Just as sets that may never enjoy the footlights’ glare for the 80th annual Academy Awards presentation are currently under construction, so, too, is CTV planning for eventualities that may never come to pass. The fate of the year’s largest TV draw in Canada remained a question mark as the WGA strike grinded on as of Thursday.

The network was just down this road with the usually glamorous Golden Globes, which was reduced to a press conference-type presentation, and Canadian rights-holder CTV opted not to air the event.

‘It’s the same,’ says CTV creative content head Susanne Boyce. ‘You plan for all scenarios. That’s really what I have to do.’

While Academy Award producers insist the show will go on, in what form that would be — if there are no WGA writers working on the it and a possible picket line at the red carpet — remains to be seen.

The problem for advertisers who bought into the Oscars, then, is to decide whether or not to hold the course.

The closest alternative in audience size and time of year is the Super Bowl, although it will air exactly three weeks ahead of the Oscars, and perhaps well before the fate of the film awards is known.

(Last year, the average audience for the Oscars was 4.9 million for CTV, compared to 3.6 million for the Super Bowl on Global, but this year CTV has the football championship as well.)

‘Would I have moved the money into the Super Bowl? Probably,’ speculates Doner Canada broadcast manager Laura Wingfelder, who says this time around she doesn’t have any clients who have purchased the Oscars, ‘thank goodness.’

‘The tip-off would have been the Golden Globes,’ she adds. ‘When the Golden Globes was off, I might have been calling CTV and saying, ‘We can’t risk this. We have to reinvest in other properties now.”

The trouble with shifting ad dollars from the Oscars to the Super Bowl is that the demographics for the two are hardly a perfect match, Wingfelder notes. And not only that, but football’s big game is now sold out. CTV adds, however, that no advertiser has pulled out of the Oscar broadcast.

Further, the net insists that it has plenty of fresh programming to appease its clients should the worst come to pass. That includes a carefully hoarded new mini-season of Lost, which premiered Thursday, as well as Eli Stone, Jericho, Nip/Tuck, the Showtime series Dexter, Golden Globe winner Mad Men, and CBS comedy Welcome to the Captain.

None of it, however, is of the same caliber as a full-fledged Oscars broadcast. But as Boyce notes, this predicament has not exactly snuck up on us, nor is CTV to blame. ‘There’s no point in panicking,’ she says, ‘because what can one do?’