Lobby group The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is launching a national advertising blitz with a series of witty spots appealing to the public to get behind English-language drama. The PSA campaign, valued at around $400,000, will begin airing Sept. 17.

According to FCB spokesperson Ian Morrison, the campaign, titled ‘Let’s Tell Our Own Stories,’ is meant to raise the public’s ‘share of mind’ on the issue of the fate of Canadian drama.

‘You don’t make money in the Canadian audiovisual system by making expensive indigenous television programs and putting them on the air. It requires a form of public subsidy,’ Morrison says. ‘Bringing that issue to a larger audience and enabling that audience to express its views to members of Parliament and the CRTC, et cetera – that’s the key motive that we brought to the table.’

To that end, each spot points viewers to a Web page (www.tellcanadianstories.ca) that provides detailed information on the state of English-Canadian drama and directs viewers on how to voice their opinions to federal government representatives.

Time and equipment were donated for the spot and CBC, CTV, CHUM and numerous local broadcasters have signed on to run the PSAs. Cineplex Odeon will also run one of the spots nationally in its theaters. Morrison says most contributors came on board to assist in efforts to offset the declines in production exacerbated recently by SARS, the increase in the Canadian dollar and cuts to public film and TV funding by the federal government.

The timing of the campaign, Morrison says, is meant to coincide with the run-up to the Liberal leadership convention in November, where Paul Martin is widely expected to be selected as Canada’s new prime minister.

‘There would be presumably a new leader of the Liberal party from mid-December and a policy convention in mid-November with nothing [going on] except to talk about new ideas, because the leader has been effectively selected,’ he says.

‘So we thought that those two months would be a time when the government would be more receptive to thinking about changes to the existing policy structure than at any time since its first election back in 1993.’

The spots feature an American director, played by comedian David Huband, trying to wrap his brain around iconic Canadian stories while shooting a series of MOWs. One spot pokes fun at the making of The Bobby Orr Story, as the director instructs a child actor playing the legendary defenseman as a boy to wear his skates on his hands so that he can develop lethal skills as a martial arts expert. In another spot, the director insists that Canada’s ubiquitous snow be portrayed as ‘a mountain of cocaine,’ as he tries to get the Inuit lead to recite the line ‘This is my whale fat’ with a little more street cred.

‘It’s an absurd interpretation. It’s supposed to be a Second City parody… of what could happen five or 10 years from now. The idea was to do it with a little wink and a nudge but say there is a much more serious issue here,’ says director Mitch Gabourie, who developed the creative along with fellow commercial director Aubrey Singer.

‘The point of the spots is to draw attention to the issues faced by Canadian filmmakers and television producers making Canadian stories.’

Morrison points out that finding ways to support and promote homegrown production is not a question of starting from scratch since most of the answers lie in the recent report on the state of broadcasting by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. The roadmap is in place, he says, it’s just a question of political will.

‘A way to tell our own stories effectively would be to just implement the Heritage Committee’s report,’ Morrison says. ‘For two or three years, members of Parliament have been looking at the broadcast system and have come up with a comprehensive list of reforms which involve some fundamental changes.’

Companies donating time and services to the campaign include Kodak, Deluxe Laboratories, Eyes Post Group, Syndicate, Showline Harbourside Studios, Sparks Productions, Third Floor Editing and William F. White.