Matt Watts, long silent (hard at work), has posted some welcome news on his blog…

“Canadia: 2056…

If you notice a complete lack of publicity surrounding a show – if you hear or read absolutely nothing at all about a particular program – the chances are that it’s premiering within a matter of days. It’s CBC Radio’s anti-publicity campaign, their ‘publicity-nouveau’ if you will. If you think about it, it really challenges the listener to ‘discover’ programming. It’s rather brilliant and progressive, actually.

“Our silence and lack of acknowledgment indicates that some thing is about to happen… Maybe.”

But, for the neophobes who can’t get on board with this whole “anti-publicity” fad, and for those who have duly noted that the CBC Program schedule says that Afghanada is still airing on the 2nd of January:

Canadia: 2056 starts airing on Wednesday. Yes, this Wednesday, January 2nd at 11:05PM, repeat on Friday January 4th at 11:30AM. The first season will run through until March, and then the second season (the episodes we’re currently writing/recording) will begin airing.

Also, for those of you enquiring about CD’s of the first season: I think it’s safe to assume at this point that they will not be available for Christmas. I’m assured that they will be available for pre-order by the time the show starts airing on Wednesday… But if you go by my convoluted logic regarding the publicity for the show – if you don’t order the CD’s at all, they will arrive on your doorstep sometime last week.

As for podcasting… Don’t even ask. It’s hopeless at this point. The idea of downloading any radio drama from the CBC website looks like it’ll probably happen around the time digital media is considered out-dated and archaic. Incidentally, I tried to get the phrase ‘now available on the compact disc format!’ on the cover of the CD’s, but they didn’t go for it.

We’re halfway through recording the new season, which I’m really enjoying writing. Although the focus is primarily the characters and their relationships, we’re pushing the SF story-lines as far as we can… For the record, if you think I’ve stolen something from either Douglas Adams or Grant Naylor, it’s an homage…

Not theft.

(Fine, I ‘borrowed’ some ideas… But at least I ADMIT IT!)”

Cool! I’ll be tuning in for the re-running of Season One. Listeners outside of Canada will have to make due with the online listening service provided through the CBC Radio One site. It really pisses me off that CBC can’t get their act together when it comes to podcasting their in-house radio drama. Its the ideal format for the stuff.

We’ll be talking more about Canadia: 2056 as Season Two approaches.

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. Free The Adventures Of Apocalypse Al!