You may recall a piece a couple of issues ago in which I addressed the across-the-board low ratings for the CBC’s new fall programs.

Well, the network wasn’t too happy about it.

Since then, hopeful signs for the new crop of shows have been few, to say the least. The Ceeb is positioning the entrepreneurial reality show Dragon’s Den as its breakout hit of the season, touting the fact that double-D recorded a viewership of 547,000 for its Nov. 8 episode, a 250% increase over its October debut. But perhaps popping the cork was a bit premature, as the following ep was watched by only 379,000.

While no new shows have really caught fire, some older programs have returned to solid numbers, including venerable political satires The Rick Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Royal Canadian Air Farce, and investigative news prog the fifth estate.

But the fact that the network has not been able to launch one true hit – despite the strong quality of dramas such as Intelligence (256,000 viewers for its latest ep), Jozi-H (192,000) and October 1970 (a mind-boggling 58,000) – speaks to largely ineffectual promotional efforts. The talents involved in a number of CBC projects that have recently gone to air have spoken up in recent interviews, practically begging the network to push their shows, whether on air or elsewhere.

There is no denying that the CBC is cash-strapped and bereft of hit U.S. shows, and therefore must be cleverer than the private nets when marketing homegrown fare. Some entrepreneurial producers have taken matters into their own hands, as was the case with Barna-Alper Productions, which made the MOW Shania: A Life in Eight Albums. The prodco held a pre-broadcast celebration in Sudbury last year – ostensibly to promote the city, where the MOW was shot, as a filming location – and generated press in the process.

That was the only post-lockout CBC drama to achieve the million-plus ratings that Ceeb TV head Richard Stursberg covets. True, the movie’s subject, Shania Twain, is a superstar, but the producers in this case weren’t going to just sit back and hope for the best.

The network itself desperately needs to do more along this line, and producers who don’t want to see their programs get lost in the shuffle would be wise to also be proactive in getting the word out.

As it stands, the overall ratings picture for CBC is not pretty. According to Nielsen data, CBC’s 2+ primetime share across Canada from Aug. 28 to Nov. 12 is 6.4, down from 6.9 in the same period one year ago, and its whole day share is 4.8, down from 5.2. What makes those figures especially bleak is the fact that last year was hardly a stellar one for the network, adversely affected as it was by management’s lockout of staff. In the same period in 2004, the Ceeb’s primetime share was 8.0 and its whole day share 6.2. These numbers are heading in one direction, and are devastating to the bottom line – according to one industry analyst, each primetime point is worth $30 million in annual ad revenue.

Numbers like this come at a bad time for CBC, when speculation runs high that the reigning Conservatives are just waiting for a majority government to rewrite the pubcaster’s mandate. Even sooner, it was recently announced, the House of Commons heritage committee will launch its own review of the CBC in the new year. And no doubt one of the questions they will ask is if the Ceeb can’t compete against CTV and Global – which in large part it is trying to do with its expensive dramas and sporting events – then why should the Canadian public have to pay for its efforts to do so?

Perhaps the feds would follow the direction suggested in this year’s Senate committee report, making the Ceeb a lower-budget network without ads and sports, but with a greater focus on news and regional programming. One top-ranked broadcast executive in the private sector believes the pubcaster should throw in the towel on costly dramas and instead put greater resources behind its operations at CBC Newsworld.

This is not the course Stursberg wants to take, and there are some strong reasons for backing him on that. If the CBC gets out of high-end Canadian drama, then who will pick up the slack? Hearings for the CRTC’s over-the-air television review begin as this issue of Playback hits the streets, and we will soon know whether the regulator will bring back expenditure requirements for private broadcasters.

But, given the current climate in Ottawa, the production community can’t count on it. Earlier this month, the feds took the extraordinary step of overruling a CRTC decision to regulate various telephone services offered over broadband, so as to allow a more market-based approach. So where will Canadian drama fit in this free-market philosophy? Sure, if the Bell Globemedia takeover of CHUM Ltd. is approved, there will be a large benefits package for domestic production, but that is hardly a sustainable long-term solution for the industry.

So before the CBC is forced to reinvent itself drastically, only the network itself and the indie producers with which it collaborates can right the ship and justify the Ceeb’s current agenda. The future of high-quality Canadian drama production depends on it.