Source : Globe & Mail

Canadians have watched reality TV readjust their sets. Now, our own big networks are jumping in

Can you imagine Justin Trudeau handing out roses to a Roughriders cheerleader? Or how about Don Cherry getting a makeover from a team of gay fashion consultants?

For the past few years, Canadians have watched in rapt attention as reality TV slunk its way onto the tube. Sure, we tuned in to cheer on Donald Trump when he finally fired the evil Omarosa, and to laugh at Paris Hilton terrorizing well-fed farm boys. For the most part, however, we could hold our heads high and tell ourselves this was just another big, fat, obnoxious trend tempting us from afar. Other than Ben Mulroney and his merry Canadian Idols, reality was not the type of television we were very good at making.

Well, take another bite of that maggot meat pie and give your head a shake. All three national Canadian networks are now mucking about in the reality trenches — with a combination of domestically produced and American shows — plunging in with more gusto than a Fear Factor contestant in a vat of snakes.

CanWest Global Television recently announced its fall and winter season of Canadian programming. All seven new Canadian series — every single one — are reality shows, including a made-in-Canada version of The Block, a home-renovation/Apprentice hybrid originally formatted in Australia.

Last week, CTV announced its summer lineup. The second season of Canadian Idol returns on June 1, followed by more American-made reality than ever. A whopping 10 of the 11 series being launched next month by the network are reality programs. Of those, CTV's four new shows include such entries as Mark Burnett's The Casino, produced by Fox, and MTV's Pimp My Ride.

Even CBC Television is getting in on the game with The Greatest Canadian contest (a knock-off of the BBC's Greatest Briton); a new reality miniseries about reincarnation that follows a group of skeptics and believers through past-life regressions; plus an original hockey Survivor-type contest from Vancouver's Network Entertainment. Making the Cut, a tryout challenge for six spots at an NHL training camp, will be broadcast on the public network this fall.

The tribal council has spoken. Canadians have no immunity.

"Soon we'll have Fear Factor in Newfoundland. The contestants will be put in a tank with a 100-pound cod until there's only one left," jokes John Parikhal, the CEO of Joint Communications Corp., a leading consultant on media strategy and consumer trends, who predicts even more reality ahead, at least in the medium term.

The onslaught of reality is no laughing matter to most Canadian producers, writers and actors. "They're taking the bottom line to heart," says Chris Haddock, the Vancouver writer-producer and creator of the CBC series Da Vinci's Inquest.

Haddock doesn't think all reality shows are bad, explaining that "some are just a game show in disguise." But he has no doubt that the rise of reality is to blame for the corresponding decline of continuing Canadian drama series: While the networks were airing 11 Canadian-made hour-long prime-time dramas in 1999, by the 2003-04 season there were only six, two of which are not returning.

The networks make no apologies. "Who cares how much things cost, as long as you're getting people to watch them?" counters Loren Mawhinney, Global TV's vice-president of Canadian productions. "The hardest thing for broadcasters is trying to get viewers' attention in this really crowded marketplace."

Mawhinney says Global's fall lineup is an audience pleaser. "Reality shows are the new comedies," says Mawhinney, who anticipates a hit with The Temps, which will get its yuks by playing pranks on an unsuspecting group of office schmucks. Last Chance for Romance, a new Global show in which Canadian couples are sent to a Sandals resort in the Caribbean to work out their relationships, is bound to be just as hilarious, although probably for unintended reasons.

Susanne Boyce, CTV president of programming, agrees that reality is popular, especially with younger viewers: "Reality works because there's ownership, there's some sort of payoff. Voting is fun."

Still, Haddock argues that broadcasters have, if not a responsibility, then at least a long-term interest in raising the bar. "The lens of drama can cut through a lot of noise," he says, "particularly in these times when the individual voices of countries should be heard, and not drowned out by the tide of American culture."

Boyce, whose network has just received CTF certification to renew The Eleventh Hour and DeGrassi: The Next Generation, agrees that it's important to have drama in CTV's programming mix. Thirteen of the top 20 shows in the latest Bureau of Broadcast Measurement rankings for were dramas, she notes. Reality shows accounted for only five. "Reality simply provides another sandbox for producers to play in," says Boyce.

