Kelly Senecal says his CTV primetime soap Whistler needs a needle-drop soundtrack to deliver a ‘different kind of energy’ than a traditional musical score.

The inclusion of needle drops – tracks using contemporary, usually lyric-based pop songs, as opposed to scores – in Whistler puts the upcoming series in league with Global’s Falcon Beach, the CTV MOW Playing House, and U.S. fare such as The O.C., which all enhance atmosphere with pop music.

‘Score is very on-the-nose and very upfront in how manipulative it is to the audience, whereas a needle drop sometimes plays counterpoint to a scene,’ says Senecal, Whistler’s creator/exec producer. ‘There will be a very occasional time where we will need a tiny little piece of score, but so far we’ve mixed down four episodes and the amount of score has been minimal.’

Senecal even mentioned his desire for a needle-drop soundtrack in his pitch to Telefilm Canada, and he expects Whistler – a coproduction between Toronto’s Blueprint Entertainment and Vancouver’s Boardwatch Productions – will average 10 songs per episode, on par with what Falcon Beach, from Toronto’s Insight Production Company and Winnipeg’s Original Pictures, has used since its January premiere. That is about 130 songs per season, with multilevel clearances needed for each track.

According to Insight’s John Murray, coproducer/cocreator of Falcon Beach, getting permission to use contemporary music on TV isn’t as difficult as it used to be.

‘There is now an understanding in the music business that television is a great way to promote and market your music, and [artists] actually see the value,’ he says. ‘Viewers discover bands by watching TV shows.’

Vancouver band The New Pornographers, for example, received a lot of extra attention in the U.S. after the song On the Table by band member A.C. Newman was featured in the second season of Fox’s The O.C.

Murray says the Falcon Beach website also receives a lot of traffic from song-hunting viewers after each episode. Some of the artists heard on the series include Sloan, Aveo, Jenny Galt, Sam Roberts, and Matt Mays and El Torpedo, who also appear in the show’s ninth episode. Murray and coproducers Shannon Farr (also cocreator) and Kim Todd have the final say on what music makes it into the show.

Nick Hirst, Original CEO, says the music used on Falcon Beach is mostly handled through agency SL Feldman and Associates. Feldman sources music for the show and negotiates the rights for use of a song in the series’ promotional initiatives as well as in the episodes with its writer(s) and publisher.

‘You go for as many rights as you can,’ says Hirst. ‘With some [artists] you don’t get everything you want because you’re not prepared to pay, but with others, they just want their music to be on the show because they like it and want the exposure.’

Whistler’s Senecal says there are misconceptions about how expensive needle-drop tracks are. While most established artists do cost more, lesser-known names looking for exposure are often affordable and can help create buzz both for themselves and the show.

‘Sometimes U.S. network shows have quarter-of-a-million-dollar budgets set aside for music per episode,’ says Senecal. ‘We’re nowhere near that. When you have a lower budget, you can’t go with artists that are as high-profile, but at the same time, we have the opportunity to give [smaller artists] the spotlight and also benefit from it.’

Whistler has already secured songs from Waking Eyes, Pilot and Vancouver’s The Dirtmitts, who provide the show’s opener, Ordinary Day.

The upcoming Blueprint MOW Playing House – airing March 24 on CTV and on Lifetime Television in April – also uses a full needle-drop soundtrack, featuring artists such as Chas, Royal Wood and the Todd Hunter Band. The production is already a bit different from a standard MOW, in that it’s a straight-up romantic comedy about a woman falling in love afterward with the father of their baby, says exec producer Anne Marie La Traverse.

‘It was conceived with music in mind, but not specific songs,’ she says. ‘Because romantic comedies are stories about relationships, they lend themselves perfectly to using songs. For the more intense or emotional dramatic moments, we needed something very specific to our scene.’

There is also a chance a featured song could end up on a soundtrack CD, driving revenue to the songwriter(s) and the series. Senecal hopes to have Whistler compilations for each season, and Hirst says the first Falcon Beach CD will come out later this year.

Epitome Pictures’ Instant Star, airing on CTV, already has a CD of songs from season one available in stores and through web retailer Puretracks, which also offers downloads of individual tracks.

Instant Star features mostly original music performed by star Alexz Johnson and created by a team of songwriters who collaborate in a weeklong songwriting camp as each new season is developed. The team – which includes Luke McMaster, Damhnait Doyle and Rob Wells – splits the rights to the Instant Star songs amongst themselves and their music publishers.

‘We get the right to include their songs in the show and that’s it,’ says Stephen Stohn, the series’ executive producer and himself a former songwriter/musician. ‘If the songs become a hit, [the songwriters] get the monetary benefit, and we get the extra advertising for the show. Normally, producers take the copyright, some of the revenue and ownership if a song is written for a TV show. As a personal principle, I won’t do it.’

Stohn adds that Degrassi: The Next Generation, another Epitome program for CTV, has also used its share of needle-drop tracks. ‘It’s not just The O.C.,’ he says.