THE QUEBEC MARKET is the country’s Bizarro World for Canadian content. Frame its borders with mirrors and the reflected image offers the opposite of everything we know, and believe, in the rest of Canada when it comes to culture.
Francophone broadcasters don’t have to air Cancon; they like and want to air it. They don’t air the minimum CRTC-required hours in prime time. They go over and above them. They invest in their own Cancon and promote it. That’s crazy talk for English language broadcasters.
But, it doesn’t take voodoo to ensure success. There’s no magic elixir or Harry Potter-style wand wave. What there appears to be is a symbiotic relationship in the province between broadcasters, creatives and the audience, aided by a triumvirate of factors: the barrier of language, an actively supported local star system, and R&D investment and promotion.
“It’s a cultural mandate,” says Canada Media Fund president and CEO Valerie Creighton. “They celebrate their content and creative.”
Language
On any given night of the week in Quebec, private broadcaster TVA nets 30% of the audience market share for mostly original programming. Radio-Canada grabs about 12%, V slices out 8% and Astral hauls in 20% with its French specialties. The other 30% is spread over sports and other channels, says Judith Brosseau, the senior vice-president of programming, communications and digital media at Astral, which invests between $35- and $36-million on Quebec content annually.
“It’s not rare in Quebec for shows to get 1.5- to 2-million viewers,” she says. “That’s 2 million of a 7-million population. In English-language Canada, we open champagne for 1 to 2 million.”
The most obvious ingredient in the province’s Cancon success is the French language that buffers Quebec from the U.S. entertainment machine that blankets English Canada.
“Because of the barrier of language, we compete among ourselves,” adds Brosseau (left). “We don’t do simsub. Of course we get signals from Global and CTV, but when you look at the audience figures, they’re not watching these shows.”
The top 10 shows on the schedule, in English Canada, are either American or sports, she says. In Quebec, 10 out of 10 of them are from Quebec.
Radio-Canada airs 85% Canadian content between 6 a.m. and midnight and more than 90% from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. That’s more than 5,650 hours a year all day and more than 1,350 hours a year in prime time. French-language local programming is simply better received than U.S. and other foreign shows, says Nancy Roch, Radio-Canada’s director, schedule and broadcasting.
As a public broadcaster, its role is to showcase homegrown talent. But even the private-broadcast numbers are high. Case: TVA airs 67% Cancon in prime time (from 6 p.m. to midnight), and 64% all day.
France Lauziére, TVA’s vp of programming, says the prime-time numbers haven’t changed in a decade. About 85% of TVA’s budget is used to produce Canadian content. In another Anglo-Franco reversal, Cancon gets pride of place on the schedule.
“For low season, like summer, our programming is more acquisitions and non-Canadian content,” she says. “It’s about balance. If we only had acquisitions, yes, there’s a huge return. But if we did only that, in time, the return would go down. More acquisitions are good for the budget, but we’d lose viewers and it’s hard to get them back. It’s dangerous.”
Seeing stars
Variety, talk and quiz shows still pull in the highest ratings. But in the past few years, drama has made a comeback.
The reasons for it are a more potent factor in Cancon’s success than language. “Quebec viewers want to recognize themselves, to recognize their reality on the screen,” says André Béraud, the director of TV drama and feature films at Radio-Canada. “The success of Quebec drama series comes precisely from the fact that our authors write stories that are immersed in our reality, featuring characters who are like us and who reflect our identity.”
That desire is aided by a well-established domestic star system developed over 50 or so years and supported by the media.
“Twenty-five years ago, we were the same as English-language Canada,” Roch says. “But for 25 years, the government decided to invest in Canadian and Quebec culture.”
House lead actor Hugh Laurie has been embraced in Quebec as one of its own, a phenomenon helped along by TVA’s promotions department. “It worked. It’s such as success story,” says Lauzière. “[House] has reached 1 million [viewers] for years. But it’s an exception.”
TVA continues to build on the star system, as well, feeding that relationship with the audience. “With all the new web and mobile [broadcasts] now, we’re all over the world. But it might not be that way in a few years. It’s our responsibility to push homegrown shows. We have to keep up the connection with our viewers,” Lauzière (right) says. “We have to put money into it and our marketing plan.” Adds Sylvie Castonguay, TVA’s programming strategy consultant, “We are really now managing our shows as brands.”
A brand extension could include a contest or offering to connect publications with winning contestants from Le Banquer, its version of the game show Deal or No Deal. “If a contestant won a lot of money and have a story, people might be interested in finding out what they are going to do with it,” says Lauzière. “It might be interesting for a magazine to write a story about that after the show.”
Quebecor’s other online and print resources (from Canoe to Le Journal de Montreal and its magazines), are also mobilized to create substantial buzz around its shows and stars.
Support
Visit Montreal in the last week of August and you’ll see billboards, metro and newspaper ads for domestic programming. “It’s not because we’re heroes that we advertise,” says Brosseau. “We do it because we’ll get ratings. We know that if we reach viewers about the show on Thursday at 8 p.m., they’ll be there.”
Support also comes at Cancon conception. In Quebec, there’s an investment and cross-fertilization at the R&D, script and airing stage.
“We take a lot of risk in promoting Cancon, but it’s very important to contribute to and develop Canadian talent,” says Roch. “We work with the director and authors. We’re involved in the development of the series and the financing. It’s a kind of collegial team involved in the idea creation. All of our TV shows, we’ve decided to be part of as financial partners. We try to promote it and we sell those shows to other countries. Each time we release a show, it’s supported by promotion both on TV and outside advertising.”
Several programs are in demand in France and other foreign countries. Un Gars Une Fille, for example, is in more than 21 countries. Les Parent is in 10, and Sophie Paquin is in four countries, including on ABC Family.
TVA’s highest-rated program was LOL, a non-verbal sketch comedy show. It snagged between 25% and 30% of the market in its first season last winter. “It’s a big, big production because they go on location, doing shoots in Mexico, Africa, Greece,” says Lauzière. “We’re not only the broadcaster but the partner because they needed cash to do this and we were confident of the project.”
For fall, LOL’s been bought by India, Switzerland, Italy and Japan. “We use it as a half-hour show. Other countries may use it as two or three minutes between other shows,” Lauzière says. “It speaks with humour. They went to Vegas to produce scenes in the Grand Canyon. Everyone will recognize the scene.”
Perhaps if France was next door, Quebec would be in a similar situation as Anglophone Canada, but Quebec’s broadcasters don’t think so. The culture, its desire to support it—and even the language—is too different.
“People want to watch exciting programs to which they can relate,” says Béraud. “The biggest successes in English Canada, such as Republic of Doyle, Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Trailer Park Boys or Degrassi, are the series that speak to Canadians. You need to focus on what is distinctive—from the Americans per se—and be proud of your own identity.”
What do you think about the state of Canadian content? Does Quebec do it best? Why don’t we take those risks in English Canada? Don’t English Canadians want to see more of their own TV shows, too? Let us know at editorial@cartt.ca.
