Despite a consensus that the Internet would enhance rather than replace broadcast television, I didn't hear them talk about how to entice Canadian viewers with the shows themselves. Lost wasn't a success because it managed to provide engrossing extras like clue-filled websites and online games. Lost's extras were a success because people wanted to spend more than an hour a week with the show. What was on their television screens had hooked them. The Internet extras fed their addiction and now they're happily codependent.
Today, a segment of the audience is beginning to expect web-based extras and that segment is growing, but there has to be something there before there can be something on top of it. Canadian TV can't afford to produce a Lost or market a Lost, but there's a lesson that shouldn't be lost – the show's the thing. The extras are…extra. And both need to connect with the audience.
The Banff panel threw around the word "quality" a lot: "We have to make a quality product." But I didn't hear how the Canadian television industry plans to meet that goal of creating more quality shows, strategies to overcome barriers to making quality shows, or what happens when a quality show falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it.
I have no doubt the future of television will include multi-platform programming with an international reach. The future of television will depend on finding new sources of revenue to supplement the declining value of on-air advertising. But the future of television will also depend on loyal viewers, and you can't create a future with them by ignoring them in the present.
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".