Apart from sex, few subjects are as inherently intriguing as money and power. So you'd think that a four-part documentary series about the nexus between the two couldn't miss. Titans, which premieres on Wednesday on Global and Sunday, April 22, on Prime, certainly looks promising on paper.
Produced by Vancouver-based Paperny Films, the series is based on the 1998 bestselling book of the same name by Peter C. Newman, the third volume in his Canadian Establishment trilogy. The series brings a bevy of tycoons profiled in the book to the small screen, including Gerry Schwartz and wife Heather Reisman, Peter Munk, Jimmy Pattison, Israel (Izzy) Asper and Ted Rogers.
It is also based on the same provocative thesis. Newman, who appears in all four episodes, argues that it is getting much harder to make money the old-fashioned way in this country -- by inheriting it. "Thirty-one of the great Canadian families lost their power over the last 10, 15 years," he says, including the Siftons, the Southams and the Eatons, the poster children for faded dynastic glory.
A new Canadian establishment is taking their place, one made up of self-made entrepreneurs, many of them the children of immigrants, who've vaulted over the WASPy old boys' network. "It's a meritocracy," says Newman. And while they live and work in Canada, the new breed are globalizing their businesses as fast as they can.
The first episode also seems to promise some glitz. With images of champagne glasses and yachts flashing by, the voice-over says that if these new titans watched Who Wants to be a Millionaire, "they'd watch it with amusement. Being a simple millionaire would be a big step down."
But Titans quickly sags. And it doesn't take long to figure out why.
Newman has made a career out of describing Canadian businessmen in larger-than-life terms -- "gunslingers in red suspenders," "the Pacific mystics" and that kind of thing. He also has an ear for a sharp quote. Leaf through the book, and you'll find a scrappy Gerry Schwartz
dissing the old Toronto establishment.
"All that Bud McDougald shit is gone,"
he says, a reference to the all-powerful chairman of Argus Corp. in its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s.
But in the TV version, the titans themselves do almost all the talking, and they're at their most guarded in front of the cameras. Is Schwartz bitter about his failed takeover bid for Air Canada in late 1999? Just regretful. "I felt we could have done a great job with it."
There isn't a lot of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-style opulence on display either. Munk allows the cameras to accompany him to his ski getaway in the Swiss Alps. Jimmy Pattison sits at the bar in his house in Palm Springs, Ca., a house once owned by Frank Sinatra. But those segments are brief. You also see Harrison McCain sliding a sheet of frozen fish filets into his oven.
Indeed, at many points, it seems like the everyday life of the billionaire next door isn't that different from ours. That's comforting, but it doesn't make for exciting TV.
The cameras also peer into the titans' offices, but, again, there's not much to hold your attention, apart from some expensive furniture. We don't get to eavesdrop on any high-stakes negotiations. It's more like having Dad show you around the place. Pattison points to walls of photos of managers of his various businesses. He also reads a framed poem his mother gave him when he started out in 1961: "Not failure, but low aim, is a crime."
In Munk's offices in Toronto, the chairman of Barrick tells his secretary to get Brian Mulroney on the line, showing he can get the former Prime Minister to call him from any location in about a minute.
Some work environments are cooler than others, of course, and you see them in the second episode of the series, which features media and entertainment kingpins, including Robert Lantos and Moses Znaimer.
The titans also spend a great deal of screen time talking about their extensive philanthropic activities, how good Canada has been to them and the imperative
for globalization.
As for the four episodes, the first focuses on the so-called New Titans, including Schwartz and Reisman, Munk and Pattison. The second looks at the Titans of Media, including Rogers, Asper and Znaimer. Episode three, the Titans of Cash, spotlights TD Bank chairman Charles Baillie and controversial Yorkton Securities chairman Scott Paterson. The finale is devoted to the Titans of Tech, including Nortel's John Roth and JDS Uniphase chairman Jozef Strauss, who haven't looked all that titan-like recently.
As worthwhile as all of it is, you can't help but wonder if there's something missing. There is. Look at any list of the largest and most profitable corporations in the country, and you'll see most of the top slots occupied by the banks, the phone companies, the insurance companies and companies controlled by families with the names Weston and Thomson --the companies that have dominated Canadian business for much of the last century. The titans who run most of those businesses apparently prefer not to appear on television.
Titans, Wednesdays, 10 p.m., Global
John Daly is a senior editor at Report on Business Magazine.