With foreign sales slowing, Canadian broadcast production is turning attention to what many believe is Canada’s greatest unrealized resource: comedy.

While sketch comedy, one-hour dramas and documentaries have long been the staples of homegrown production, there has been less emphasis traditionally on broader narrative-style comedies in this country. But that is about to change.

Canadian viewers can expect to see a new crop of sitcom-style programs premiering in the fall plus an assortment of innovative comedy series and specials up and down the dial.

Leading the pack is the CBC. Building on the success of Made in Canada and The Red Green Show, the public broadcaster is rolling out a new strand of 24 half-hour comedies, six each of An American in Canada (S&S Productions), Rideau Hall (Topsail Entertainment), a self-titled series starring Sean Cullen (Insight Productions), and a new in-house Jonathan Torrens (Jonovision) project called Jonathan Cross’ Canada.

According to Slawko Klymkiw, executive director of network programming at the CBC, the push will help position the network at the leading edge of comedy in Canada.

‘We’re going to look at new forms. You are going to see us over the next couple of years do things that are a lot different,’ he says. ‘We’re going to spend a fair amount of time and money developing comedic talent.’

To that end, the network has also slotted six new comedy pilots for the summer originating from different regions across Canada. These are: The Royal Liechtenstein Theatre Company (Manitoba), Queboom (Quebec), Western Alienation Comedy Hour (B.C.), Sin City (Ontario), Best of the Halifax Comedy Festival (Nova Scotia) and Buddy Wasisname And The Other Feller (Newfoundland). The network has also slotted three shows from the Winnipeg Comedy Festival for the fall.

All this will be in addition to a range of ‘innovative’ comedies as part of its late-night slot titled Zed.

CTV is also ramping up its comedy quotient through its Comedy Network.

Ed Robinson, senior VP comedy and variety programming, describes Comedy as the farm system for the main network, with several programs having made the leap as special presentations on CTV. To that end, Comedy and CTV will premier and co-broadcast 22 episodes of sketch series The Jessica Holmes Show (Year End Productions).

Comedy will also premier five other series over the course of the next year, including the six-episode animated series The Seen (Smiley Guys Productions), starring Don Mckellar, about a hard-to-place temp worker; six-episode live-action comedy Patti (Amaze Film and Television), starring Miranda Black; 13-episode sketch series The Bobroom (Leopard One Production); 13-episode live-action comedy Rockpoint P.D. (Small Screen Pictures); and 13-episode, live-action/puppet comedy Puppets Who Kill (Radical Sheep Productions).

Robinson says it is only a matter of time before more original comedy series make it to the main network.

Such an increased focus on comedy could in turn draw home more of the quality talent that has gone south over the years in search of work.

‘There are a lot of Canadians who are involved in writing and producing sitcoms in the States,’ he says. ‘But I think in the last five years there has been the opportunity in comedy in this country to actually make a decent living, not necessarily in sitcoms, but in comedy ventures. That will help to continue to grow individuals who have the ability to do comedy work.’

But the push does not stop at the major broadcasters.

John Galway, director of the TV business unit for Ontario and Nunavut at Telefilm Canada, says the funding agency is seeing more comedies in general.

‘[Comedy] is cheaper to make and often 100% financed domestically because it is cheaper. It kind of functions within itself,’ he says.

Indeed, the advantage of a half-hour comedy is that, at a cost of $300,000 to $500,000 per episode, these types of programs need not rely on the vagaries of foreign sales as is the case for $1-million-plus one-hour dramas.

This was a point driven home last month when producers of The Associates cited lack of foreign sales as a primary factor for the program’s cancellation.

‘Comedy is an effective expenditure in dollars,’ says CBC’s Klymkiw. ‘I don’t want to say that these things don’t have costs attached and that the costs don’t become an issue, but I don’t have to worry, for the most part, about a distribution advance to get the funding done.’

This is precisely what executive producer Paul de Silva, special executive in charge of production at Vision TV, is counting on with the sitcom he is developing with Leda Serene Films titled Lord Have Mercy.

The production, which is budgeted at ‘considerably less’ than $300,000 per episode, is currently waiting on financing from various sources, including Telefilm and Rogers Telefund. Vision is on board as the first window broadcaster, with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network secured for a second window.

‘That would complete the financing,’ he says. ‘We really need (the funding agencies) in. And if not, we’re going to be looking for some gap financing.’

This, however, highlights one of the major pitfalls in developing comedies.

According to several industry executives, the last thing you want to rely on as a comedy producer is foreign distribution because, if the foreign market is bleak for dramas, it is an absolute wasteland for comedies.

According to Laszlo Barna of Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions, comedy is a hard sell because the essence of most jokes is lost in translation.

‘Comedy, and particularly a sitcom, has a very special, defined market. You need the English-speaking world to play a really big part – the Americans to play a big part in it.’

Unfortunately, the last thing America, the birthplace of the sitcom, needs from Canada is comedy series.

That is not to say that breaking through is impossible. Just ask Steve Smith.

Smith, star and creator of The Red Green Show and executive producer of An American in Canada, has managed to crack several foreign markets with Red Green, which runs on close to 100 stations in the U.S. and around the world including Australia, New Zealand and Demark.

‘Its strength is its weakness. It’s so different, it makes it hard for people to accept, but once they do, there’s nowhere else you can get it.’