Hometown Proud
January 2,1999
By Catherine Dawson TV Guide
When the cast (including Geraint Wyn Davies, Rebecca Jenkins and Joe Ziegler) and crew of Black Harbour returned to Nova Scotia to film Season 3, there was a small but significant surprise waiting.
About 40 kilometres west of Halifax on Highway 103 sat two shiny, blue aluminum signs, one for eastbound and one for westbound lanes. Secured underneath the exit for Hubbards and Mill Cove, they proclaim: “Home of TV’s Black Harbour.”
The signs went up last February, a month before executive producers Barbara Samuels and Wayne Grigsby had CBC’s final OK for a third season. Last year’s ratings, after all, weren’t great. But the townsfolk didn’t give a fig about ratings. They went ahead and split the $1,000 cost of the highway signs with Nova Scotia’s Ministry of Tourism. Black Harbour is their show and they want every passing motorist to know it.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve been able to work with virtually the whole community,” says Wyn Davies, who plays Nick. “Everybody shows up on the show in one capacity or another as extras. During location shoots we get to meet everybody who owns a business.”
But it’s likely local appreciation has more to do with money than with the thrill of seeing their home town on TV. The series injects almost $9 million into the area during its six-month stay each year. Back in 1995, things weren’t looking too good in Hubbards. Then came Black Harbour. “The armed forces moved out of this base April 1 and we moved in here the first of July,” says Grigsby proudly. “We’re a completely different corporate culture and a completely different style of people, but everybody around understood that this was an economic input.”
Grigsby says the liquor store was the first to notice the change in clientele. “[The military] was more of a beer and rum crowd. Now they sell a lot more champagne than they did before!” he grins. Then other businesses began catering to the show. Down the road at the Trellis Cafe there’s a yellow file folder stuck near the cash register labelled “Black Harbour Extra Applications,” while the cafe’s gift shop now stocks T-shirts with “Hubbards: Home of TV’s Black Harbour” written in flowery script. Even bed and breakfasts have learned to ask guests if they should watch their fax machines for daily call sheets (a list of what’s being filmed). “It’s amazing how flexible the towns are,” says Grigsby. “They’ve picked up the lingo.”
But Grigsby’s favorite story about how the community has taken hold of Black Harbour took place when he drove into Hubbards’ two-pump gas station. “When we were first here,” he begins, “you’d hear snatches of conversation about whether the mackerel were running and what the catch was like. I pulled in there one day and these two guys were leaning up against the wall and they were saying ‘Oh man, look the storm’s coming in. I guess they’re going to go to weather cover now. This will really screw up their schedule.’ They now know what our policy is and they know where we won’t be shooting!” he laughs.
The residents of Hubbards and Mill Cove may have settled in but viewers in the rest of the country still need some convincing. This season the viewer average sits at only 475,000 people each week, down from last year’s 607,000. While even those ratings were considered disappointing by the CBC, the network says they were in keeping with an overall downturn in network TV viewers in the 1996-97 season. With this year’s numbers even worse, you have to wonder what CBC is thinking now.
One thing the network is not worried about is the recent professional breakup of Black Harbour’s creators and writing partners, Grigsby and Samuels. “It’s not any kind of disagreement about what Black Harbour is [about] that we are totally in sync on,” says Grigsby. “What it came down to was we were looking to the next project and her tastes were going in one direction and mine were going in another.” If Black Harbour does come back next year, Grigsby says they will become less hands-on, acting “more like classic executive producers” by removing themselves from the show’s day-to-day duties.
This week Black Harbour returns after being pre-empted for more than a month. To start, Katherine (Jenkins) works hard at fostering a close relationship with her new-found family members, but finds they aren’t terribly trustworthy.
While some plotlines sound like they belong on a soap, for the people of Hubbards it’s the plot and characters that keep them tuning in. Down at the wharf, locals David and Allen Millington work on a fishing boat. David says the novelty of seeing his home town on TV every week “wore off after the first season. Allen laughs, “It’s better than The Beachcombers and they pushed that for 19 years!”
Then again, Beachcombers never got its own highway signs.
