On its 25th anniversary, the Banff Television Festival will once again bring the TV world to Canada, allowing homegrown talents to rub shoulders with their international counterparts.

‘Worldly’ best describes the fest. From the keynote, titled ‘Media Responsibilities in an Age of Terror’, delivered by author and Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff, to a host of panels, Banff promises to challenge industry players to think about what and how they’re producing, as well as their place in the world.

But for all its international reach, one of Banff 2004’s centerpieces will be its 90-minute tribute and salute to Canada on June 14. The fest has traditionally picked one nation to fete every year, so new Banff CEO Robert Montgomery says it was only natural for organizers to choose Canada for the fest’s silver anniversary. And it would be hard to find a more natural host for the event than actor/writer/producer Steve Smith, of Red Green fame.

Look for the presentation to offer a special tip of the historical hat to such industry pillars as the CBC, the National Film Board, the English and French production and funding organizations, and other helping hands, including the Telefilm Canada/NFB Spark Plug Initiative.

Other highlights will include the presentation of ACTRA’s John Drainie Award, for contribution to Canadian broadcasting, to director, producer and broadcast executive Daryl Duke (The Thorn Birds, The Silent Partner), who founded and launched Vancouver’s CKVU-TV.

Also, the CTV Fellowship Prize will be awarded to Hart Hanson, a Canadian writer/producer who has put his name on everything from Joan of Arcadia and Judging Amy to Traders, Stargate SG-1 and Road to Avonlea. Hanson will also participate in a Banff Masters writers session.

And nothing says Canada quite like cross-border angst. ‘Living Next to an Elephant’, a June 15 panel moderated by the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, promises to be an informative, if tooth-gnashing time. Panelists include producer and CFTPA chair Laszlo Barna; Carat Strategem Canada president Jacques Dorion; Noel Curran, managing director of caster RTE Ireland; and Josef Lusser, ORF Austria’s head of structural planning. The panel will focus on the neighbors of large markets, and what policies and initiatives are required to preserve their distinctive voices.

Although Telefilm executive director Richard Stursberg was originally scheduled to be on the panel, conflicts will prevent him from taking part. But that’s not to say he doesn’t have advice for producers with elephant problems of their own. Stursberg stresses that many Canadian producers should focus on their domestic audience exclusively and treat foreign sales as an afterthought.

‘I think if you spend your time trying to think about two things at the same time, you sometimes end up confusing yourself,’ he observes. ‘If you focus rigorously on trying to make something for [one specific] audience, you are more likely to have success, and you might also make something more universal and more interesting.’

That observation summarizes what Stursberg describes as a sea change happening in the Canadian industry.

‘Historically,’ he notes, ‘the issue was always about producing volume, and the [CRTC’s] rules were volume-based rules, as was the television funding arrangement, where people would brag about how many hours they produced, without reference really to whether people were watching these programs.

‘What happened about two years ago was that a conversation began [between Telefilm and the CRTC, among others] about whether that was the appropriate approach… and the commission started talking about reorienting the paradigm towards audiences and away from volume, per se.’

Meanwhile, the topic of journalistic credibility, in Canada and elsewhere, is up for debate in June 14’s ‘Do We Trust the News?’, moderated by University of British Columbia director and professor Donna Logan. The panel will present the results of a nation-wide study of media credibility, co-conducted by UBC’s school of journalism, the York/Ryerson joint graduate program in communications and culture, and the University of Laval.

‘For many years when I worked in journalism, I was always conscious of the fact that there was very little non-proprietary information on media issues in Canada,’ Logan says. ‘And it always bothered me because U.S. statistics would get used in Canada in the assumption that we were similar. I always suspected that we were probably quite different.’

In fact, the study did find distinctions, both between Canadian and U.S. information consumers as well as anglophone and francophone consumers. Look for pending studies to tackle topics including Canadians’ use of the Internet, as well as youth and media habits.

Despite the festival’s well-documented recent bankruptcy bailout, new CEO Montgomery says he’s pleased with the content of this year’s fest, yet admits there were only so many changes he could make – or wanted to – in the short period before the 2004 installment.

‘I think what we need to do is go through a full cycle and listen,’ he notes. ‘We have our own biases and our own perspectives, but the most important perspective that we need to register is that of the delegates and the sponsors… Certainly we have ideas and we are very ambitious to evolve and develop the event – or we wouldn’t have gotten involved – but whatever we do has to be in tandem with the constituency it serves.’

Event times are available on the festival website.

-www.banff2004.com