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Sweetmiracle

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canada.com Entertainment

 

CBC poised to air huge live telecast to benefit Asian tsunami victims

 

John Mckay

Canadian Press

 

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

 

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Alex Lifeson of the Canadian rock band Rush listens during a Canada For Asia press conference in Toronto, recently. (CP Archive/Aaron Harris)

 

TORONTO (CP) - Rehearsals and other feverish preparations continued Wednesday at the CBC broadcasting centre for Thursday night's live telecast of Canada For Asia, a three-hour national benefit special to support relief efforts for the South Asian tsunami victims.

 

"It's a madhouse and it's wonderful," said CBC spokeswoman Ruth-Ellen Soles. "It's been political mayhem getting it together but we got it together," added singer Tom Cochrane. "It's precedent-setting, so this is history in the making."

 

The CBC has assembled a who's who of Canadian talent and a vast radio and TV network, having invited any interested private broadcasters to simulcast free of charge the program that will air from 7 to 10 p.m. local times.

 

In addition to CBC radio and TV, Newsworld, Country Canada and online at CBC.ca, the show will be carried on MuchMoreMusic, MTV Canada, CMT, the I Channel, Rogers Television's 30 cable access outlets in Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, Canadian Forces radio and television serving troops in Kabul, Bosnia, the Golan Heights and the Sinai, as well as some ethnic TV channels and private radio networks and stations. CTV and Global Television have turned down the CBC offer, however, citing their own benefit efforts, including CTV's concert telecast set for Jan. 29.

 

"It's too bad," said Cochrane, noting that the three major networks in Australia are co-operating on a similar undertaking. "But I understand. They have their own brand and this is a CBC-branded show and that's a reality."

 

Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, who will also be part of the on-air talent, said "there are a lot of things going on," but declined to suggest there's any rivalry amongst the networks, noting he had also been interviewed on CTV.

 

"It's just an example of the kind of unity that everybody's felt in doing whatever they can," he said.

 

Lifeson and Cochrane conceded that donor fatigue will set in eventually.

 

"It's only natural that it will, there's some other thing that will come along that will take our attention away from this," said Lifeson.

 

But, he added, it will take a long time to reinstate stability in the disaster region and vast sums of money will still be needed.

 

CBC has devoted two of its large studios to the ambitious special and final rehearsals were under way Wednesday afternoon and were to continue Thursday morning. Lifeson said because of logistical problems, Rush and several of the other bands that will be seen Thursday night have had to pre-tape their musical segments.

 

Other scheduled musical guests include Celine Dion, The Tragically Hip, Anne Murray and Bryan Adams (who will perform a duo together), Blue Rodeo, Barenaked Ladies, Sam Roberts, Bruce Cockburn, David Usher and Chad Kroeger from Nickelback.

 

Cochrane said Shania Twain was in New Zealand and expressed her regrets but would be making a "sizeable" donation.

 

Non-musical celebrities to make appearances include Mike Myers, Wayne Gretzky, Eric McCormack, David Suzuki, Dave Thomas, Alex Trebek, members of the Kids in the Hall and Royal Canadian Air Farce comedy troupes and hurdler Perdita Felicien.

 

Suanne Kelman, acting chair of the school of journalism at Toronto's Ryerson University, admitted to being a little uncomfortable with the way broadcasters and pop entertainers are rushing to get competing benefit concerts on the air and wondered if some of them aren't just grandstanding.

 

"It's like a charity ball. I don't understand what you need the ball for."

 

She said the public has already been very good about responding to the disaster with generous donations and no one should be surprised if old media rivalries haven't been swept away by the common cause.

 

"Egos don't get parked at the door."

 

Kelman said there are two reasons why the public has been so taken with the tsunami disaster, apart from the obvious one that the TV news footage of the killer waves, garnered mostly from tourist camcorders, has been so dramatic. For one thing, she said, it is a natural event, with no one to blame, and secondly, unlike the Sudan, for example, a lot of Canadians have relatives in places like Sri Lanka and Somalia and many others have vacationed in the region's hard-hit tourist zones.

 

Also, she added, the event seems ready-made for an overall sense of unease and even doom that people feel today about the shape of their planet, as reflected in such Hollywood disaster-themed entertainment as The Day After Tomorrow.

 

"People are deeply worried about our relationship with the natural world," she said. "There's the global warming issue, there's fear of pandemics. This is the kind of thing we're already sort of geared up for."

 

She said many people seem poised almost fatalistically, waiting for for the great disaster that will punish us all.

 

"I'm not even sure for what, but there is this kind of fear that it's out to get us."

 

Proceeds collected from Canada For Asia will go to World Vision, the Canadian Red Cross, UNICEF, Oxfam Canada, Care Canada, Save the Children Canada and various community groups recognized by CIDA as bona fide recipients. Donors can call 1-866-334-ASIA or contribute online at www.Canadaforasia.ca.

 

Thanks to Draconator on CP!!

