It’s not that the people at Buzz don’t like their 2001 Gemini Award. By the sounds of it, cast and crew couldn’t have been happier when their cult show scored last year’s best comedy writing honor – snagging the faux gold statuette in an upset win over more mainstream shows Made in Canada and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Buzz is nominated again this year, running against those same shows as well as An American in Canada and Women of the Night.

‘We were all shocked [by last year’s win],’ recalls coproducer Merilyn Read of MTR Entertainment, the Ottawa production company that brought the former local cable show to The Comedy Network in 2000. ‘I can’t tell you the expletives that came out of me when they announced the winner. It was incredible.’

‘That was a big shock and we’re hoping to do it again,’ agrees cohost Daryn Jones.

But excitement turned into disappointment when the top huzzah for TV comedy failed to draw more work or opportunities, say Jones and cohost Morgan ‘Mista Mo’ Smith. ‘I was surprised and disappointed that nothing tangible came out of it,’ says Jones.

‘Nobody cares,’ adds Smith. ‘When I talked to my family after winning they didn’t really care.’

Both think that Canadians – especially the media and entertainment biz – should put more stock in awards shows and the winners, like in the U.S. ‘The media is very powerful,’ Smith continues, ‘and I don’t see the media pushing the awards ceremonies [in Canada] as much as in the States.’

Top performers in any field deserve more attention, says Jones. ‘If we’d won an Emmy in the States we’d be a hot property. Everybody would want a piece of us,’ he says.

The win did, however, make Jones and Smith into ‘small c’ celebrities, says Read. And ratings on the half-hour show continue to climb, even during the sluggish summer repeat season. Buzz drew 200,000 viewers in July, which is ‘crazy, crazy for The Comedy Network,’ says Read. ‘Anything above 45,000 is a good show. Tom Green at his peak got just under 100,000.’

High ratings and last year’s win also proved that Buzz has a wider audience than previously thought. ‘We always thought it was younger people who were watching the show,’ says Smith, ‘but we know people in the Academy gotta be a certain age. They’re not a bunch of young party people.’ Fans who stop him on the street are also older than he would have guessed.

‘If I go shopping or whatever it’s always an older guy who stops me. So I always try to keep that in mind as well, that there’s older people out there watching.’