Google This!

I'm no technonerd but even I have to use Google a hundred times a day.
In the old days at The Toronto Star I'd saunter in and out of the wonderful Torstar library dozens of times a day.I'd leave with sheefs of photocopies or newspaper clippings.
Now I just google what I want from the comfort of my home office and that's that.
A quite brilliant new documentary Google Word helped me understand all this with interviews with all sorts of Google insiders (but not the reclusive creators).
"We got access and were able to go inside this world to show outsiders how it works," reports veteran producer Ted Remerowski.
"The only restriction was not to report on any upcoming designs because the opposition would be instantly alerted and competition in the Silicon Valley remains cutthroat."
Remerowski's prowling camera shows us the layout which resembles a modern university campus or maybe the ultimate graduate school for computer nerds.
It really is a world unto itself. There's a laundry so workers don't have to waste time doing such a mundane thing. Attire is casual but everyone looks reasonably clean.There's athletic equipment, a treadmill here, volleyball court there, various eating stations. Yet, the atmosphere seems friendly, relaxed even although I noticed young males seem to outnumber females by more than five to one.
There's no paper in sight. Whiteboards are everywhere and after an important meeting an associate will take a picture of the board and send a copy to all concerned.
It certainly is a different environment from the Star where paper was everywhere, the atmosphere was tense before deadlines and people spent their time reading. At Google nobody seems to read books at all which to me is alarming.
Remerowski's carefully crafted set of visuals tell half the story.
The rest is filled in by original employees who say it all really did start in a barn. They contribute to a group oortrait of the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin that's compulsively watchable.
"Of course I tried to get these two on camera," laughs Remerowski. " Each is worth what? Twelve billion dollars. So why would they want to do it? I was told they had stopped giving interviews about four years ago. When we were there filming I saw them several times. They're still there, still creating." Page, 36, is president of products, Brin,36, president of technology.
Their old professors and acquaintances tell us how Google was set up and how important it has been in the past ten years.
"It's the same kind of impact as when Ford cars revolutionized America a hundred years ago," Remerowski says. "A new society emerged. At first Google didn't make things. It revolutionized the search process."
Recently that search engine has been stalling I'd argue. Content providers like newspapers (including The Toronto Star) are on the ropes financially while the carrier of their information reaps all the profits.
But if Google could create such a revolution from a garage what about the next generation of nerds in another gargage making similar sweeping chAnges? That's what clearly disturbs Google today.
Facebook seems to be the next great wave and in retaliation Google will make a similar rival. There's also the gphone.
Google receives a million job applications a year and Remerowski discovered one 22-year-old associate productr manager is a Canadian, Jeff Harris. Like all Googleites he's encouraged to spend a fifth of his time just thinking about future endeavours for the company.
Remerowski deals with the January cyber attack on Google and talks with the head of Google China. We visit the vast storage basin in North Carolina. Filmed in China, Russia, the Googleplex and Google Canada, this 44-minute look at the phenomenon of our times ends on a fretful note.
Some excellent employees have recently drifted off to return to their roots: neighbourhood garages where the first major challenge to Google may be percolating away even as we google.
GOOGLE WORLD IS ON ON DOC ZONE ON CBC-TV THURSD. FEB. 11 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

It's Finally Over

Tonight's the night the biggest mistake in TV history finally gets unplugged.
Yes, I'm referring to the positively dreadful and mostly unfunny The Jay Leno Show created by NBC last September to stem the tide of all those provocative 10 p.m. dramas the other networks were offering up.
Jay said from the start he didn't want to do it. And his blase appearances only substantiated that. Jokes were dull and listless. Guests seem bored with it all. The stupid routines we put up with at 11:35 seemed downwright awful 90 minutesd earlier.
This was a bad 11:35 show trying to fit in at 10 p,m, and it never had a chance.
So NBC cancelled it, ordered Leno back to 11:35 in a half hour format and rescheduled Conan O'Brien at 12:05.
And then all hell broke loose. Conan refused to move and eventually settled with NBC for something like $45 million.
Leno got his show back but lost his respect.
He finally had to go on to Oprah, the last bastion for people who've just lost it. Leno is the big loser, Conan the winner --with all that money he can defect to FOX any time after September.
NBC now has five hours of prime time at 10 and not enough quality shows to fill the gap. It takes several years to develop top new dramas and with most producers alienated from the peacock proud network what else is there?
Well, NBC sources say some Law & Order stuff will be plopped in and also Dateline NBC on Friday.
NBC tried to save some money and wound up buying off one of its top stars who'll surely come back on another web to rattle the network.
Anyhow Jay's last gig is tonight. I know I'll be watching closely. For the first time in months that is.
One other victim: it's Citytv which picked up the show for its Canadian stations and now quickly needs five hours a week of filler.
THE LAST JAY LENO SHOW IS ON NBC AND CITYTV TUESDAY AT 11:35 P.M.
POSTSCRIPT: If only Leno could have been as good as he was in his final outing he might have lasted longer at 10. Opening montage of moments from the ill fated show were funny and so was the inevitable appearance of Donald Trump via satellite to intone "You're fired!" The Anton Kutcher segment had some laughs as the young star gamely caught footballs in various kinds of weather. And there was a giggly interview with Precious star Gabourey Sidibe. But now it's all over. Jay returns to his old post March 1.Sigh.

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Badge Of Pride A Must See

Here it is 40 years after I first started reviewing TV for The Globe And Mail.

I was a summer student back then and my TV critic travels subsequently took me to The Spectator, The Toronto Star and finally my own webpage.

