US TV Networks Love Canadian Drama

by Jarrett Martineau | February 4, 2008 at 10:44 am | 395 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

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Canadians are loath to proclaim their greatness, especially when it comes to culture. As a nation that favours the import of American cultural products -- especially films and television shows -- over the export of domestically-produced creative gems, it is a boost of economic and cultural confidence to see that unique Canadian dramatic series are finding new and welcoming audiences south of the border.

As the American screenwriters strike threatens to drag into its fourth month, U.S. television networks are competing intensely for Canadian-made series.

NBC won a bidding war Friday for the new CTV drama series The Listener, signing a deal to show the full 13-episode first season of the show, which begins shooting in April in Toronto. The deal comes just days after CBS snapped up another CTV drama series, Flashpoint. [...]

The Hollywood Reporter ran a story Friday stating that the CBC is close to making deals with U.S. networks on two of its series. CBS and ABC are bidding for The Border, and ABC Family is pursuing Sophie, according to the American trade paper.

Canadian series produced in British Columbia are also being courted. Larry Sugar and J.B. Sugar, executive producers of jPod, said Friday two American networks have inquired about the Vancouver-shot urban-life series based on the Douglas Coupland novel.

Stephen Hegyes, of Vancouver company Brightlight Pictures, offered these encouraging words on the 'exportability' of Canadian drama:

"Canadian drama is clearly becoming world-class drama," said Brightlight's Hegyes. "We [in Canada] bought, and continue to buy, American drama. What's happened now is the funding, structures and tax credits that have helped support Canadian drama has created an environment where we now have drama that is exportable and is being picked up by the toughest market in the world."

Meanwhile, the domestic performance of Canadian drama continues to struggle.

As Media In Canada reports, CBC Television's primetime
dramas MVP and jPod both "struggled to maintain audiences in the key
25-54 demographic. Produced in Vancouver, jPod started off with 293,000
in the Tuesday 9 pm time slot, but by the third week had dropped to
100,000. The story is much the same for MVP, about the office antics of
hockey pros and their wives and girlfriends, which garnered 208,000
viewers in the demo with its debut, but was down to 51,000 last week."

CBC Television is shuffling two of its new anchor dramas, in an attempt to boost sagging ratings. Steamy hockey soap-opera MVP will move to Tuesday nights, bumping jPod to Fridays beginning this week. [...] Like drama series Intelligence, the shows are garnering positive reviews from critics; the reviews don’t seem to translate into viewers in the numbers CBC had hoped for.