 

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Awesome article, thank you so much Sweetmiracle and Draconator! trink39.gif

 

 

Found this interesting:

 

Smith, who's also a musician, was helping Rush record a new version of Closer To The Heart this week, and a video of the recording session will be featured in the show on Thursday.

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QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jan 13 2005, 02:09 AM)
Awesome article, thank you so much Sweetmiracle and Draconator! trink39.gif


Found this interesting:

Smith, who's also a musician, was helping Rush record a new version of Closer To The Heart this week, and a video of the recording session will be featured in the show on Thursday.

That caught my eye as well - Any chance it might be released, I wonder?

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And yet another article...

 

Music telethon organized in a few heart-felt beats

 

By GUY DIXON AND JAMES ADAMS

Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - Page R1

 

 

 

 

The Canada for Asia benefit concert/telethon to be aired on CBC Television and Radio and an assortment of private broadcasters is being called an unprecedented, co-operative effort by artists and media companies in support of the South Asian tsunami victims.

 

But unprecedented isn't the right word. Some of the same lightning-fast logistics and even one prominent organizer involved in the huge Rolling Stones SARS concert, Senator Jerry Grafstein, have returned again. Also, despite everyone's efforts to help in some way to the general South Asian relief effort, not all are co-operating with the three-hour telethon being broadcast live tomorrow night from the CBC's Toronto studios.

 

Still, Grafstein was confident yesterday. "Nobody has ever said no to me on something like this. They didn't on the SARS concert, or [the post Sept. 11 rally] Canada Loves New York. Remember that? I did that," he said. "People think these things come together accidentally. Well, they don't."

 

As of yesterday afternoon, the CBC had announced a growing list of celebrities scheduled to appear on the broadcast, ranging from the Tragically Hip and Celine Dion to Rush, Mike Myers, Blue Rodeo, Wayne Gretzky, the Barenaked Ladies and on the list continues. The live broadcast to be shot in two large, adjacent studios, while also using segments taped by celebrities elsewhere, will be shown across the CBC's various media (including its website), as well as on CMT (Country Music Television), MuchMoreMusic, MTV Canada and the ichannel. Radio stations confirmed to broadcast the show range from CHFI in Toronto and Q92 in Montreal, to Rock 101 in Vancouver.

 

Grafstein and Liberal member of Parliament Ruby Dhalla, who is also heavily involved in the project, said they are still negotiating with other major broadcasters. However, CTV said it will not participate. CTV president Rick Brace declined the opportunity, citing the "short notice," as well, CTV dedicated much of its programming yesterday to tsunami relief efforts and fundraising.

 

Yesterday was the last day the federal government would match individual donations.

 

Instead, CTV will air The Concert for Tsunami Relief from Vancouver Jan. 29 starring Sarah McLachlan and Avril Lavigne. Yesterday, Global announced it would not simulcast the CBC telethon and instead "pursue our own initiatives," including the broadcast of public-service announcements and the creation of a donation plan that would see CanWest Global match the donations of its employees to relief organizations.

 

There was, at one point, talk of having the show broadcast from Toronto's SkyDome or the Air Canada Centre. Instead, given the desperately short time to get the show off the ground, given that NBC will be running its hour-long Tsunami Aid telethon Saturday, the Canadian version will be shot in front of only a small in-studio audience of a few hundred.

 

So how did the idea grow from a few phone calls on Monday, Jan. 3 to a national, star-laden charity broadcast on Thursday, Jan. 13? Dhalla, federal MP for Brampton Springdale, whose family is from Punjab, decided to contact the CBC with a telethon idea.

 

She learned from them that the charity organization World Vision, which works with singer Tom Cochrane, had also called the CBC and that Cochrane had already been phoning other musicians to get them involved.

 

At the same time, Grafstein, upon returning to Canada after monitoring the Ukraine election, had been talking to Dennis Mills, the former Toronto MP, who was also a major player in organizing the Toronto SARS concert. Mills couldn't help in time. But then Grafstein learned of Dhalla's efforts and joined her in getting all the major Canadian organizations involved with tsunami relief efforts to come on board with the broadcast. The CBC had said that the telethon's organizers themselves had to work out with the relief groups how the money from the broadcast would be distributed to those groups.

 

Meanwhile, Cochrane had been busy getting talent. One of those was Alex Lifeson, the guitarist for Rush. Describing the snap decision-making that happens when asked to do a charity event, Lifeson remembered a conversation he had with his wife as they watched the disaster unfold during the holidays.

 

"She said, 'Al, you've got a voice. You can do more than just make a donation to a charity.' And about half an hour later, after we had that conversation, Tom called," Lifeson said . "There's something about this that has galvanized everyone, and everyone's support has been absolute. To a person, everybody we've contacted has said, 'Whatever you need, I'm in.' "

 

"If all the pieces fall into place, the reach of this program will be the broadest reach in Canadian history," Grafstein said hopefully yesterday. "The problem is that when you work in one organization, you can get it done. But when you have to knit together competing organizations, competing charities, competing media, competing radio, competing personalities, it's hard to bring everything together. But everybody has subordinated their own issues for the greater good."

 

 

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