Ironically, it is next year’s awards show, not the upcoming Nov. 8-9 program, that’s the crucial issue at this year’s Alliance for Children and Television’s Festival and Awards of Excellence.

With 52 English-language and 26 French-language Canadian-produced programs submitted this year, act national director Kealy Wilkinson is concerned that the 1997 children’s tv award offerings will be much thinner.

‘Our figures indicate that this fall there are half the number of kids’ television projects in production than there were last year,’ she explains. ‘This a radical shift and I think it will show next year in far fewer programs for consideration.

‘Everybody is talking about the threat to Canadian children’s television,’ she continues. ‘The future we thought was going to be so bright is looking very vulnerable right now.’

‘Chronic underfunding’

The crux of the problem – lack of production funding sources and dwindling Canadian broadcast windows – is one of the key issues to be addressed at the act conference, being held at the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto, where a Canadian who’s who in kids’ tv production, broadcasting and distribution will converge to honor the best Canadian-produced kids’ tv programs and address industry issues.

‘There has been chronic underfunding of children’s television over the past decade,’ says Wilkinson, who plans to lobby for a higher floor on kids’ program financing in the new Canada Television and Cable Production Fund.

She has also observed that a financial crunch at mainstay children’s broadcasters like cbc and tvontario has shrunk the number of slots available for kids’ programming, and other programmers, like ytv, have all their slots filled.

‘The market, in terms of Canadian broadcasters in Canada to pick up children’s programs, just isn’t there,’ says Wilkinson.

The potential of the international market for producers seeking financing and coproductions is also being lost. ‘Canadian producers have to bring something to the table,’ says Wilkinson. ‘Canadian production funds require the project have a domestic broadcast window, and furthermore, if you tell a potential coproducer you can’t even find a slot in your own country, you don’t have much of a sell.’

New awards contenders

Despite the lower levels of Canadian production, the quality of children’s television remains high, says Wilkinson, and this is clearly evident in the programs up for Awards of Excellence, which will be presented Nov. 9 at the cbc’s Glenn Gould Studio (for the complete list of nominees, see p. 26).

A few of the contenders are new shows which premiered this past season.

The Atlantis/Credo Entertainment coproduction Heck’s Way Home, directed by Michael Scott and written by Chris Haddock (MacGyver), is vying for best drama. The tv movie tells the tale of a daring little collie named Heck who journeys from Winnipeg to Vancouver.

On My Mind, a new $1.45 million, six-episode series from Film Works and Minds Eye Pictures, is another best drama contender. The series portrays the lives of preteens within an inner-city neighborhood and deals with issues of young love and peer pressure.

Up for best animation is the nfb’s cel-animated short How Dinosaurs Learned To Fly, directed by Munro Ferguson.

French-track nominees

Among the new French-language shows in line for awards is Cinar’s La Maison de Ouimzie/ Wimzie’s House, a preschool series which teaches basic values through funny anecdotes.

Wimzie was developed by a team of educational consultants from Harvard, Concordia and ucla, as well as long-term Sesame Street collaborators Dr. Gerald Lesser, Norman Stiles and Christopher Cerf, working together to create a curriculum for the program that cultivates children’s sense of personal identity and self-esteem, an understanding of interpersonal relationships and a desire to learn.

Three pilot episodes were produced and tested with a target audience. The study showed that Wimzie touches on important social and family issues experienced by children. Unique to the series is its sitcom format.

Other French-language contenders are Cine Groupe’s Les tribulations du Cabotin, an animated series for six- to 12-year-olds, and Allegro Films’ Les Aventures de la Courte Echelle, a drama series for the six-to-12 set.

act is introducing a new annual award this year. After polling two to five year olds on their favorite Canadian-produced tv program, cbc’s Mr. Dressup will be honored as the first recipient of the Children’s Choice Award.

Breaking with the usual tradition of honoring an individual for its Special Achievement Award, act has instead chosen tvontario’s children’s and youth programming division as this year’s recipient.

The award is timely with the provincial broadcaster facing an uncertain future. As well, Wilkinson says the award recognizes tvo’s 26-year contribution to Canadian children’s tv through the production, licensing and broadcasting of excellent educational, commercial-free programming.

