It’s a tough business picking a person of the year. With so many hard-working, worthy candidates in the film and TV biz, how does one narrow the field to select a single individual for the honor?

The selection is not necessarily bestowed on those who had the most positive impact on the industry. This year, in fact, we were this close to making the American Greenback our Person of the Year. Problem is, how do you put a face on a currency? Should it be George Bush or George Washington? Certainly the tumble of the American dollar and the rise of the Canadian loonie had a major impact on what was, as recently as 2002, a $1.5-billion service sector

Likewise, last year we were just as close – closer, perhaps – to making then-minister of finance John Manley Person of the Year for cuts in his budget to the federal government’s annual $100-million contribution to the Canadian Television Fund. The repercussions of that move, probably more than any other single event, reverberated around the $2.5-billion domestic TV side for the better part of a year. In the end, however, we chose husband and wife filmmaking team Denise Robert and Denys Arcand.

This year we introduced an online survey to gauge the broader industry as to who should be our Person of the Year, but the results left some questions as Playback sales rep John Dranski, after a solid grassroots campaign, was the clear winner in the polling. Go figure.

As you will read in our profile on page 19, Susanne Boyce, president of programming and chair of the CTV Media Group, in our opinion, is the face of this year’s biggest success story, which is CTV. In 2004, the network solidified its dominant position as Canada’s number one network thanks to a combination of U.S. acquisitions and domestic productions. The network added the two hottest new properties on network TV to its lineup when it picked up Desperate Housewives and Lost. These were on top of an already dominant schedule featuring CSI, CSI:Miami, ER, The O.C., the Law & Order franchise, Cold Case, American Idol and The Amazing Race.

Domestic winners

There are those – and probably lots of those – who will shake their heads at the notion of recognizing a Canadian programming executive for picking winners out of a huge pool of expensively made, well-developed, foreign-produced programs and slotting them into a primetime lineup while pushing domestic productions to the fringes of the schedule. They have a point. But picking U.S. winners is no easy task (just ask Global).

Ultimately, though, the reason Boyce was our unanimous choice was because she has also pieced together a winning lineup of domestic productions better than any of her major network rivals.

Could CTV do better? Certainly.

According to the CRTC’s recent Broadcasting Policy Monitoring Report, CTV’s reliance on U.S. drama and comedy programs in primetime remains extremely high at 90.5% of the schedule.

But where Boyce does program Cancon, she programs Cancon well.

CTV could opt for cheaply made Canadian fare to fulfill its priority programming requirements, but it doesn’t. Time and again the network commissions fine MOWs in which great Canadian stories are the premium. It continues to stand behind one-hour drama The Eleventh Hour despite middling ratings. It airs Degrassi: The Next Generation, a hit with Canadian youth, and has commissioned Instant Star, targeting the same demo. CTV puts up some of the best comedy in the country on The Comedy Network, some of the best docs and factual programming on Discovery, and some of the best sports programming on TSN.

On top of it all, CTV airs the two hottest domestic shows on Canadian TV in Canadian Idol and Corner Gas.

In a tough year for domestic production, marked by cutbacks and low licence fees, CTV continued to step up.

Boyce’s Person of the Year selection recognizes that simple fact.