Portage And Main

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE THIRD EDITION OF "THE BEAU ZONE" ON THE HARD ROCK HEROES WEBSITE FROM SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER 2004.

Agencies have been looking for ideas on what to do with the corner of Portage & Main recently. I wrote in, and here's what I suggested:

Perhaps one component of the corner could be provided by Global, now that they own the TD Centre.

Muchmusic has been doing live TV in their ground floor "environment", or outside it, with people on the street being part of the scenery, for 20 years now. NBC and ABC have copied this approach, unbeknownst to Americans without Much, for their morning shows Today and Good Morning America, respectively, making them more vibrant and exciting shows. ABC even gave Good Morning America their own studio in Times Square for this purpose.

Maybe Global can do the same thing: Move their suppertime news broadcast from St. Vital to a new studio at the ground floor of the TD Centre in front of the windows and the street, where we would see all the passers-by. It would make for fun TV, and would open up new possibilities for Global to add more local broadcasts to the day shot from this location, like perhaps a competing show to A-Channel's The Big Breakfast, or even a late night weekend entertainment and music video show. Perhaps, as the former host of VPW's Hard Rock Heroes, Global would let me host it, too. We could get a steady stream of people from the nearby nightclubs late at night for audience interaction.

All of this would definitely add people traffic to Portage & Main, along with excitement over being in the background on TV. People could set their VCR's and watch themselves later.