Merchandising workshop

With financing at the top of the agenda at this year’s kids’ tv conference, the key workshop, ‘Merchandising and Kids’ Television,’ will address the question of whether Canadian producers are able to initiate merchandising spin-offs without an American deal.

At press time, Wilkinson was still in the process of lining up the panel, which she hopes will include investors, reps from ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, children’s product merchandisers such as Irwin Toys president George Irwin, Breakthrough Film and Television’s Ira Levy, and the creative teams from Radical Sheep’s Big Comfy Couch and Portfolio Film & Television/J.A. Delmage Productions’ Groundling Marsh.

With dwindling financial opportunities a chief concern, act opted to forego the market simulation this year and concentrate on the how-to’s of pitching a project to potential financiers.

As well, Wilkinson says at last year’s workshop the panel realized that show concept wasn’t the main problem for the producers, rather they needed to work on honing the skill of selling.

Of the three projects which took part in last year’s market simulation, Rainmakers is the only one to have reached the production stage. Robbie Hart and his Montreal-based Adobe Foundation have shot four of the six half-hour segments for the documentary, which profiles youth leaders from around the world who have overcome personal hardships to become instrumental in fighting for a cause.

cbc committed development funding for Rainmakers prior to the simulation but, after the conference, Hart secured $110,000 in production financing from the pubcaster. Radio-Canada also came through with an offer at the workshop, but Hart turned it down when Radio-Quebec came up with a better bid of $180,000. Hart also landed funding from Vision tv, scn, the Cable Production Fund, and international distributor Multimedia Group. With a $9,722,000 budget, Rainmakers will be delivered in May 1997.

Ann Bromley brought Mind Over Matter to last year’s market simulation.

The adventure series centers on a group of teens with superhero powers. The storyline is based on their efforts to save their school from the repressive influence of an evil teacher.

‘At the workshop we started to build a positive reputation for the project among broadcasters, it strengthened our position,’ says Bromley, who secured funding from Telefilm Canada and development financing from cfcf in Montreal after the workshop. She is currently negotiating with a potential coproducer in Montreal and seeking a Canadian network broadcaster and international partners.

Les Harris of Toronto-based Canamedia Productions chose to drop his claymation project Tayles of Snayles after last year’s market simulation. ‘The broadcasters didn’t want to pick it up as it was and the modifications they suggested seemed too radical; it would be better to do another show,’ he explains. He is currently proposing a children’s tv program, Bumbles, to the cbc and other broadcasters.

Three take the mound

This year’s pitching workshop will give three more producers the opportunity to gauge interest in their projects as they give their sell to a panel that includes Kevin Wright, vp programming at Family Channel; Peter Moss, creative head of children’s programming at cbc and his counterpart at Radio-Canada, Michel Lavoie; Andre Champagne from tfo; Canal Famille’s Denis Dubois; and ytv’s Dale Taylor.

Pierre Beaudry and partners Guy Latraverse and Renald Pare at Montreal’s Les Productions Sogestalt are up to bat with Elliot, an adventure series for nine- to 12-year-olds revolving around 12-year-old Kim who loses her parents in a car accident and is under the care of Vincent, a video game designer who has created Elliot, an animated character who can enter the video games and try them out.

Kim, facing the loss of her parents and entering her first year of high school, turns to Elliot as her confidante, and the two develop a close friendship. The 26-episode, 30-minute format series follows the sequence of events after Elliot is kidnapped by Vincent’s competitor and becomes trapped in the Internet.

Beaudry is making his pitch based on the opportunity it gives preteens to learn about the Internet as well as explore issues of family, friendship and growing up.

He is also banking on the appeal of the cyberworld and the cgi animation/live action combination to sell his series, planning to target TeleQuebec and Canal Famille as well as international coproducers.

But creating awareness and enthusiasm for the project is the main goal for the pitching session, says Beaudry, whose three-year-old production company has one other children’s program under its belt, La Princesse Astronaute, a live-action series broadcast on Canal Famille and Tele-Quebec.

