Concentration is the name of the game. As goes the United States, so goes Canada, with the top few players buying up suppliers domestically and abroad, shrinking the number of drama distributors taking product to market.

For instance, CanWest Global – which owns Fireworks Entertainment – last July bought the international distribution unit of Dutch tv giant Endemol Entertainment, while, more recently, Alliance Atlantis Communications bought factual producers Cafe Productions in the u.k. and Great North Communications in Canada, and is buying producer/distrib Salter Street Films of Canada. (Note: The Salter takeover is in progress; Salter has a booth at mip.)

Ted Riley, president of AAC Television Distribution, reflects on the domino effect of convergence: ‘You get an agglomeration of very big players at mip and then a lot of very frightened, very anxious, very small players, because that’s all that’s left in the industry, really.’ Riley isn’t sure how a market of Canada’s size can remedy this, but there’s new currency in the idea that distributors controlled by broadcasters should be able to sell publicly funded programs.

Sari Buksner, senior vp of international sales and development at The Multimedia Group of Canada in Montreal, says some Quebec-based distribs have pulled back from dramatic series. ‘We had invested a lot in distributing drama for a few years, but most fiction is produced in French, and if we want to have an English version, the politics of dubbing is crazy in Quebec. [Also in this market,] there’s no real relation between the cost to produce and popularity with audiences.’

Meanwhile, what is mip’s future? ‘The May screenings is when the new American seasons are announced,’ says Riley. ‘Everything was introduced at mipcom and backed up at natpe, and mip-tv has become something of a gap show.’

In fact, the big news is that Warner Bros. has withdrawn from the April Cannes show, while such smaller Canadian producers and distributors as Partners in Motion and Picture Plant Productions are also passing.

What about the trends in tv series today? Is it all reality? Says aac’s Riley: ‘[Buyers are] not looking for as much in dramatic series, but what they are looking for are things like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which is our big show. Big, high-concept, detective, jeopardy, murder-mystery shows.’