At the Alliance for Children and Television’s first-ever market simulation for children’s tv, the story was less about what happened and more about who missed it.

Pitching for a shallow pool of domestic players, a number of producers expressed concern. ‘Canadian broadcasters (were) noticeably absent,’ says Anne Bromley. Bromley and Jill Gollick had hoped to have the opportunity to pitch their project – a live-action super-hero show – for ytv.

The list of noticeably absents at the simulation included Telefilm Canada, the Cable Production Fund and provincial agencies. The vast majority of private broadcasters were not represented.

Those who did attend included Gerri Cook from the Shaw Children’s Programming Initiative, Kirstine Layfield from Paragon, Heather McGillivray from Family Channel, Adrian Mills from tvontario, Peter Moss from cbc, Michel Lavoie from Radio-Canada and Andra Sheffer from the Maclean Hunter Television Fund.

Isme Bennie from CHUM/City was handed the task of ‘representing the world’ for the purposes of the simulation.

Pat Ferns, who led the session, admits he’s ‘a little disappointed.’

‘I was anticipating little from the international market, but a pretty comprehensive representation in the Canadian market,’ says Ferns. ‘Clearly there were certain projects that would have benefited from having the response of private broadcasters and/or ytv. I was surprised the organizers hadn’t secured Telefilm.’

According to Judith Pike, one of the organizers of the simulation, Telefilm and ytv were both invited to participate. It’s unclear whether the annual Canadian Association of Broadcasters convention, which took place in Ottawa at the same time, caused any schedule clashes.

Alan Mirabelli, chair of act, says although the representation from the funding bodies may have been discouraging for those who pitched, it says a lot about the status of children’s tv in Canada.

‘It was a fairly consistent story,’ he says. ‘First of all, there’s no money in anybody’s budget, and secondly, if one has to read between the lines, children’s programming is very low on the priority list. While it might have been discouraging for the producers, at the same time, I think they learned something they needed to learn, and so did the rest of us.’