Source : Vancouver Sun

The news conference went along according to script until a reporter asked the assembled Canadian broadcasting stars about the difference between Canadian and American TV dramas. Veteran actor Donnelly Rhodes leapt to the podium to answer.

He talked about the importance of watching Canadian stories on TV instead of American stories about crime in Miami.

Getting warmed up, Rhodes talked about the need for nurturing homegrown actors and performers and about making sure our stories aren't marginalized because of money. And he talked about Canadians getting their heads out of the sand about what's happening on the public airwaves.

"It's about living in a country that cares," said Rhodes, whose career has spanned 48 years including recent TV programs such as Da Vinci's Inquest and Battlestar Galactica.

Rhodes's passionate plea on behalf of Canadian dramatic programming on TV came towards the end of a news conference Monday calling for private broadcasters to invest more in Canadian drama. Organized by the Union of B.C. Performers, Canadian stars such as Rhodes, Jackson Davies, Joy Coghill and Christine Willes took the unusual move of using their public personas as actors to become advocates for Canadian culture.

Davies said that as one of the stars of the CBC's hugely successful Beachcombers, which ran for 19 years, he knows that Canadian dramas are not only watched by Canadians but by people all around the world.

"Canadian drama works -- it just needs to be given a chance," he said.

Davies zeroed in on a change made in 1999 by the CRTC to its television policy which allowed broadcasters to air cheaper entertainment magazine and reality shows and to stop spending a percentage of revenues on Canadian content.

According to information provided by the UBCP, the number of English-language Canadian TV drama series has dropped from 12 one-hour programs in 1999 to three as of last November on the country's three major networks.

Davies said it is "embarrassing" how little Canadian drama there is now on TV screens across the country.

"We're just about an endangered species in this country," Davies said.

Coghill, a member of the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame and a winner of four Jessie Awards in theatre, said she can turn on the TV and see American and British actors she can call her friends. But she said it is becoming increasingly difficult for her to find her Canadian colleagues on the public airwaves.

Coghill laid part of the blame on the Canadian lack of self-confidence that calls into question the success of entertainers who stay at home rather than heading to the U.S.

"It is part of us being Canadian that only a few of us are proud and passionate about reflecting the society in which we live," Coghill said.

Willes, who has acted in The Wicker Man and Dead Like Me, said the changes made by the CRTC in 1999 were "catastrophic" and amounted to giving away the public airways "for free."

"It saddens me that we have to fight for recognition in our own country," she said.

UBCP, the B.C. Branch of the Canadian acting union ACTRA, is calling for private broadcasters to spend at least seven per cent of advertising revenues on Canadian English-language dramatic programming and to schedule at least two more hours of Canadian dramas in prime time -- from Sunday to Thursday between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.

On Monday, Nov. 27, the CRTC begins 10 days of hearings in Hull, Quebec on Canadian content on the public airwaves.

Monday's news conference was held in the lobby of the Performing Arts Lodge next to the Bayshore Inn where the Canadian Association of Broadcasters are holding their annual convention.

© Vancouver Sun