Success abroad, online viewing, CBC troubles dominated Canadian TV in '06 by Lee-Ann Goodman
Source : Canadian Press
December 21, 2006
TORONTO (CP) - The state of Canadian television in 2006 was a study in contradictions.
To wit: only a handful of Canadian shows - "Corner Gas," "The Rick Mercer Report" and, in the summer, "Canadian Idol" - were routinely watched by large numbers of Canadian viewers, yet homegrown fare reached millions internationally through sales to foreign countries and lucrative syndication deals.
Global, CTV and CBC want households to pay as much as $5 a month more to watch television, yet an increasing number of viewers are already migrating to the web to catch their favourite shows - at the encouragement of some of those very networks.
And even though it was responsible for some of the freshest Canadian-made shows on the airwaves this year - including Chris Haddock's "Intelligence," the medical drama "Jozi-H" and the sexy "Rumours" - the CBC had a dismal year in terms of ratings, prompting the public broadcaster to put the call out to producers to make fewer miniseries and concentrate on long-running series in an effort to turn things around.
The CBC's move away from miniseries came after the poor performances of "Hockey: A People's History" and "October 1970." Richard Stursberg, the executive vice-president of English TV, has made one million viewers the benchmark for a successful primetime CBC show, and "Hockey" and "October 1970" fell well short of that goal.
"We had a rough year, no question," says Kirstine Layfield, CBC's executive director of network programming who came to the public broadcaster in March from Alliance Atlantis. "It was a transition year ... there was a transition of programming strategies and philosophies."
Precious few Canadian-made comedies or dramas grabbed a significant audience share in 2006. Only CTV's "Corner Gas" routinely pulled in more than a million viewers every week, with the Top 20 in Canada usually dominated by big American shows like "Grey's Anatomy," "House" and "Desperate Housewives."
The fact that so few Canadian shows are getting big ratings resulted in increasing pressure on the CRTC this year to force tougher Canadian content regulations on private broadcasters.
CTV and Global have a sweet set-up compared to the CBC - they can simply shop for the best shows on American television and air them during prime time in Canada, reaping millions in advertising dollars while spending peanuts on made-in-Canada programming. Global, in particular, has a dearth of Canadian shows.
In an online poll about the mandate of the CRTC conducted recently on the Playback Magazine website, www.playbackmag.com, almost 85 per cent of respondents said the CRTC should get back to the business of ensuring Canadian broadcasters spend money on Canadian productions after the federal agency eased content regulations in 1999.
"The private broadcasters have a pretty easy ride," says Mark Dillon, editor of Playback. "Instead of producing a lot of Canadian programming, they buy a lot of premium American shows, which is much cheaper for them to do."
"Without those kinds of regulations, you're not going to see a lot of Canadian programming," he adds. "If they aren't forced to do it, don't expect them to do it. I'm all for the government enforcing some of these expenditure requirements, because the production industry is in tatters right now in Canada. A lot of people are just leaving it entirely if not going to the United States because there's so little being produced here."
Diane Wild, who runs the TV, Eh? blog on Canadian television (www.tv-eh.com), is irked by what she calls the failure of the CRTC to view Canadian content as a priority.
"I don't understand what the CRTC is for if not to protect the public interest in the use of our airwaves," Wild wrote in a recent post on the Blog Critics site (www.blogcritics.org). "And I don't understand how allowing Canadian broadcasters to make money duplicating the content we get on American channels and burying Canadian series is in our best interests."
Wild adds she's confronted regularly by people who think, without even seeing it, that Canadian television is substandard and so balk at the idea of rules forcing private broadcasters to produce more of it.
"Why, when we're talking about the most prominent expression of culture available to us, (is it) OK with us that we're becoming the 51st state?" she says. "We're so smug about what makes us different, even better, than Americans, yet we let ourselves be assimilated to the point where we loudly reject even the need to develop our own cultural product."
Despite the grim state of affairs, some see cause for optimism in the year to come.
Layfield says 2007 promises to be a better year for the CBC. She's particularly excited about "Little Mosque on the Prairie," a comedy premiering in January that's already enjoying serious buzz. Even the New York Times and CNN have run items about the show.
"When I saw this was going to be good TV, I didn't see why we'd wait until next fall to put it on the air," she says of the CBC's decision to speed up production of the show. "It's a great, great show, it looks fantastic, so I thought 'Why keep this from the public?"'
Others say the success of Canadian shows abroad, including "Slings and Arrows," "Da Vinci's Inquest," "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and "Corner Gas" proves that Canadians make great TV and that, in turn, is good for the industry.
"Canadian television is changing," says Shannon Farr, one of three producers on Global's "Falcon Beach," a teen drama recently sold to 30 countries around the world, including France, Australia and Vietnam.
"The production values of Canadian shows have really gone up; no one can watch a Canadian show now and say you can tell it was produced in Canada because it doesn't look as good as American shows. We are producing really high-end television now, and it's getting noticed, and that's good for the future of Canadian TV."
