Montreal: Productions sda’s underworld crime series Omerta: la loi du silence tops all other program finalists in the 11th edition of the Prix Gemeaux with 17 nominations including best drama series, best direction, best writing and best male lead.

The Gemeaux awards honor excellence in French-language television and will be broadcast in two parts Sunday, Sept. 29. The afternoon show is being broadcast by rdi from Centre Pierre-Peladeau, with the Theatre Saint-Denis evening gala airing live on Radio-Canada.

Competing with Omerta in the drama series category are the police miniseries 10-07 and Alys Robi, both produced by Telefiction; Jasmine, a police series coproduced by Bloom Films and Verseau International; and Urgence, the Productions Prisma medical drama.

This year’s top 10 nominated programs are: Omerta (17), Alys Robi (11), the Sovimage/Sagittaire courtroom anthology Les Grands proces (10), the Radio-Quebec/ Point de Mire drama series Avec un Grand A (10), Urgence (6), the Radio-Canada cultural magazine l’Enfer c’est nous autres (6), the Avanti Cine Video sitcom Moi et l’autre (5), the sda miniseries Innocence (5), the Productions Sogestalt kids’ show La Princesse Astronaute iii (5) and the Verseau International teen drama Zap iii (5).

Independent producers picked up 65% of this year’s nominations.

Nominees for best writer of a drama series are Joanne Arseneau for 10-07, Fabienne Larouche and Rejean Tremblay for Innocence, and Luc Dionne for Omerta.

Nominees for best performance special are Glenn Gould: Extasis (Radio-Canada), Joe (Radio-Canada), Le Songe du collectionneur de gammes (Cine Qua Non Films), Les Ailes du feu (Productions de l’Encrier) and Saltimbanco (Productions Telemagik).

The nominees for best cultural series are the movie release and location magazine Box-Office (Image Diffusion International), the arts interview show Christiane Charette en direct (Radio-Canada), the fashion file Perfecto (MusiquePlus), last year’s deserving winner Second Regard (Radio-Canada) and the cultural travel magazine Visions d’Amerique (Coscient).

ACCT-Quebec received 1,213 nomination entries this year, with close to 500 finalists in 64 program, craft and talent categories.

At a press reception high atop Place Ville Marie, ACCT-Quebec president Robert Roy said private-sector sponsorship is playing a greater role than ever, with major contributions from Hydro-Quebec for a second year, and Ford du Canada for a fourth edition.

The Academy’s Quebec director Patrice Lachance says the Gemeaux budget has been squeezed 10% or more for the past two years and is in the $1.2 million range this year, including services and indirect broadcast-related costs.

Hydro-Quebec is the sponsor of a special program prize which will be chosen by the public from among last season’s 10 top-rated tv shows.

This year’s Grand Prix award for career achievement goes to sportscaster Richard Garneau.

Tele-Metropole, broadcaster of the publicly voted Gala MetroStar, is again boycotting this year’s Gemeaux competition, although several of its shows were entered by their producers.