Jewish folk fare

Peter Williamson, Ira Levy and Arthur Kraus, executive producers at Toronto’s Breakthrough Films and Television, are hoping they have another hit on their hands with The Children of Chelm, a proposed 65 half-hours for an audience aged three to eight, the same target viewers as their successful The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon series.

Based on Jewish folk wisdom passed down over the last 500 years, Williamson says the tales are similar to Aesop’s Fables, full of wisdom and famous in Jewish communities throughout the world. ‘The idea is that God wanted to keep an eye on all the fools in the world so he put them in the village of Chelm. The series will look at the comic mishaps of adults as seen through the eyes of children,’ he says.

Williamson is toying with the options of a live-action puppet show or animation, but says the final decision will depend on what potential financiers deem preferable.

‘The market is leaning towards animation,’ he says. ‘Puppets and live action are a tougher sell because of the lip-synching, but my personal feeling is that there is so much animation out there that there has to be a backlash at some point.’ Trying to keep ahead of trends, not follow them, he wonders if kids will get fed up with animation over the next few years.

Williamson says The Children of Chelm fills a void in the programming market for youngsters, which he feels is balanced too heavily on entertainment rather than social value.

‘It’s the type of project that will look good for Canadian broadcasters to have on their schedule,’ adds the savvy tv production veteran. ‘When they go to the crtc they can show they support worthwhile programming. They know this kind of series is valuable to slot.’

But entertainment value is crucial to make a sale and Williamson is pitching his series as edutainment, with funny stories as well as words of wisdom. ‘I think anything that stands out, not only because it’s fun to watch and kids like it, but because it’s worthwhile, is bound to do well,’ he says.

Williamson pitched the series at last month’s mipcom and met with interest from JCS Productions in Israel, bbc, Welsh Channel F4C and wedu-tv Florida, a pbs entry-point station. He is also looking into the possibility of a coproduction with an Israeli and European partner.

As an animated series, The Children of Chelm is budgeted at us$350,000 per half-hour, with production slated for spring 1997 and delivery in fall 1997.

Addressing kids’ fears

Basing his The Good Nitey Knights pitch more on characters and concept than actual storyline, Neil Bregman of Ottawa-based Sound Venture Productions is offering an animated series with characters such as sleepy Sir Nap A Lot, clutzy Sir Snoreburt, ‘the not so nice’ Sir Nap Not and his horse Night Mare, and the brave Princess Starlight.

‘The series centers on kids’ nightime fears, dreams, nightmares, being scared of what’s under your bed and the dark, as well as any kind of fears,’ explains Bregman, who was approached by animator/toy inventor Ron Lindsay, creator of the Good Nitey Knight characters, to develop the concept into a tv series aimed at preschoolers.

Bregman says Good Nitey Knights fills a particular niche in the preschool market. ‘It helps parents and children deal with fears in a happy, positive way,’ he says. ‘Most shows don’t deal with this directly.’

Proposing six to 13 animated half-hours with three short tales per segment, Bregman has been discussing the project with Ottawa’s Funbag Animation and is looking into the toy and book market and potential revenues from merchandising the characters.

Bregman, who produced Painting Pictures, a preschool series on Canadian art which premiered on the cbc in October, and the 1992 children’s special The Tin Soldier, says his Ottawa-based production company is not as well known in the hub of the Toronto marketplace. He views the pitching session as a good foot in the door in terms of generating interest from broadcasters.

‘It is an opportunity to get your name and product known to the buyers,’ explains Bregman. ‘So even if people say no to me on this project, at least they know who I am and I can approach them more easily on other projects I am developing. I can’t lose.’

Wilkinson says her aim for this year’s national kids’ tv conference is to ensure that the Canadian children’s tv industry doesn’t lose out as a whole.

‘Foreign countries look to Canada for quality children’s programs, and it’s frustrating that these opportunities are being missed, not through lack of ideas but through lack of infrastructure,’ says Wilkinson, who plans to organize a team from among the conference representatives to lobby the government ministries of Heritage, Industry and Foreign Affairs to work together on a solution to the funding crisis.

‘We have to come up with a made-in-Canada solution for what is clearly a made-in-Canada problem.’