But I still get that same frisson of fear and anticipation whenever I pop in a new DVD preview of an upcoming TV show (back in 1970 I had to constantly travel to network screening rooms).

And I haven't been as pleasantly surprised in some time as when I popped in the outstanding new documentary Badge Of Pride which got jostled by TV coverage of Haiti and is now premiering Wed. Feb. 3 at 10 p.m.

The method is simplicity itself. Filmmaker Min Sook Lee got permission from the Toronto Police Force to take her roving camera inside the working of the police including office work and street patrols.

She filmed for a year off and on documenting what it truly is like to be a Toronto cop and also be out.

She had few takers for her group profile. She was finally able to get two lesbians and two gays to agree to be documented.

But in a force of over 7,000 that is a surprisingly low number.

First let's tackle the subject matter. The film is so outstanding and filled with such insights it deserves its pride of place on the national network.

But given the touchy theme I can well anticipate why it runs instead on CBC News Network although I'm hardly suggesting The Passionate Eye is the "B" team. But I'd like as many people to see it as possible because of its depth and compassion.

Lee starts on one Gay Pride festival and ends a year later and the irony is apparent. The first Pride event was a declaration of war against the Toronto force for arresting 300 "suspects" in the 1981 bath house busting.

And this was followed in September 2000 by the force's "Painty Raid" against a lesbian bar.

One of those lesbian protestors is profiled here --she subsequently enrolled in the Ontario Police academy and became a respected constable.

But as the film unfolds her sense of self and confidence starts unravelling as superiors interrogate her about participating in such a film. She's simply worn out by the constant level of gratuitous insults.

A gay constable who has not experienced such treatment is filmed out on assignment with his patrol partner who says everything is fine but declines a sleep over at his house which was necessitated by an early court appearance the next day. He instead chooses to bunk down with a straight colleague.

Another lesbian says the culture of the force is such that when she first came onboard all women were discounted. Despite a fine service record she has not been promoted up the ranks and the reason seems clear to her.

Another gay cop recounts a lengthy campaign of harassment by others who'd phone his home anonymously and park outside his home in an attempt to out him. But he made not formal protests although the stress has forced him to take months off for sick leave.

Lee's camera is unobtrusive, she seems to be only making a record of what's happening. But she expertly draws us into the life of cops and in doing so demystifies them.

We witness how this particular closed society operates, how the all male atmosphere is pervasive even to this day.

The emotional roller coaster we are forced to ride with these four people produces disquieting moments. Victories are few. It's a method of working around the inequalities which clearly exist.

"If you leave, they win," says one of the women. She sees herself as opening the door for other people who'll eventually get the promotions she deserves.

Every sprawling corporation has a clear and distinct culture. The fascination in Badge Of Pride lies in watching policing laid out for us, showing how it affects every police employee.

There's nothing at all to shock the sensibilities here and that's as it should be. Lee is after deeper meanings specifically the art of coping in an often hostile or indifferent environment. The result is a consistently fascinating look at a culture that up to now has mostly preferred to keep its doors shut tight to outsiders.

BADGE OF PRIDE WILL NOW RUN WED. FEB. 3 AT 10 P.M. ON THE PASSIONATE EYE ON CBC NEWS NETWORK.

MY RATING: ****.

TV's Talk Wars

Why is everone getting so excited about the American Talk Show wars?

Maybe it's because we've never had a wholely successful Canadian TV Talk Show of our own.

There are so many missing parts of Canadan TV from a lack of soap operas to a lack of successful talk shows.

The result is we've become pseudo-American viewers, fixating on the great Conan versus Leno confontation.

Everywhere I go I'm being asked the same questions. So here are my answers.

Q: How could NBC do this to Conan?

A: How could the network not do it, you mean. In his seven months as new host of the venerable Tonight franchise he managed to lose 50 per cent of the audience as the show started losing money for the first time.

It's true Conan supporters can point to the poor lead ins from both Leno at 10 and the local newscasts at 11 as the reasons.

But I was frankly not taken with the new, unimproved Conan. And I really like the guy.

When he started out on late nights I was about the first TV critic to interview him and praise him. But he seemed strangely subdued almost intimidated in his newest gig.

Q: Why did Leno sock it to Conan?

A: He did nothing of the sort. Six years ago Conan pressured NBC to name him the next Tonight show host and left Leno to hang around for five years, surely a fate akin to being on Death Row.

Leno was never less than gracious to Conan. But Leno always argued moving his show to 10 p.m. up against the huge ratings successes on ABC and CBS might not work. And it didn't

When NBC affiliates hollered they were losing viewers at 11 from such a weak Leno lead in NBC panicked and pulled the plug.

NBC solution? Leno at 11:35, Conan at 12:05 still as The Tonight Show.

Q: So why did Conan quit?

A: His ego was bruised. His contract gives him up to $40 million in one of the biggest network buyouts of all time. Leno then was ready to seize power when Conan said he'd walk. It's all NBC's fault, not really Len's. What was he supposed to do? e could have walked away with the same soret of settlement Conan got. But he chose to stay.

Conan will surely resurface after September on Fox. And I think Leno will get back much of his old 11:35 viewers who much preferred him to CBS's Letterman in recent years.

But I still can't understand why Canadians are getting so riled up.

I never heard more than a peep when CBC axed Peter Gzowski from his late night berth way back in 1978. And what about when Global TV quickly dumped Mike Bullard?

Quick! Name me one Canadian TV Talk show you watch every day. See what I mean! Gotcha!

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