Source : Toronto Star

"You either have to (produce) a CSI or a cooking show, or a Hitler miniseries or a cooking show. If you're going to make something, better to make it at one end of the spectrum and not be in the middle." — Peter Sussman, CEO of Alliance Atlantis Entertainment, and executive producer of Hitler: The Rise Of Evil Last month, when I read Peter Sussman's words in the trade mag Playback, I had a bitter laugh. It was exactly the sort of line that the venal TV executives on Salter Street Productions' satire Made In Canada might have spouted as they helped themselves to more tax dollars to produce some cheesy cooking show. At the same time, I also wondered how many Canadians knew their cash was being used to fund cheap and interchangeable cooking and decorating shows to fill the schedules of privately owned cable channels — instead of funding riskier and more culturally significant domestic dramas. Dramas that tell our stories, that employ and develop Canadian talent and keep it here while achieving critical success abroad. Productions such as Made In Canada. It's pretty much moot now. Last week, Alliance Atlantis Communications (AAC) announced it was shutting down Salter Street Productions, which it acquired in 2001 for $82 million. Created when Alliance Communications merged with Atlantis Communications in 1998, AAC is also shuttering its other production arms. All the better to concentrate on distributing foreign films here, producing CSI and other programming for CBS, and running its stable of Canadian cable channels. (Ironically, that stable includes the Independent Film Channel, the real prize AAC was after when it bought the Halifax-based Salter. Or at least it seemed like a prize at the time. As everybody knows, the digital TV universe is not turning out as it should financially.) The shutdown came as a nasty shock to Canada's talent community. "It's as if we took Inco and Falconbridge out of the nickel business; it leaves a huge hole," lamented actor/producer/writer Paul Gross (Men With Brooms, Due South), who has become a visible and vocal defender of Canadian TV drama. "A Canadian company like Alliance Atlantis shouldn't be able to buy up independent production houses, the engines of our production industry, then pack up and abandon their commitment to the Canadian industry after being nurtured for years by government support," Pamela Brand, national executive director of the Directors Guild of Canada, said in a statement. As for AAC's Sussman, he and fellow Atlantis founder Seaton Maclean say they're leaving, while dozens of other employees, who don't have the luxury of choice, nor the bank accounts, are being let go. They join hundreds of AAC staffers who have lost their jobs in recent years. Over those years, Alliance Atlantis went from producing 326 hours of drama in fiscal 1999 to only 78 in fiscal 2003 — and 43 of those reduced hours were  for its CSI franchise for CBS. Canadians should be outraged. Outraged because AAC, which has benefited from 20 years of public policy to encourage development of Canadian drama, did what was best for its shareholders and cut its losses in an area that has long lost money. Canadian taxpayers have contributed far more to AAC's growth and success than any institutional investor. Outraged because, as all this was going on, CBC was slashed so that certain players — the chosen few, insiders wink — could make millions on the taxpayers' backs, all in the name of creating Canadian culture. Outraged because, over the past 20 years, too much money was spent — wasted! — on this, what with task forces and studies, that could have been better invested in a couple of Canadian dramas. Outraged because the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) changed its policy in 1999 to allow broadcasters to reduce their homegrown drama programming, programming they have always aired at the point of the regulator's knife. Outraged because Canadian commercial broadcasters have pared back their drama programming orders from companies such as AAC in favour of cheaper reality fare. And even when they do air drama, it almost always gets scheduled outside of the most prime prime time of 8 to 11. Outraged because, just as every developed nation around the world is embracing its own programming, Canada seems to be even more of a dumping ground for American TV. Outraged because very profitable and protected commercial broadcasters, which have long wah-wahed the Canadian content blues, benefit from all sorts of CRTC regulations that, for example, allow them to simulcast U.S. shows. But then they whine and complain when other regulations require them to give something back to the culture. Which is why I agree with Gross: "It's a peculiar notion that we should be applying market logic to an industry that is not actually functioning as if it were in a free market. "I am willing to concede that if we want to follow the market argument, then let's follow it to its logical conclusion and deregulate the whole thing so that Global can go out and compete on a level footing with ABC. But we can't do this weird split that does no service to the country." For most of the past 20 years, I have been fearing and predicting the demise of Canadian television drama. Its end has come. The loss is immeasurable. Merry Christmas, Canada.