial, the best place to do it is the world of literature. "Marketing. It’s not really me, but I have to learn it." Richler passion cools for the first time, but only long enough to make the confession. Then it catches him up again. "I’m in it because it’s the best job you can imagine, because we can talk about and make TV about anything we like."

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