A week after the first annual Golden Marble Awards in New York and at the end of the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival, it’s easy to mark a change in the cadence of the culture.

Take the Marbles, for example. Canadians accounted for about 10% of the 300 entries at the Big Apple-based awards for excellence in children’s advertising, which were produced by Brunico Marketing Inc., the L.A. subsidiary of Brunico Communications Inc., Toronto. The nine judges from u.s. ad agencies including fcb, Grey, Griffin Bacal, jwt, Saatchi & Saatchi and Ogilvy & Mather selected Canadian commercials to win seven of the 29 Golden Marbles. It’s film fest days so we’re too tired for math, but the ratio of entries to awards is disproportionate.

What may be more interesting is the feedback from the u.s. agencies. Much of the work that screened for the Marbles, they’d never seen before. That they’re caught by surprise by the quality of work that comes out of here isn’t entirely their fault. Canadian commercial production companies are notorious for skirting international competitions, and maybe the Marble results are an indication of what can happen when they participate. It’s not like our broadcasting system flows seamlessly over the border and into their living rooms and allows them to see Canadian advertising work.

And as the Marbles got underway in New York, here at home Canadian film was having its own celebration. Rhombus Media’s The Red Violin commanded so much ink in the days after it opened the Toronto International Film Festival, anything here is redundant. But such a beautiful piece of work, that two hours tiff director Piers Handling dubbed an ‘intimate epic.’ Previous Toronto festival openers like Fly Away Home and Whale Music had their moments, but The Red Violin pulled the quality bar up.

Now, as we leave the events of New York and Toronto behind, the focus moves to Hull, Que. Commonplace among broadcasters departing parties at the festival: ‘See you in Hell.’ Fair enough. It’s shaping up nasty.

The rivalry between ctv and Global has increased tenfold in the months leading up to the Canadian Television Policy Review hearings (Sept. 23 through the next millennium), and the cftpa is arriving at the proceedings with ctv a prototype of its proposal for 10 hours of original Canadian programming per week.

The cab may say the crtc ‘can’t’ bring Global up to ctv’s spending level on Canadian programming, but the fact is they can and new conditions flowing from the proceeding could end up costing Global tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

A broadcasting licence has cultural obligations attached in this country so spending more on Canadian isn’t unreasonable, particularly for a company as strong as CanWest. But 10 hours of underserved programming (drama, etc.) in primetime across at least three station groups? It’s an excellent suggestion if it can compete for the audience, but one of the few things everybody agrees on (besides the fact they could at least hold these hearings in a room with windows) is that quality demands money.

Increased licence fees will help, but it’s not going to go the distance on 1,560 hours per year of original quality. Nobody needs to be reminded that the public funding system self-destructed with the licence conditions in play now.

If the cftpa is going to request 10 hours, there needs to be some other ideas for financing. Given the quality of programming the Canadian production community is capable of, it’d be wonderful to see 30 hours of it per week. But `how’ needs to command much airtime in Quebec so the momentum we’re enjoying now continues to build.