CTV's summer schedule might be heavy on reality, but Boyce says that's because she's trying to keep the lineup fresh when most dramas and sitcoms are into reruns. "I certainly wouldn't want five Canadian Idols," says Boyce, noting that the CTV summer schedule also includes five original Canadian films.

Whatever package it comes in, the reality genre is with us for the long haul. There's no point in bemoaning it, says consultant Parikhal, whose job is to look out for TV trends, and who predicted reality's ascent 15 years ago.

"In a time-shifting, instantly recordable world, the only thing that matters is live radio and TV," he says. "When you can get whatever you want, whenever you want it, the only thing that has an urgency to it is something like a sporting event or reality TV."

Creating a Survivor might be cheaper than investing in a Friends or ER. But Parikhal says reality TV also meets a deeper need. "As much as we hold ourselves up to a higher order — and this is especially true in the politically correct environs of Canada — we really are all gossips and judgers. ..... We all have that dark part of ourselves, the id, and a need to explore it."

At one time, he explains, soap operas were the perfect place to escape and project those fantasies. "Reality TV, if it's produced well, is a soap opera on bad drugs," says Parikhal. "You can scold the villains, cheer for your heroes, be negative and, most importantly, talk to people about it at work."

In fact, one thing that irks many people in the Canadian TV industry is that, until now, most broadcasters haven't even tried creating original reality programs that might be successfully exported. "There's no risk, no gamble, no investment," says Maureen Parker, executive director of the Writers' Union of Canada. "They're just purchasing formats from other countries."

Although History Television has had some success with its "living history" programs (most notably the original, 1999 entry, Pioneer Quest), Making the Cut could be the first breakout Canadian hit.

You can't get much more Canadian than hockey. And this is the first reality series to enter the realm of professional sports. The CBC, Reseau des Sports (the French-language sports channel, which will broadcast the series in French) and the show's sponsor, Bell Canada, are hoping the tryout challenge might turn into a franchise.

"It could be an interesting examination of the hopes and dreams of a bunch of Canadians," says Haddock. "Hockey seems to be one of the areas we put a lot of stake into. It might have dramatic interest."

CBC, which outbid Global for the rights to the independently produced series, is certainly placing a lot of stake in reality. They've even hired their own reality guru, Pia Marquard, as the director of program development. The Dane has worked for public broadcasters all over the world, including Sveriges in Sweden, where, in 1997, she created a show called Expedition Robinson, otherwise known as the original Survivor.

Making the Cut doesn't come under Marquard's domain, but her role is to inject new reality-style techniques into all sorts of programming. The first show she oversaw was a two-part series called Raging Hormones, in which "ToolGirl" Mag Ruffman plopped herself in the midst of two Canadian families coping with unruly teens.

"The CBC is always accused of being staid," Slawko Klymkiw, executive director of network programming, told The Globe and Mail three months before the show aired in March. "We're trying to do something different." For the CBC, he and Marquard envisioned something more sophisticated: "Constructive observational documentary," he called it.

Writing in The Globe and Mail, Andrew Ryan called Marquard's first outing "an embarrassment" that provided "wincing evidence of why Canada should stay out of the reality-TV racket altogether. ... There is no real point or structure to Raging Hormones, it's just snapshots of acrimonious encounters between family members."

At the same time, Boyce argues that making such knockoffs as Canadian Idol is actually a bigger gamble than creating something new. "You have to be better than the American version because Canadians can compare the two," she says. "The expectations are huge."

That the program drew huge ratings, as did CTV's Canadian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, proves to her that Canadian reality can be made well. Still, she believes there are certain types of reality that will translate better than others in Canada. Canadian Idol or Amazing Race, for example, are very good-natured, she notes. "They fit our Canadian sensibilities. There's competition, but nobody wants anybody to die."

Except, perhaps, the fans of Canadian drama, many of whom wouldn't mind knocking the toupee off Donald Trump's head and telling him, and all of reality TV, "You're fired."

© Globe and Mail