I covered the Banff World Television Festival last month because I'm interested in the behind-the-scenes workings of TV. I'm interested from the perspective of a kid who likes to take my toys apart to see how they work and I write about it from the viewpoint of a fan.
Even more than writing about the industry itself, I'd enjoy writing about the new homegrown show I'm enjoying — that is, if I knew about such a show in the first place; and enjoyed it in the second place. Those two events so rarely coincide, Halley's comet looks like a pest.
I've written before about the invisible networks, about realizing how little Canadian programming I stumble across, how difficult it is to even seek it out, and lamenting the fact that the poor Canadian industry can't compete against the giant American TV marketing machine.
But now that I'm motivated to at least be aware of what's out there in Canadian television so that I'm not overlooking programs I might enjoy and programs that might reflect stories I wouldn't otherwise see, I find that Canadian television does not seem to see me as its future.
At the Banff festival, I attended a town hall session on the future of Canadian TV with representatives from funders, regulators, content producers, and broadcasters, talking to an audience of the same. Now I think I understand another layer of the invisible networks problem. Listening to executives talk about my own country's product, I felt completely invisible. The discussion was focused on everything but the Canadian television viewer.
I'm not necessarily the typical viewer. At this point, I'm probably more motivated than average to seek out Canadian programming. Unfortunately, the reason for my recent motivation is not a reproducible marketing strategy: I got addicted to the blog of a Canadian television writer who's insightful, passionate, and funny about a wide range of subjects, but particularly the industry he works in. And he kept talking about shows I'd never heard of, like Jeff Ltd., Billable Hours and The Jane Show.
Article comments
1 - AlbertaLife
We have not done enough in terms of Canadian content, and a lot of the CanCon we have simply sucks (e.g., Jeff Ltd., which is a textbook example of what happens when untalented actors and writers get together).
I have been lamenting the lack of CanCon, and I have been calling for the adoption of European law, which states that you have to show 60% domestic content.
2 - Diane Kristine
I hate to say it, but I don't know that more Canadian content is the answer right now, when we can't produce and promote what is on the air now properly. I think we should focus on doing it right first, then doing more of it.
3 - Brent
Dianne, I'm not entirely convinced that both you and AlbertaLife aren't right and wrong at the same time. I think that there are loopholes in the regulations that need to be plugged, like the ones which allow networks to show a lot of their Cancon during the summer, and which define "peak viewing hours" (aka "prime time") in such a way that the evening and late night local newscasts count towards a station's peak viewing hour quota. Make the stations make the quota on a quarterly basis rather than an annual one is just one way to go. At the same time we need to find some way to encourage quality programming in shows that aren't co-productions with some foreign network or did we all forget the farce that was Canwest's "Adventures of Sinbad", shot in South Africa and money from All-American TV and with only a couple of Canadian Actors and government money to make it "Canadian".