This weekend, Globe and Mail scribe Andrew Ryan wondered aloud what it would be like to have a made-in-Canada soap opera. In it, he cited the two existing daytime dramas on CBC Television — 49th and Main and North/South.
In it, he writes:

North/South received a brief daytime tryout last month. The show was set in the Halifax construction industry and featured top-notch writing and a respectable Canadian cast. But CBC burned it off in six parts over two weeks, and North/South promptly disappeared just when the story was getting interesting. It will never return.
     The second Canadian-made soap, 49th & Main, was even better. This time, the show was set in Vancouver and revolved around a newly arrived Indian doctor unceremoniously dropped into a multi-cultural community. It was Northern Exposure meets Da Vinci’s Inquest. The last episode of 49th & Main airs on CBC this Thursday, and we’re not likely to see it again.

That surprised me, as I hadn’t seen any news about either show’s cancellation. As luck would have it, I’d been in touch with the William Wallace Grey, the Executive Producer of 49th and Main, and I asked him a few questions about the show, the process of getting a Canadian soap-opera to air, and his experiences with the CBC.

What kind of process led to 49th and Main getting on air?

More than two years ago, in May of 2004, the CBC decided to “transform day-time television” by creating a daytime drama series, i.e. a soap. They decided to achieve this goal by conducting a contest, much like a building project is put out to tender to architects. And so they stated a mandate and invited independent producers from across the country to work up and submit proposals.

     
The mandate: a low-budget half-hour continuing day-time drama series. The shows had to reflect Canada’s multi-ethnic and multi-cultural diversity both in front of and behind the cameras and needed to submit a plan which would include a training component intended to provide opportunities for cast and crew not typically represented on Canadian TV. And the concept had to show that it would be entertaining to a broad audience. As then-head of programming, Slawko Klymkiw said: “We want a hit!” The plan was that the winner of all this would be awarded a large-order pick-up for a daily show. At least 65 episodes per year, starting on-air in January 2007, was the talk, although this was never put on paper.

     
The CBC received 359 proposals. According to a pre-determined and transparent process, this was winnowed to 12 semi finalists, who were then charged with creating a full bible and writing a “middle-of-series” episode. 49th and Main, a production by Raging Ruby Pictures and William B. Davis Productions of Vancouver made this cut and we proceeded to comply.

     
Then a further culling occurred and we ended up as one of six further semi-finalists, charged with revising our bible and writing another random episode in consultation with CBC’s network drama department. The plan from the beginning was that from this group two winners would be chosen, who would then go on to produce one of these episodes. At the fine-cut stage of production, one of these two producers would be declared the winner and would be given the large order from the CBC. 49th and Main and The Halifax Film Company’s North/South were chosen as the two finalists, getting the greenlight for production of the sample episode just before Christmas of 2004, with delivery required by April 2006. This was a short time-frame what with Christmas down-time and all that had to be done, especially for a show starting up from scratch. (And in our case securing a very large multi-ethnic cast). But both productions did so. During the process we were then told that both shows would have to in fact shoot and post-produce to broadcastable conclusion, an additional cost factor. And we learned finally what low budget meant in hard terms, and they were hard terms indeed. Both shows completed and delivered as required, being told that a decision would be made in Mid-March 2005.

     
Nothing happened until late June, 2005, when both projects were told at meetings that the CBC “loved” both of our shows and that the decision was much more difficult than they had expected. And that, no surprise, each show was very different from the other. (My partner’s comment to them was: “Do you mean you have two great shows and you’re going to throw one away?” But, of course, we do know there are fiscal realities). Therefore, they decided they wanted to conduct market research and would get back to us in three or four weeks’ time. They also said that they had decided the winner, when it went to full series, would air not only in the afternoon but also, and importantly, in the 7 p.m. evening block next to the hit Coronation Street, which made a great deal of sense to us and which delighted us.

     
We ended up seeing the market research, the result of a mailing-out of something like a 180 DVD’s. It was underwhelming for both us and North/South, which was no surprise given the randomness of the episodes and the comparisons, among others, to the top (and very high-budget) established hit U.S. evening “soaps” such as Desperate Housewives et al.

