It was a bittersweet final bow for a cancelled drama, redemption for an underwatched miniseries, and a night as notable for its star power as its no-shows, as the 2005 Gemini Awards were handed out at the event’s Nov. 19 closing-night gala in Toronto.

Axed journalism drama The Eleventh Hour went out on top with voters from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, winning for best drama series for the second time. It earned four more awards, including nods for direction for David Wellington and writing for co-creator Semi Chellas and Tassie Cameron. The show struggled to find an audience throughout its three-year run, and broadcaster CTV finally pulled the plug this year.

‘We didn’t know how to whore ourselves enough to draw the numbers,’ producer Peter Simpson told a sparsely filled pressroom afterwards. ‘Quality is a great thing to do, but you want some recognition for your work.’

CBC’s Sex Traffic, meanwhile, took home four awards, including the trophy for best dramatic miniseries. A U.K./Canada copro involving Halifax’s Big Motion Pictures, the gritty drama about a pair of European women sold into a bleak world of sexual slavery received critical acclaim and eight BAFTAs, but attracted only a modest 500,000 viewers for each of its two eps that aired on CBC last year. Some questioned the network’s wisdom in programming the brutal drama over the family-oriented Thanksgiving weekend.

One show that has never had a problem drawing a crowd is Corner Gas, which picked up prizes for best comedy series and website. These were the only nominations for the runaway success, compared to five last year. Curiously, Tara Spencer-Nairn was the only cast member on hand to accept the best comedy award along with show producers Paul Mather and Mark Farrell. Creator and star Brent Butt was said to be off marrying costar Nancy Robertson, although the timing was curious.

Also smelling of boycott was a no-show by the Trailer Park Boys, who have traditionally been on hand to amuse Gemini attendees. The Boys were surprisingly not even nominated for best comedy series, which they won last year. However, their show was up for ensemble cast, which turned out to be its only win among three nominations.

Supporting players Lucy Decoutere, Cory Bowles and Garry James accepted the award, later explaining that the others were either off dealing with newborns or trapped in L.A. A TPB motion picture, produced by Ivan Reitman, is in the can and should be on screens in 2006.

‘It’s not how many awards you win, it’s the quality of the award,’ said James about the ensemble prize.

The 20th edition of the Geminis marked the first one broadcast by Global Television, a surprising choice given the net’s spotty track record of Canadian production. Despite Global’s promotional efforts, the gala was watched by only slightly more than 200,000, putting it at the lower end of the range achieved by CBC in its recent Gemini airings. Scheduling didn’t help – the event faced off against CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, which scored nearly 1.6 million viewers that night.

‘We’re programmers here, and we juggle a lot of shows and a lot of decisions and scheduling challenges all the time, and you ultimately make your best choices for what you’ve got,’ says Barbara Williams, SVP of programming and production at CanWest MediaWorks, which oversees Global. She says that industry feedback indicated that TV players prefer their big party on a Saturday.

‘We’re quite content, both with the decision to put it on the Saturday night and with the numbers that came out of it,’ she adds.

CBC aired the gala in a second window Nov. 20 at 11 p.m. to 84,000, according to the pubcaster.

The two nets collaborated on an entertaining 20th anniversary retrospective special hosted by Patrick McKenna of The Red Green Show. It premiered on CBC Nov. 17 at 9 p.m., drawing 146,000, and was repeated in abbreviated form on Global after the gala timeslot.

Global did deliver on its promise to use Entertainment Tonight Canada to inject some glamour into the event, preceding the main broadcast with a half-hour red-carpet special from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The pre-show experienced a few glitches, however, including some awkward interviews and a full minute where audio and video were lost. The caster reports that 170,000 watched.

The two-hour awards show itself featured announcers Jessica Holmes (Royal Canadian Air Farce) and Mark Critch (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) and a series of comedy sketches that were generally amusing if overlong. The electronic stage background did not transfer well to the TV broadcast, creating unwanted picture noise.

Perhaps the biggest laugh of the evening was for The Newsroom’s Peter Keleghan, who, in a monologue, compared making a TV show to making love. As the Gems give the production community its most public forum to voice its concerns, the performer slipped in some politicking.

‘Great shows like The Eleventh Hour, The Associates and, of course, Walter Ego [which Keleghan starred in], all ended their lives early. They weren’t given a chance. It’s also very difficult to fund a TV show and get it going in Canada… Let’s just fix this problem with Canadian TV, okay?’ he said.

Meanwhile, in the pressroom, fingers were being pointed.

‘The broadcasters are making buckets of money. Buckets. But they’re not spreading it around. The folks at the CRTC should reach down in their pockets and find their balls,’ said producer Chris Haddock, likely referring to a recent study showing that Canadian broadcasters’ support for domestic programming was not rising on par with their profits. Producers mostly blame this on the regulator’s 1999 Television Policy, which loosened rules on drama programming expenditures for broadcasters.

Haddock, the brains behind Da Vinci’s Inquest, which was shut out of the hardware for its final season, shared the best dramatic writing prize with Alan DiFiore for the CTV MOW The Life.

Another theme of the evening was the recent CBC lockout.

‘I’m proud to work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,’ said Scott Russell upon accepting the award for best sports host or interviewer for CBC Sports Saturday. ‘I’m proud, given our recent labor situation, to still be on television.’

CTV cop thriller Tripping the Wire: A Stephen Tree Mystery, produced by Galafilm Productions, won for best TV movie at the industry ceremony on Nov. 18. The previous night saw documentary, news and sports awards handed out, highlighted by a standing ovation for retired CBC reporter David Halton, who received the Gordon Sinclair Award for excellence in TV journalism.

CBC led the trophy haul among broadcasters, as usual, having a hand in 48 award wins, followed by CTV with 20, Corus with eight, Alliance Atlantis channels tied at seven with Astral, and CHUM with five. Global got one lone award for best news anchor for Kevin Newman.

Newman said backstage that his Global National’s first win of what he dubbed ‘the Peter Mansbridge Award’ – as the CBC anchor has won 11 times – had less to do with changes at Global than it did an overhaul of the Academy’s voting system last year to eliminate what was perceived to be a pro-CBC bias.

The Academy expressed its satisfaction with Global’s efforts on the broadcast, and indicated more changes may be afoot in 2006. There is talk about rotating the venue for the event, which could see it in Vancouver as early as next year.

With files from Dustin Dinoff

www.geminiawards.ca