Source : Winnipeg Free Press

MEDIA mogul Leonard Asper appeared to do an excellent job on Thursday in soothing the nerves of his company's shareholders.

Winnipeg-based CanWest Global Communications, now cleanly rebranded as Canwest, was reporting its latest quarterly results, and Asper sounded a confident note about Global TV's prospects in the face of the ongoing U.S. writers' strike.

"What, me worry?" he seemed to be saying, even though his network has always garnered the lion's share of its audience from simulcasting U.S. dramas and sitcoms.

"There's plenty of programming around now," he noted and proceeded to enumerate a list of reality shows that, because they are not scripted, remain unaffected by the two-month-old Hollywood work stoppage.

Only time will tell how bad the effects of this strike will be on the North American entertainment economy. It is some consolation to Asper, one imagines, that however hard Canwest is hit, its arch-rival in the private broadcasting sector, CTV, is being affected just as much, if not more.

Over at the publicly supported CBC, its executives are looking like programming geniuses, at least for now.

They have ended a week in which they have aired two new dramas and two new comedies. And they have launched them with a high-end sales blitz that seldom accompanies the low-key and budget-restricted Canadian way.

Good for them. The only way indigenous programs can compete against their American counterparts is if they are seen to be as glitzy and glamorous.

Is it largely good fortune that the CBC's new shows appear to be taking advantage of the U.S. writers' strike. The network always launches in January, and when these plans were being formulated, there was no guarantee or even foresight of a vacuum in the American pipeline.

The striking thing about the new CBC offerings, regardless of their quality, is how populist they are in their intent. A show about goofy Dilbert-like office cubicle dwellers? Another about slinky hockey wives?

This is a clear change in direction from a few years ago when the template for a CBC drama was the high-end niche occupied by the likes of Ken Finkleman.

Two main arguments exist as to why indigenous programs even matter at all.

The first argument is monetary. They produce jobs for writers, producers, designers and technicians -- the kind of jobs that propel the 21st-century creative-class economy.

The second argument is about nation-building, and it's more amorphous. Will Jill Canadian feel more rooted to her country if she watches a sitcom set in Toronto rather than in Los Angeles?

The truth is, probably not. But with the CBC, another issue matters more. If the network is going to be financed from the Canadian purse, it should offer an outlet for Canadian expression.

It's harder to make that argument with the private networks. As long as English Canada shares a border and a language with the U.S. giant, they will lack the economies of scale to compete on an equal footing.

We saw what happened earlier this week in publishing. Vancouver's Raincoast Books, which made its fortune by distributing British phenomenon Harry Potter, said it was dropping its Canadian division for lack of profitability.

Canwest faces the same problems. Mind you, with the strong loonie, it is paying less to import U.S. shows than it used to. And it now, with its takeover of Alliance, it has that nice income stream from specialty cable signals.

There is a great deal of regional disdain directed at Canwest in the media boardrooms of Toronto. But a successful Canwest is certainly in Winnipeg's best interest.

CTV or any other Toronto-centred company is not going to invest in a ballpark, a football stadium or a museum in this city.

These initiatives will be left to locally headquartered companies, such as the surgical imaging company Imris did this week with its $600,000 sponsorship of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival.

You don't have to be a fan of the mass-market material Global traffics in to want that writers' strike to end as much as Leonard Asper wants it to.

© Winnipeg Free Press