     
In October 2005, the CBC informed us that they now wanted us each to produce six episodes of our shows which they would air to “get the audience involved” in the decision about who to go forward with in the now almost-mythical large order. Financial terms were not at that point clear. After much back-and-forth, and two days before Christmas, those terms got locked in, as very difficult as they were, and the greenlight lit up. We were to deliver the six episodes by May 1, 2006. This was, naturally, a challenge, as both of us had shot our sample episodes on locations, but to make the bucks work on six we would have to build sets in studios. Oh, yes, and we were told: the idea of an evening slot had been abandoned, them telling us that this was always intended as a daytime program.

     
In the end, we both delivered our series on time, after a two-week grace period had been given. The summer airdates that have seen us both airing are now in progress. However the decision which we were told would be made by the end of July 2006 as to, as they now said, whether they would order one, both or neither of us, has evaporated. (The “winner” aspect of the competition had disappeared). The CBC’s view would seem to be that this project has been inherited from the previous regime and whether or not CBC can even afford a daytime drama is a question still to be determined, and one which will require “several weeks” to address. And even if there are resources, there will then be creative issues about what they might or might not like about which elements of either series. It could, and likely will be, that if we were asked to go forward for September 2007 airing — or September 2008 — we would have to in essence start over, as continuing to episode seven after such a long time would likely make cast changes inevitable, never mind age matches and all such things. Of course, we would be prepared to do so; this is what producers do, and we believe deeply in our concept — and our current execution.

     
Sadly, the promotional campaign we were promised for this summer run never materialized. Each of the projects did some of it’s own marketing, but only at a very late stage when we discovered the CBC, under it’s new promotional structure, was either unable or unwilling to mount anything like a push. One fifteen-second promo for each show was aired on occasion in the few days before that show went to air, and that was about it.

     
So, to answer the question begged by the Globe & Mail comment about 49th and Main, “not likely to be seen again”, I have no real answer. It would appear the possibilities could go in any direction. Naturally, I fervently, along with my partner, hope that CBC will see the light and go forward (with at least us, of course!). I have naturally had discussions with several CBC network executives about what’s going on or not going on. The above is all I could glean. Interestingly, though, not one of them ventured their opinion as to the quality, worth or value of our show. Thus I have no idea what they’re thinking or where we potentially might stand. It is all, as anyone could imagine, somewhat frustrating — and some of those executives do acknowledge and apologize for that, as well for the lack of promised promotion. Even though these are low-budget shows, many real dollars have been spent and many, many people worked very hard to make them the best as they could and yet we have had no creative feedback, other than the usual and useful note process during the writing and editing stages with CBC production executives. But this isn’t nor ever has been an easy business as many issues are always at play. But I really do hope people will tune in (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week, at 2:30 p.m.) as I think we have something happening that will engage them, especially with on-going viewing.

     
49th and Main, by the way, is executive produced by William Wallace Gray and William B. Davis. The creators are Barbara Ellison & William B. Davis. Our cast is very large and ensemble in nature, as befitting an intended long-running series with multiple story-lines and character arcs. We shot within a business arrangement in-studio at CBC’s Vancouver facilities, as an independent production. And we did it with a great and committed cast and crew and a terrific relationship with the CBC facilities and its people here in Vancouver. I have to plug them all because they are why it works. Dedication, particularly in the low-budget arena, is the make-it-or-break-it magic.

     
This is never an easy or predictable business — for all involved; us, the broadcasters, the cast, the crew. But (hype coming!) I believe we have accomplished something unique in Canadian broadcasting and if you’re reading this, please tune in and give us a shot. And tell your friends. And tell the CBC!

Would this show work in the U.S.? Why or why not?

We made this show about and for the Canadian market with no apologies and with enthusiasm for depicting in fiction the way life really is on Canadian urban streets. But I believe audiences revel in the particular and so I do believe that 49th and Main certainly has the potential for export, including to the U.S., on an appropriate network. However, the U.S. is a difficult market to crack, especially with non-domestic product in which any network there has no sense of authorship or control/influence of the creative content. They tend to feel they lack any stake or control in an import. With that said, should we actually go to a high-volume series, we, along with CBC, would certainly explore all foreign avenues. It only makes sense. Would an American audience like it? I would think so because while we are two different countries, we have similarities, obviously. The trick will be to convince a network that this is so.

Why is this kind of show important for Canada — or is it?

Of course I am terribly biased, but I believe the show is important. However, I don’t want it seen to be wearing that importance on its sleeve. It is primarily, and intends to be, an entertainment. Omigod, what is Lydia going to do? And how will Cedric deal with that? And what on earth will happen to Rajanpreet after what just happened to her? And who did it and why? And what did she do? Is Cedric a decent guy or is he a bit lecherously swayed? And what of Baldeep? Is he really or not what he seems to be? How will his stern father, Mr. Kumar, react, or will he find out at all? And on and on. However, while this is not a political show, we do not, within the drama, sidestep issues that affect these characters’ daily lives: arranged marriages, abortion, rape, professional ethics, intergenerational tensions, cultural/ethnic differences, etc.

