INSIDE

– Perspective: Channel 4 begins p.1

– Hanley documents the festival p. 27

– There’s more than just barbeque on the spit: Pat Ferns gets roasted p. 32

– Canadian Rockie nominees: who from home is going up against the international heavyweights p. 34

– Stand up for the Comedy Cabaret p. 40

In an eye-crossing, jet lag-inducing calendar of international events which includes endless cycles of acronyms and enough festivals to choke an elk, Banff is a relative oasis of calm. The TV people have time to screen TV shows for a change, and the shop talk includes issues beyond ratings and rights. Television, often dismissed by the critics as hackneyed and asinine, gets treated to ‘artsy’ dialogue too often reserved for film.

It might be the venue ­ huge snow-topped rocks and the big sky can’t hurt ­ but there’s something about Banff which lets fresh air into debates on tough subjects. In last year’s Two in a Room, Channel 4 and the CBC took an earnest look at an alternative doc proposal called Planet Queer before the CBC blinked first.

As the uniquely coprod-fertile festival broadens to cover more of the world more of the year, Banff’s tradition of friendly irreverence and casual squeaky-clean Canadian-ness will be its best defence against any global growing pains which might challenge its collaborative consciousness. It’ll still be a beautiful place to make a deal.

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To its mantra of ‘Excellence, Vision, Collaboration,’ this year the Banff Television Festival (June 8-14) adds the word ‘Innovation.’ And while you won’t find it anywhere on the letterhead, the festival might just as well have added the word ‘Expansion’ too.

‘We want people to understand that Banff is not just a one-week experience in the heart of the Canadian Rockies,’ says senior vp Jerry Ezekiel. ‘The Banff experience is something that happens and is happening elsewhere in the world and elsewhere on the calendar.’

Establishing a higher profile on the international scene was near the top of the festival’s list of priorities, but the price tag of hosting affairs like ‘Banff on the Beach’ at events like mip-tv in Cannes­ home of the $20 coffee ­ is high. ‘Luckily for us,’ says Ezekiel, ‘NetStar stepped up to the plate with a gift of $1 million over five years to help us promote ourselves internationally, and it’s already starting to pay off.’

Sure enough, if you’ve been conference- or market-hopping anywhere in the globe in the last 12 months you’ve almost certainly run into the festival’s president and ceo Pat Ferns. He’s been spreading the Banff gospel at everything from the World Congress of Science Producers to natpe, 24 international events this year alone.

‘One of the concerns we’d had in the past is that the festival might be too focused on English-speaking countries,’ says Ferns. ‘Our strengths have been Canada, the u.k., the u.s., Australia, but we’ve got to look at other areas of the world to develop.’

To that end, this year the fest is expanding (there’s that word again) the International Focus, with a special series called Les Journees ‘Special France’ in addition to seminars specifically on growing television markets in Asia and the Nordic countries.

The French connection runs through the whole festival, says Ferns. Aside from a general session on the broadcast landscape in France and specific sessions on fiction, documentaries and animation, the theme is tied into a number of other fest events.

The New Media focus has a session entitled ‘Digital France’ and one of the projects featured in Sharing Stories, the coproduction case studies strand, is Sylvie, a three-way copro between La Compagnie des Phares et Balises of France, Channel 4 in the u.k. and the British Film Institute.

The Market Simulation features a coproduction between Peter Raymont of Toronto’s Investigative Productions and France’s Gedeon, as well as a project from Dominique Barneaud of France’s Kalamazoo International. On Tuesday morning, Jean-Pierre Cottet, director general of France 2, will address the breakfast crowd.

‘All together we’ve got seven sessions on France,’ says Ferns, ‘so if a delegate wants a really good grasp on what’s going on, then we’ve got a strong focus there.’

In the spirit of ‘cross-pollination’ prevailing over the festival’s schedule, a comprehensive look at Channel 4 in the u.k. is combined with a breakfast session with Graham Benson, chairman of the Producers Alliance for Cinema & Television in the u.k., one of the groups most affected by the health of Channel 4.

As for the ‘Innovation’ part of the expanded philosophy, this year’s biggest addition is the Cascade Technology Showcase, an exhibition of software and hardware as it applies to production, programming and the creative process.

The eight new media seminars will take place at the showcase each afternoon from Monday to Thursday. Exhibitors include Avid, ITV.Net and Silicon Graphics, but Ferns says delegates expecting the usual trade show-type exhibits will be disappointed.

‘The showcase looks at technology in terms of how it has impacted the creative process and how it’s changing the way we make programs. It’s an expansion on last year’s new media series since it was so well received.’

In true Banff fest style ­ getting the best in the world to interact up in the mountains by honoring them with an award ­ SONY Corporation of Japan will this year receive the first-ever Banff Television Festival Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, specifically for the company’s Betacam format.

In addition to helping sponsor Moses Znaimer’s MZTV Museum ­ on site at the Whyte Museum for the duration ­ sony will join the likes of Apple Canada, sgi, Microsoft Network and Medialab in the presentation of one of the new media sessions. The presentation, an examination of the use of electronic (digital) cinematography for commercial and long-form production, will feature Robert Wilcox, product manager of broadcast cameras for Sony of Canada.

Also in the Banff tradition, influential (and amusing) television personalities will be on hand to pick up some hardware and talk up the believers.

Steve Allen, creator and first host of what is now The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, will be looking back over 50 years of tv in his keynote, entitled ‘TV: Are Vulgarians Entertaining Barbarians?’

Joining the ranks of Walter Cronkite, Steven Bochco and Laurence Olivier, Murphy Brown creator Diane English will accept the festival’s 1997 Award of Excellence in addition to having a very public conversation with Dini Petty on Monday afternoon.

While the fashionable and well-coifed Dame Edna Everage (of Dame Edna’s Neighbourhood Watch and Dame Edna’s Hollywood fame) gets to host a Birthday Extravaganza celebrating the bbc’s 75th, Telefilm Canada’s 30th, Citytv’s 25th and nanba’s 25th, her ‘manager’ (and creator) Barry Humphries will be receiving the 1997 Sir Peter Ustinov Endowment. All three special guests will be feted at the private Governors Dinner on Sunday evening.

Adding to the distinction of this year’s Rockie Awards themselves ­ and yet another way to ‘internationalize’ the festival ­ Banff has added a new award, The International Critics Prize. A panel of seven television critics, writers and commentators from all over the globe will view all 15 award-winning programs prior to the festival, choosing one winner as the critics’ choice. Richard Zoglin, a senior writer for Time magazine, leads a jury representing Australia, Canada, the u.k., Japan, France and Germany.

And, of course, what would Banff be without some good, old-fashioned Canadian hospitality, something to which many delegates attribute much of Banff’s success. Bustling with bigwigs in big hats, the Baton Western Barbeque will no doubt be bringing out the cowboy in even the most sedate commissioning editor.