The reviews are in: Canada’s television critics say there are few genuine reasons to proudly wave the flag of Canadian TV or the Gemini Awards designed to pat our cultural output on the back. The Awards Gala is not relevant, they say. Badly timed. Oblivious to what Canadians really watch. Insular.

In a roundtable session, Playback asked critics John Doyle from The Globe and Mail, Alex Strachan from The Vancouver Sun (and soon-to-be the main reviewer for CanWest Global’s papers across the country), Brian Hartigan from TV Guide and Brad Oswald from the Winnipeg Free Press to elaborate.

Playback: How do you perceive the current state of the Gemini Awards?

John Doyle: This is a very difficult year for the Geminis. Last year was a disaster and people like me were rather hard on the Academy and the awards. For two reasons: one, the announcement of the nominations was a horrible event here in Toronto. The whole thing was just amateur hour. Then the broadcast of the Gala, hosted by Sean Cullen, was not particularly good. And most significantly, the [audience] numbers for it were down dramatically. That means that if the Geminis are going to have any credibility, they have to do better. So far, I’m not sure they are doing much better.

Brian Hartigan: Viewers have caught on that there is not a lot of relevance left in the Gemini Award. Why

bother watching [the Gala] when it doesn’t mean anything? You don’t see networks touting the number of Gemini winners when they are promoting a Canadian show. If you make them a bit harder to get, they rise up in relevance. You can walk into any production office in Toronto and on the reception desk is a Gemini Award.

Alex Strachan: The Geminis audience tends to be the identical audience that watches CBC in primetime. It’s an older crowd. It’s [only] reaching the converted. You want to reach the people watching Will & Grace and Friends and ER. That’s where the growth is. The Emmys is basically a three-hour promo ad for the upcoming season. That’s why they have it on the Sunday before the season begins and that’s the reason the other networks don’t put on any heavy-duty programming [to compete for audience].

The Geminis is on at exactly the wrong time of year – late October. CTV and Global are going to go with simulcasts of [Punk’d, Whoopi and Third Watch] and [Fear Factor, respectively]. They’re not going to hold that back just because somebody on another channel is waving the banner for Canadian TV, and I don’t think their advertisers would let them hold back, either.

If the Geminis can do anything, and it’s arguable, it’s to draw attention to one or two great Canadian shows. This year, that would be The Eleventh Hour.

Doyle: The Academy has to decide once and for all what the point is. At the moment there are two points. One is that it’s a fairly insular industry award. And that’s fair enough. Guys who sell used cars probably have an industry award. The Academy also wants to showcase Canadian talent. If you’re going to have an insular awards show, you are not really promoting talent. The promotion comes during the Gala and the buildup to that – who’s nominated and having some fun with it.

At a lunch the Academy had with TV critics in Toronto back in the spring, I asked them, ‘What is the big breakout show in Canadian television?’ They sort of hummed and hawed and said, ‘It doesn’t really work like that.’ I had to interject and say, ‘The right answer is Trailer Park Boys. If you are going to reflect what is actually a hit with people, what’s a cool show, you have to go with Trailer Park Boys. The two leads from Trailer Park Boys and Bubbles should be hosting the Geminis this year.’

Brad Oswald: Until the Geminis embraces the glamour side of the industry and doesn’t focus on obscure awards in journalistic and newsmagazine categories, there is more that we as critics can do [in comparison] to improve the fortunes of a show like The Eleventh Hour. We champion the cause of quality shows that aren’t finding an audience. The ink that our newspapers spend on promoting a show like The Eleventh Hour has much more effect on whether people sample the show than how many Gemini Award nominations it gets…

Trailer Park Boys is a great example. It developed a small cult audience, and then those of us who watched it and liked it started writing about it. And I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘I read your story about that show. I watched it. It was really funny.’

Doyle: What critics have to do more of in covering Canadian television is resist the pressure from Canadian broadcasters, producers and so on to simply draw attention to things. We’ve got to review it and say, ‘This is good, this is bad, it’s weak in this area and good in that.’

Oswald: I might have an inclination, on a busy day, to take a look at a Canadian show rather than an episode of another American sitcom, but that doesn’t mean that I’m inclined to cut the show any slack if it’s no good. Supporting the industry by taking a critical look at it is one thing, but apologizing for it is another thing altogether.

Strachan: If I get a tape of a new Canadian show that comes in – yeah, I do feel a kind of responsibility to watch it rather than see yet another episode of Will & Grace. That said, I will judge that Canadian comedy, holding it to exactly the same standard that I evaluate Will & Grace.

People who make [Canadian] shows say, ‘That’s really unfair of you – we’ve only got 50 bucks to do this and they have $5 million.’ It’s not unfair. The people who read our columns – people who actually watch TV – don’t have time to be good citizens. They come home at the end of a day of working really hard, they’ve got a finite amount of time and they simply want to know what’s good.

Hartigan: TV Guide is on the newsstand next to People Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, so our readership is really geared to the glamour and excitement of [the U.S.] shows. But we had Trailer Park Boys on our cover in June – it was our best-selling June cover – so when there is a Canadian show worthy of attention, we certainly go after it.

Oswald: I don’t think there are that many people who tune into the Geminis to see who wins the Donald Brittain Award for documentary programs. If this is about public interest in the Canadian television industry, then it has to be about real pop culture TV viewing. God bless Peter and Lloyd for almost always winning best news anchor, but I don’t think that means a lot to the average TV viewer.

Playback: Is it the drop in domestic production that has impacted the quality of Canadian shows and the relevancy of the Geminis?

Strachan: I would disagree in the sense that I think there is too much Canadian television. I get so many tapes every day – all of it Cancon, all of it churned out on the cheap to meet commitments. I weigh it by the pound.

Hartigan: There are certainly a lot of specialty cable shows and these cheap dating and food shows, but there are five nominees for drama. Are there more than that [being produced]? No. Everyone gets a shot.

Doyle: [As for] the inclusion of The Atwood Stories in the category of best continuing drama – it’s six half-hours. It was included to round out the category.

Oswald: It immediately throws up a red flag if your best drama category has a short-run anthology in it. What does that say about the state of the industry?

Strachan: It comes down to quality versus quantity… Given the advertising market and the size of the country, I don’t think that in any given year more than five or six shows like [The Eleventh Hour] are going to be made. And to assume that all five are going to be of award quality, I think, is stretching it.

Oswald: The reason American television has a number of quality comedies and dramas is that it produces so many of them. For every 10 new shows that get on the air, there are 50 pilots made and 150 presentation reels. In Canada, if a network decides to have a sitcom on its schedule, it develops one sitcom. The odds [against] that sitcom being any good are astronomical.

Playback: What’s the short-term fix?

Oswald: The focus has to be making the Gemini show a good show. If there is a little bit of fuss about the Geminis being a good show this year, then more people will watch next year.

Doyle: I see it now: Debbie Travis [of W decorating show The Painted House] redoing the Trailer Park Boys’ trailers.

Strachan: One thing I don’t want to see is Lloyd Robertson kiss Peter Mansbridge on the lips in the opening scene.