Back to articles
January 2,1999
By Catherine Dawson TV Guide
When the cast (including Geraint Wyn Davies, Rebecca Jenkins and Joe Ziegler) and crew of Black Harbour returned to Nova Scotia to film Season 3, there was a small but significant surprise waiting.
About 40 kilometres west of Halifax on Highway 103 sat two shiny, blue aluminum signs, one for eastbound and one for westbound lanes. Secured underneath the exit for Hubbards and Mill Cove, they proclaim: “Home of TV’s Black Harbour.”
The signs went up last February, a month before executive producers Barbara Samuels and Wayne Grigsby had CBC’s final OK for a third season. Last year’s ratings, after all, weren’t great. But the townsfolk didn’t give a fig about ratings. They went ahead and split the $1,000 cost of the highway signs with Nova Scotia’s Ministry of Tourism. Black Harbour is their show and they want every passing motorist to know it.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve been able to work with virtually the whole community,” says Wyn Davies, who plays Nick. “Everybody shows up on the show in one capacity or another as extras. During location shoots we get to meet everybody who owns a business.”
But it’s likely local appreciation has more to do with money than with the thrill of seeing their home town on TV. The series injects almost $9 million into the area during its six-month stay each year. Back in 1995, things weren’t looking too good in Hubbards. Then came Black Harbour. “The armed forces moved out of this base April 1 and we moved in here the first of July,” says Grigsby proudly. “We’re a completely different corporate culture and a completely different style of people, but everybody around understood that this was an economic input.”
Grigsby says the liquor store was the first to notice the change in clientele. “[The military] was more of a beer and rum crowd. Now they sell a lot more champagne than they did before!” he grins. Then other businesses began catering to the show. Down the road at the Trellis Cafe there’s a yellow file folder stuck near the cash register labelled “Black Harbour Extra Applications,” while the cafe’s gift shop now stocks T-shirts with “Hubbards: Home of TV’s Black Harbour” written in flowery script. Even bed and breakfasts have learned to ask guests if they should watch their fax machines for daily call sheets (a list of what’s being filmed). “It’s amazing how flexible the towns are,” says Grigsby. “They’ve picked up the lingo.”
But Grigsby’s favorite story about how the community has taken hold of Black Harbour took place when he drove into Hubbards’ two-pump gas station. “When we were first here,” he begins, “you’d hear snatches of conversation about whether the mackerel were running and what the catch was like. I pulled in there one day and these two guys were leaning up against the wall and they were saying ‘Oh man, look the storm’s coming in. I guess they’re going to go to weather cover now. This will really screw up their schedule.’ They now know what our policy is and they know where we won’t be shooting!” he laughs.
The residents of Hubbards and Mill Cove may have settled in but viewers in the rest of the country still need some convincing. This season the viewer average sits at only 475,000 people each week, down from last year’s 607,000. While even those ratings were considered disappointing by the CBC, the network says they were in keeping with an overall downturn in network TV viewers in the 1996-97 season. With this year’s numbers even worse, you have to wonder what CBC is thinking now.
One thing the network is not worried about is the recent professional breakup of Black Harbour’s creators and writing partners, Grigsby and Samuels. “It’s not any kind of disagreement about what Black Harbour is [about] that we are totally in sync on,” says Grigsby. “What it came down to was we were looking to the next project and her tastes were going in one direction and mine were going in another.” If Black Harbour does come back next year, Grigsby says they will become less hands-on, acting “more like classic executive producers” by removing themselves from the show’s day-to-day duties.
This week Black Harbour returns after being pre-empted for more than a month. To start, Katherine (Jenkins) works hard at fostering a close relationship with her new-found family members, but finds they aren’t terribly trustworthy.
While some plotlines sound like they belong on a soap, for the people of Hubbards it’s the plot and characters that keep them tuning in. Down at the wharf, locals David and Allen Millington work on a fishing boat. David says the novelty of seeing his home town on TV every week “wore off after the first season. Allen laughs, “It’s better than The Beachcombers and they pushed that for 19 years!”
Then again, Beachcombers never got its own highway signs.
Back to articles