After a three-year run in Toronto, the Alliance for Children and Television is taking its awards show and conference east to Montreal.

This year’s conference will be held at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel and features a lineup of panels tailor-made by and for Canadian producers of children’s programming.

A cocktail reception on Friday night, Nov. 6 sets the stage for a day of panel discussions capped by the Awards of Excellence dinner presentation.

The sessions kick off Saturday morning with It’s Never Easy! Perspectives on Innovative Television, in which moderator Adrian Mills, cbc creative head of children’s, youth and daytime, will explore some very different yet highly successful children’s shows – domestic and international – with their producers.

One of the central issues on the panel lineup comes from a key concern of Quebec producers and broadcasters: the regulation limiting advertising to children, a policy put in place by the Quebec government about 10 years ago. The panel, Kids Advertising: Self-Regulation and the Canadian Experience, examines what is and isn’t working in the children’s advertising domain and incentives for change.

‘It’s a trickle-down effect for private broadcasters,’ says act executive director Kealy Wilkinson. ‘It is very difficult for them to generate revenue required to offset the cost of carrying children’s television.’

Inspired by last spring’s funding fiasco, the final session of the day, New Names, New Players, New Processes, takes a look at the shifting funding landscape and how it is affecting kids’ programming producers. Discussions with representatives from the Canadian Television Fund, Telefilm Canada and other funders are scheduled.

According to Wilkinson, finding that last 10% of financing remains the major hurdle for producers of kids’ shows since licences for the genre are on the lower end. ‘Licence fees have been coming down, so that 15% [licence fee] really has become a ceiling instead of a floor.’

Another issue on the table for children’s producers is the need for more live-action programs. While Canadians have been turning out plenty of quality animation and puppetry in the last decade, Wilkinson says there is a definite need for children to see their stories told by real people. Young people’s drama has almost completely dropped off the board, she says.

‘We need animation,’ she says, ‘but we also need more real people, which is why I am happy to see most of the networks are now using [live-action] hosts in and around the animation programming.’

As for trends in the children’s programming marketplace, Wilkinson says over the last few years there has been a huge inventory of programming for preschoolers.

ACT Awards

More than 80 children’s programs from across the country were entered in this year’s Awards of Excellence competition. Of those, 20 English- and 15 French-language programs have been nominated.

There was a 21% decline in the number of French-language shows entered in this year’s competition, however, Quebec producers did enter 33% more English-language programs than in the previous year and three times as many as were entered in the 1994 competition.

Wilkinson says the reason for the decline in French-language entries is the genre is getting increasingly harder to place due to limited windows.

Meanwhile, the number of English-language programs submitted increased 36% over last year.

As for regional distribution, 65% of the entries came from Ontario, 16% from Quebec, 13% from Western Canada, and 6% from Atlantic Canada. According to Wilkinson, the numbers show a decline in regionally based production of children’s programs from four years ago when less than half the entries were produced by Ontario-based companies.

Special awards

Along with Awards of Excellence, a number of special awards will be presented at the Nov. 7 gala.

Annabel Slaight is this year’s recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to English-language children’s television in Canada.

One of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Owl Centre for Children’s Film and Television in 1988, Slaight’s executive producer credits include owl/tv, Big Comfy Couch, Mrs. Cherrywinkle and max tv. She is president of the Owl Children’s Trust and the board of directors of the Shaw Television Broadcast Fund.

Writer/producer Carmen Bourassa will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award for her three decades in French-language children’s tv. Bourassa’s long list of producer credits includes Passe-partout, Pop-Citrouille, Court Circuit, and more recently, Pin-Pon on Canal Famille and Cornemuse, slated to begin airing on Tele-Quebec in January 1999.

YTV Canada is being honored with an Outstanding Contribution Award. Since its inception, the children’s network, now owned by Shaw Communications, has commissioned over 1,200 hours of original Canadian programs and triggered some $515 million in Canadian production.

And this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award goes to Michel Lavoie, past executive producer of Canadian Sesame Street, and currently SDA Productions’ executive producer of children’s and family series for the international market. Lavoie’s first major project, Popular Mechanics for Kids, is now playing in Europe, South America and the u.s. To The Max, his latest sda magazine series, hits the airwaves next year.