© Canadian Press
To wit: only a handful of Canadian shows - "Corner Gas," "The Rick Mercer Report" and, in the summer, "Canadian Idol" - were routinely watched by large numbers of Canadian viewers, yet homegrown fare reached millions internationally through sales to foreign countries and lucrative syndication deals.
Global, CTV and CBC want households to pay as much as $5 a month more to watch television, yet an increasing number of viewers are already migrating to the web to catch their favourite shows - at the encouragement of some of those very networks.
And even though it was responsible for some of the freshest Canadian-made shows on the airwaves this year - including Chris Haddock's "Intelligence," the medical drama "Jozi-H" and the sexy "Rumours" - the CBC had a dismal year in terms of ratings, prompting the public broadcaster to put the call out to producers to make fewer miniseries and concentrate on long-running series in an effort to turn things around.
The CBC's move away from miniseries came after the poor performances of "Hockey: A People's History" and "October 1970." Richard Stursberg, the executive vice-president of English TV, has made one million viewers the benchmark for a successful primetime CBC show, and "Hockey" and "October 1970" fell well short of that goal.
"We had a rough year, no question," says Kirstine Layfield, CBC's executive director of network programming who came to the public broadcaster in March from Alliance Atlantis. "It was a transition year ... there was a transition of programming strategies and philosophies."
Precious few Canadian-made comedies or dramas grabbed a significant audience share in 2006. Only CTV's "Corner Gas" routinely pulled in more than a million viewers every week, with the Top 20 in Canada usually dominated by big American shows like "Grey's Anatomy," "House" and "Desperate Housewives."
The fact that so few Canadian shows are getting big ratings resulted in increasing pressure on the CRTC this year to force tougher Canadian content regulations on private broadcasters.
CTV and Global have a sweet set-up compared to the CBC - they can simply shop for the best shows on American television and air them during prime time in Canada, reaping millions in advertising dollars while spending peanuts on made-in-Canada programming. Global, in particular, has a dearth of Canadian shows.
In an online poll about the mandate of the CRTC conducted recently on the Playback Magazine website, www.playbackmag.com, almost 85 per cent of respondents said the CRTC should get back to the business of ensuring Canadian broadcasters spend money on Canadian productions after the federal agency eased content regulations in 1999.
"The private broadcasters have a pretty easy ride," says Mark Dillon, editor of Playback. "Instead of producing a lot of Canadian programming, they buy a lot of premium American shows, which is much cheaper for them to do."
"Without those kinds of regulations, you're not going to see a lot of Canadian programming," he adds. "If they aren't forced to do it, don't expect them to do it. I'm all for the government enforcing some of these expenditure requirements, because the production industry is in tatters right now in Canada. A lot of people are just leaving it entirely if not going to the United States because there's so little being produced here."
Diane Wild, who runs the TV, Eh? blog on Canadian television (www.tv-eh.com), is irked by what she calls the failure of the CRTC to view Canadian content as a priority.
"I don't understand what the CRTC is for if not to protect the public interest in the use of our airwaves," Wild wrote in a recent post on the Blog Critics site (www.blogcritics.org). "And I don't understand how allowing Canadian broadcasters to make money duplicating the content we get on American channels and burying Canadian series is in our best interests."
Wild adds she's confronted regularly by people who think, without even seeing it, that Canadian television is substandard and so balk at the idea of rules forcing private broadcasters to produce more of it.
"Why, when we're talking about the most prominent expression of culture available to us, (is it) OK with us that we're becoming the 51st state?" she says. "We're so smug about what makes us different, even better, than Americans, yet we let ourselves be assimilated to the point where we loudly reject even the need to develop our own cultural product."
Despite the grim state of affairs, some see cause for optimism in the year to come.
Layfield says 2007 promises to be a better year for the CBC. She's particularly excited about "Little Mosque on the Prairie," a comedy premiering in January that's already enjoying serious buzz. Even the New York Times and CNN have run items about the show.
"When I saw this was going to be good TV, I didn't see why we'd wait until next fall to put it on the air," she says of the CBC's decision to speed up production of the show. "It's a great, great show, it looks fantastic, so I thought 'Why keep this from the public?"'
Others say the success of Canadian shows abroad, including "Slings and Arrows," "Da Vinci's Inquest," "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and "Corner Gas" proves that Canadians make great TV and that, in turn, is good for the industry.
"Canadian television is changing," says Shannon Farr, one of three producers on Global's "Falcon Beach," a teen drama recently sold to 30 countries around the world, including France, Australia and Vietnam.
"The production values of Canadian shows have really gone up; no one can watch a Canadian show now and say you can tell it was produced in Canada because it doesn't look as good as American shows. We are producing really high-end television now, and it's getting noticed, and that's good for the future of Canadian TV."
© Canadian Press