     
So, sure, I think it’s important because it reflects, in its fiction, the kinds of lives Canadians, in all their stripes, lead. But it is still fundamentally intended to be a source of addictive entertainment, a can’t-miss-it narrative that could carry on and evolve for years to come.

What are your thoughts on the state of producing television drama for Canadian brodcasters?

This is always tough to address. Books could be written — and have been. Government inquiries could be commissioned — and have been. As a veteran independent producer participant (and as a former broadcast executive and Telefilm executive), I have obviously given — and had to give — this issue great thought. Drama (expensive) is difficult, especially in a country that breathes high-production-value U.S. programming as if it were air itself. And they do it of course with production budgets we could never nor will ever hope to match; we simply don’t have the domestic market to support such largesse. As well, we don’t have anywhere near the resources in our overall system to chase the cream at the top of the bottle that Hollywood is able to do, for the simple reason that we can’t afford the bushels of cash required to be funneled into the development/pilot process that Hollywood uses to chase its hits. And even there, the misses far exceed the successes. Fiction which can attract large audiences is akin to rubbing the lamp without even knowing whether there’s a genie inside.

     
And yet our cultural norms, our sense of who and what we are as a country are arguably less informed by news than by fiction. People’s sense of what is normal, of what is going on on the street level of their own country is, in my biased view, formed by the nuance of seeing television drama that reflects back their homeland. U.S. drama, at its best, is fantastic, and in the view of many has supplanted the Victorian novel as the best form of story-telling the world has seen. But it does, unapologetically and by its nature, reflect the American perspective in those stories. And I believe we must tell our own. This is hardly an original thought, but it still remains, in my mind, a crucially important one. Crucial to our sense of identity for ourselves as Canadians.

     
For private Canadian broadcasters, even among those individuals within them who would agree with what I espouse, economic realties are difficult to reconcile. Buying a U.S. show is dirt cheap relative to the cost of its making. And you get a huge on-screen value for your small dollar. Then, along with that low-cost purchase of a high-value asset comes the enormous world of publicity flowing out of the U.S. market — and onto Canadian screens and other media outlets. Everything from Leno/Letterman et al to all the tabloids, celeb mags, news mags, Entertainment Tonight’s and on and on and on and on. Promotion of even the best-intentioned original Canadian show is but a gnat on that mammoth’s back, virtually indiscernable in the increasing storm of information/hype/marketing that floods citizens of this country twenty-four hours a day.

     
However, a day of reckoning is on the horizon for private broadcasters in Canada, because the days of the lucrative simulcast of U.S. shows are numbered due to the sea-change we are now experiencing in multiple platforms, rights hold-backs etc. The more enlightened among them realize that originality and rights ownership are the keys to long-term viability. But how to make that square up in a world of quarterly shareholder reports, when to really accomplish a long-term vision, significant and high-risk up-front long-term investment is needed?

     
For the CBC, our public broadcaster, many of these same issues apply. And yet the Corporation has a public mandate to deliver programming specifically to, by, for and about Canadians. Which needs oodles of dollars, which they don’t really have, at least not right now.

     
As an independent Canadian producer, all I can say to both parties is: As tough as it is, as seemingly impossible is it is: Take risks! Risk your opinions! Risk your doubts! Risk your jobs! This is what we as producers do every minute of every day as it is the most intrinsic part of what we do. Nobody knows for sure what will work, what will click with an audience. If there were such a person, he/she would be ensconced in Hollywood with a multi-billion dollar salary. But no such person exists, nor ever will.

     
We have no studio system in Canada, not even a minor approximation. When shows do go into production, producer fees are tightly capped by Telefilm, the broadcasters and others with the result that even those producers who do survive have little resources remaining with which to gamble on future ideas. In theory, as the producer owns the show, he/she should be able to gather revenue from foreign or downstream sales. But the reality is that most shows end up pre-selling such rights in order to raise enough money to make the show itself. Or to make a show so Canadian — a good thing! — that it is a difficult sell in other markets. There are a handful of exceptions, but they are only a handful. And I am speaking of “real” Canadian producers, not those whose business it is to serve U.S. productions shooting or animating on our shores, if sometime “Canadianizing” them in order to give them technical regulatory value to Canadian broadcasters.

