FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Vote For the Most Embarrassing Canadian - Website Satires CBC’s Greatest Canadian

Calgary, Alberta (Media Release) October 19, 2004 – An Alberta man has created The Most Embarrassing Canadian, a website takeoff on the popular CBC series “The Greatest Canadian”. The website features send-ups of “embarrassing” Canadians such as Ben Johnson, Ralph Klein, and Pamela Anderson, among others, and invites internet surfers to vote for the names included or to nominate there own selections.

The website parodies the CBC television series “The Greatest Canadian”, in which viewers have been voting from a list of hundreds of nominees to narrow down a list of the top-ten, greatest Canadians. These top-ten greatest Canadians are now being featured on a fall television series.

The CBC series has been the center of some controversy, with some groups upset at some names that have made the list and those that have not - The top ten list does not include a single woman or any person of colour. Many viewers have expressed disappointment with the method of polling – A Winnipeg disk jockey waged a campaign for votes and ended up as one of the top fifty greatest Canadians.

Ted Knudtson anticipates no such dissention over his website. “The Most Embarrassing Canadian is much more natural for Canadians. We aren’t very comfortable exalting our heroes, but we do have a long, proud history of tearing down our famous figures.” Knudtson says.

Knudtson, an emergency medical technician by day and freelance writer by night, says he has always been very patriotic, just quietly so. “Even the term ‘the greatest’ seems like rather an American approach. I think Canadians prefer to poke fun at celebrity rather than worship it, Avril Lavigne fans aside.”

Although his humour may offend some people, Knudtson feels his website will cause less conflict than the CBC series,” Selecting the greatest Canadian is, by nature, going to be a divisive process. Just defining the term ‘great’ can spark an argument, but everyone can agree on who they find embarrassing.”

The Most Embarrassing Canadian is located at: http://www.airenet.com/TheLazyK/TMECIntro.htm

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Ted Knudtson

The Most Embarrassing Canadian

www.airenet/TheLazyK/TMECIntro.htm