Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reality TV, serials out, sitcoms in for 2009-10
Mark McKinney on the set of his TV series, Less Than Kind which is shot in Winnipeg. (JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
BANFF, Alta. -- Procedural dramas are in, serials are out. Sitcoms are back, reality TV is fading fast.
Those are some of the pronouncements that top-tier television experts are making as they converge at the Banff World Television Festival this week to assess the health of the industry and chart a course for its future.
Christina Jennings of Shaftesbury Films, whose production roster includes CTV's The Listener and Citytv's Murdoch Mysteries, says procedural dramas that feature self-contained episodes are the new standard after years of dominance by serialized television.
"We've all heard the story of people saying, 'I tried to watch so-and-so and I missed a few weeks and I felt like I had to wait for the DVD set to come out,"' says Jennings, whose company will be getting the 2009 Lionsgate/Maple Pictures Innovative Producer Award at the festival.
"I think that no broadcaster right now wants to be in that situation, you know.... You don't want that audience member to come in in the third or fourth or fifth episode and go, 'What's going on?'"
Norm Bolen of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association says drama will remain the most popular form of programming overall, noting that "anything to do with crime, forensics and police" do especially well.
It's the reality genre that's on the wane, says festival director Peter Vamos. He stopped short of declaring the genre dead, but said the format has started to wither as audiences grow tired of the same sensational gimmicks.
"There's nothing really new after a while so then you start to go, 'OK, well what else can we do?' And then the pendulum swings back the other way," says Vamos.
It's becoming less attractive to broadcasters and producers, as well, because once they've created the reality show, "there's no ability to syndicate it," he says. "It's done."
That's not to say reality has left the dial -- uber-producer Mark Burnett brings his newest series Shark Tank, to ABC, and also has a 19th season season of Survivor and a new round of Celebrity Apprentice on deck.
Canadian and U.S. networks revealed their fall lineups in recent weeks, providing fodder for small-screen aficionados to weigh in with predictions.
Vamos says the sitcom is back, and a glance at the schedule seems to bear that out. ABC's Wednesday block is packed with half-hour comedies, with veterans Courteney Cox, Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton and Ed O'Neill each helming new shows.
Writer/producer Mark McKinney, of Citytv's shot-in-Winnipeg Less Than Kind, says he's pleased to see some variety among the half-hour comedies on the dial.
"There's everything from Weeds to your standard three-wall sitcom, audience, laugh-track kind-of-thing," says McKinney, who receives the Peter Ustinov Award for comedy on Monday at the festival.
Several shows seem inspired by the economic downturn.
Grammer's new show Hank is about a former business tycoon who falls on hard times and is forced to move his family back to his small town. Heaton's series The Middle has her playing a harried mom heading up a middle-class family in middle America. Both air on A Channel in Canada.
Then there are the envelope-pushing cable shows that feature regular joes taking extraordinary measures to make ends meet. They include proud high school teacher Walter White in Breaking Bad, who dealt meth to fund his cancer treatments, the widow Nancy Botwin on Weeds, who sold marijuana to support her kids, and the upcoming series Hung, about a divorced dad in recession-plagued Detroit who takes up the world's oldest profession.
Vamos said movies of the week are also on the upswing, noting that a panel discussion set for the festival on Wednesday is dedicated to the growing popularity of the genre, thanks to the success of High School Musical.
The Banff World Television Festival runs through Wednesday.
-- The Canadian Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 10, 2009 D3
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