Daily BrewFashionistas mourn cancellation of Fashion Television
I'm not among those rending their garments at the demise of Fashion Television, which has been cancelled by CTV after 27 years on the air.
It's not out of animosity. I simply never watched it except when I channel-surfed past it on the way to something else, catching snatches of the pounding eighties techno theme music by Animotion. I don't get much more fashion forward than Mark's Work Warehouse.
But CTV's announcement Wednesday that it was "suspending" production of the pioneering fashion program is disappointing fashionistas.
Network owner Bell Media spokesman Scott Henderson said in statement that it "remains committed to the fashion genre and will continue to grow FashionTelevisionChannel to deliver a broader appeal for viewers, advertisers, and distributors."
Host Jeanne Beker seemed stunned by the development.
"So surreal," she tweeted. "This dream is over: After 27 glorious years, FT production ceased today. So sad to see some of my closest colleagues move on."
Bell said repeats will continue to air on the main CTV network and on its Fashion Television Channel.
Beker will stay with the company and work on new projects, and she later tweeted that she looked forward to "evolving the FT brand."
Actor and TV host Dan Levy, a fan of the show, tweeted Fashion Television and Jeanne Beker "made me believe in the magic of fashion. Thanks for an amazing 27-year education."
"Say it ain't so!" tweeted Jay Manuel, creative director of America's Next Top Model. "I grew up learning the world of fashion from Ms. Jeanne Beker. It's a sad day!"
"A dark day for fashion," Flare Magazine editor Ryan Michael Cheung tweeted.
Whether you cared about fashion or not, you couldn't escape the trend Fashion Television helped establish, mainstreaming coverage of an industry that was once the province of a journalistic niche.
The show was a victim of its own success, the Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt suggested.
"Fashion news is now the same sort of cheap commodity that so much other news has become, and the taste-making outlets that helped turn it into a pillar of pop culture are being squeezed between an influx of bootstrapping bloggers and fashion houses producing their own branded content for eager, credulous consumers," Houpt wrote.
Fashion Television started as a 15-minute segment hosted by Beker on independently-owned CityTV in Toronto in 1985.
It later moved to CTV and grew to a half-hour program, later spawning Fashion Television Channel.
Beker took viewers behind the scenes at major fashion shows in New York, Paris and elsewhere, and inside the design houses of famous couturiers.
But, Houpt noted, CTV consigned the show to air Saturday nights on the main network and its viewership on the pay Fashion Television Channel could barely break into four figures.
Technology and a growing awareness by the fashion industry that it could control its content also helped trigger the show's demise. The advent of web video trumped its no-frills, hand-held camera format.
"As viewers became accustomed to the new cut-rate aesthetic, the field was primed for the rise of individuals toting flip phones," Houpt wrote. "Many fashion labels began to produce videos of their own shows, further squeezing the established outlets."
But designers are mourning the show's disappearance, already nostalgic about it. David Dixon recalled his first appearance in the late 1990s as "life altering."
"It was really quite the awe-inspiring moment because every designer wanted to be featured, and over the years they've continued supporting the brand."
(CP photo)
