Source : National Post

Producers hope to cash in on writers' strike

As the Hollywood writers' strike drags into its 13th week, Canadian television producers are fielding phone calls that they hope will turn into sales of their shows to U.S. networks starved for new programming.

Peter Raymont, a co-founder, producer and writer at White Pine Pictures, an independent Toronto-based production company, said he is "optimistic" his CBC drama The Border -- about an elite border security unit confronting international crime, terrorists and trafficking -- will be sold to a U.S. network after a series of meetings today and tomorrow in Las Vegas.

"It's certainly helping us that there is a writers' strike and the Americans are hungry for content," Mr. Raymont said yesterday before he was to fly to an annual international sales event convened by the National Association of Television Program Executives. "We've had a lot of interest from the U.S."

The Writers Guild of America strike has shut down production of such hit shows as Grey's Anatomy and House. Talks between the writers and U.S. studios continue, but unscripted reality shows and reruns are filling huge gaps in the prime-time TV schedule, leaving programmers in search of fresh material.

"I've been getting a number of calls from various networks in the United States, asking to see pilot episodes and scripts," said Ira Levy, co-founder of and executive producer at Toronto-based Breakthrough Films and Television. "There's a [large] market that doesn't have product because of the Writers Guild strike."

There were rumours in the Canadian production industry last week that Toronto-based Shaftesbury Films, maker of Murdoch Mysteries and Life With Derek, was close to a deal with a major U.S. network.

As the strike drags on, CBS and NBC are showing they are willing to step outside their comfort zones to find new sources of scripted shows. CBS, for example, is reaching into the vault of cable channel subsidiary Showtime Networks Inc. for Dexter, a show about a forensic scientist who moonlights as a serial killer.

Also next month, rival NBC plans to begin airing episodes of Quarter Life, originally made for viewing exclusively on the Internet.

Canadian production companies are not unknown in the United States. Breakthrough Films and Television, for example, has sold scripted children's shows, including Atomic Betty and Captain Flamingo, to Time-Warner Inc.'s Cartoon Network and Walt Disney Co.

But Mr. Levy says the Canadian company is now fielding calls about more grown-up fare.

Buyers for U.S. networks have expressed interest in a half-hour comedy being produced with Citytv called Less Than Kind, starring Maury Chaykin and shot in Winnipeg.

Another show Mr. Levy thinks could make the leap to the U.S. airwaves is a show for CBC called Easton Meets West, about a family's move from Toronto to Calgary. Mr. Levy said that although Americans may have to rely on the differences between their own culturally and politically diverse "Blue" and "Red" states to relate to the conflicts between the two Canadian cities, the central theme of dysfunctional neighbours could transcend the Canadian setting. The formula seems to have worked for CTV's Corner Gas, which was recently sold to U.S. cable Superstation WGN.

"I don't think Americans are so fascinated with Saskatchewan; they just appreciate a good, funny show," Mr. Levy said.

Canadian producers have long aspired to sell into the giant U.S. television marketplace, particularly to one of the Big Four networks. But the Holy Grail has seldom been grasped. In the mid-1990s, Canadian-made Due South, a show that paired a Mountie with aU.S. cop, aired briefly on CBS.

Messrs. Levy and Raymont said that if the current crop of producers is successful in penetrating the U.S. market during the writers' strike, Canadian shows won't remain gap fillers confined only to the length of the strike.

"I'm confident that once we make a sale into the American market, it'll stick," said Mr. Raymont, whose previous work includes the documentary feature Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire, which received the 2007 Emmy Award for Best Documentary.

Test audiences for The Border said the production values were equal to the quality of U.S. shows, said Mr. Raymont. That's a change from the days when Canadian productions were at times easy to distinguish because the money spent on their production was a fraction of what was spent on U.S. shows.

Mr. Levy said renewed interest in high-quality Canadian shows, and an expected influx of money, should make the job of penetrating the U.S. market easier.

He estimates about $1-billion will come into Canada's production business over the next five to seven years, triggered by "benefits" packages tied to a flurry of recent broadcast acquisitions by CTVglobemedia Inc., Canwest Global Communications Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc.

"It creates more of a critical mass," Mr. Levy said. "There's a real interest and a real awareness that we're producing all these interesting shows north of the border that can play to an American audience as well."

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