     
Further to your question: independently producing Canadian television is a near-suicide mission. Getting things creatively right, exciting, interesting and engaging is of course the Grail, and always an elusive chalice. But there is also the enormous challenge of doing so without adequate funding, with enormous quantities of business affairs detail to be conducted, with form-filling and pleasing bureaucrats, with vast expenditures and concommitent paperwork in securing bank loans as broadcasters like to dole out their rights purchase fees as late as possible. Capitalization occurs, but is tenuous at best and if it can be found tends to force a small company to be focused on the financial rather than the creative. The Hollywood studios concluded this a long time ago; they realized that running big business flew in the face of creating product. And so they shifted focus to the sales business of distribution, dumping resources on contracted producers who could then focus on ideas, concepts, scripts, casting, and production itself. But while we will never have that luxury in the way that they do, I believe there are lessons to be learned. When Alliance Atlantis moved out of its earlier producer phase and began to become a real business, what did they do? Why they got out of production, of course, and understandably so as a public company: Bay Street doesn’t like risk. So now AAC is a broadcaster, although still holding onto the financially-remunerative business of distribution. But they don’t produce. (CSI, for all the hype, is a rights-sale deal; AAC is not involved in its actual creation).

     
The solution? Who the hell knows, I suppose. But I do believe the broadcasters are key to finding one, ideally out of their own self-interest. But to do so, they will have to take risks. And they will have to be forced via regulation to take bigger ones because even if you were a CEO of a big broadcaster who actually passionately believed in what I have been saying, you need to be able to go to your shareholders and say: “Sorry, I had no choice. The government made me do it. It’s a cost of doing business, this original programming, this high-risk Canadian albatross. Sorry again, but we have to do it to keep the licence we have to make money from all the other things.”

     
And then get on the blower and call up proven producers and huddle and yell and scheme and scream and come up with a great show or two that people actually want to watch. And then dip into his coffers and spend even more in getting the word out to Canadians so that they know the thing actually exists. In essence, CTV did this with Corner Gas and they got lucky and it worked. Now, all of them, including CBC, need to get their heads around the notion that getting lucky is at least possible. And so they should go for it.

     
And then, who knows? They might even make money at it.

Does your company or its partners have any other shows/pilots in the work?

We do. Raging Ruby Pictures and William B. Davis both have, together and separately, several other projects in the works, both for television and as feature films. However it would be premature to get into any detail of them at this time.

     
For my part, my company, Raging Ruby Pictures, is a only a two year-old enterprise, but I am personally a veteran producer of feature films, and TV movies and TV series for all the Canadian networks as well as others in the U.S. Programs I have produced have been nominated for and won all sorts of awards in Canada and around the world as well as having sold across the globe. They are, though, with one only-quasi exception, all truly Canadian in every way. I’m proud of that. I was also in the past Western Regional Director of Telefilm Canada, Vice-President at Atlantis Films, Senior Executive Vice President at CineGroupe, Executive Vice President at Stornoway, General Manager of Prime TV, and an independent broadcast consultant working with various national broadcasters. I am also a lawyer and a writer and have served on numerous industry boards. My partner in executive producing 49th and Main is William B. Davis, who audiences will know, of course, from his acting work in X-Files and many other TV shows and movies. He also directed three of the episodes of our show, as well as serving as one of our writers and, along with Barbara Ellison, as co-creator.

     49th and Main! Watch! Stay with it! You’ll get hooked! Honest! (A producer also has to be a salesperson).

     And, again: TELL THE CBC.

49th and Main is a contemporary, ensemble, continuing daily drama which takes place in a fictional version of the Vancouver neighbourhood defined by the crossroads of 49th Avenue and Main Street. A neighbourhood known for its high concentration of ethnic diversity. Our entry point is the arrival of a British-educated medical doctor of Indian descent who was born in Kenya. Arriving, he encounters his New World and all its denizens. And these include the people of the neighbourhood and all of their day-to-day lives and issues, some political to be sure, but largely focused on the travails and foibles of human beings as they go about their interconnected existences. It is a drama with dramatic punch and ongoing suspense, yet also allows for considerable natural human humour. Our characters span generations, both from Old Countries to this new one. Our stories range from the seemingly ordinary to those of crisis and compromised complication.

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	49th and Main, Behind the Scenes, Drama