The 29th edition of the Banff World Television Festival (June 8-11) has brought back the mountain-view barbecue, complete with bonfires around which city slickers can drink and dance the night away at festival’s end. But before delegates don cowboy hats to celebrate the dizzying 360-panorama of the Canadian Rockies and their deal-making, the mood in Banff promises to be more austere, as broadcasters continue to recover from the U.S. writers’ strike and ratings dips for some popular U.S. network series.

Banff programmers have invited a number of Hollywood showrunners, including Entourage’s Doug Ellin, Hannah Montana creator/exec producer Michael Poyres, Gossip Girl co-showrunner Stephanie Savage and Bones creator/showrunner Hart Hanson.

And there’s a June 11 panel for international producers on landing a U.S. network or cable deal, to include Toronto-based Shaftesbury Films chairman Christina Jennings, who sold her new drama The Listener to NBC.

David Paperny of Vancouver’s Paperny Films, which recently hired Erin Haskett away from Infinity Features as its director of development, wants to mine new North American interest in Canadian dramas while in Banff.

‘There’s a push on in Canada among producers and broadcasters to get real Canadian drama back on, and also a great push in having Canadian drama picked up in the U.S. market,’ Paperny explains. ‘And we’re eager to be involved in that.’

The master classes will be interspersed with panel sessions that aim to help broadcasters and producers inch their way through the dark to establish a new ‘normal.’ To help them, Virgin Media’s content boss Malcolm Wall will provide the nextMedia crossover speech on June 8, and Schematic’s Kurt Kratchman and Joseph Ferreira, SVP of audience research at CBS, will participate in a panel the following morning on succeeding in the digital realm.

Banff has also scheduled a June 10 panel, ‘The Biz: Where’s the Audience,’ to gauge how fragmentation has split TV viewership.

To spawn new programming, Banff has drawn around 150 Canadian and international commissioning editors to the festival for its 2008 edition.

‘I’m bringing the world to Banff,’ says Jennifer Harkness, executive director of the BWTF. ‘A producer doesn’t have to make the trip to New York, Los Angeles and Paris. I’m bringing those executives to Banff, and producers will have a great opportunity to meet them.

‘People are shelling out a lot of money to get to Banff,’ Harkness continues. ‘I want them to come out with some sort of deal or relationship to take to the next level.’

The next level may well be MIPCOM, where creative ideas hatched in Banff can hopefully be parlayed into international sales.

That’s the strategy for Lisa Olfman, cofounder and president of Toronto’s Portfolio Entertainment, which intends to acquire around 400 hours of product in Banff for its distribution pipeline. That product – ideally lifestyle, factual, kids and family fare – will then go into the Portfolio catalog for shopping in Cannes.

‘What is wonderful about Banff is you can take the time to really get to know a producer and see whether there’s a connection in terms of goals and in terms of where the market is,’ Olfman explains.

Other Banff highlights include a June 9 panel on selling the Americans on comedy formats, to include executives behind the sales to the U.S. market of The Office (U.K.), Ugly Betty (Colombia), Serial Frank (Canada) and Kath & Kim (Australia).

The festival also plans a June 10 panel on casting for reality TV shows, whether for a host or contenders. Panel participants include MTV Networks SVP Liz Gateley, 2waytraffic executive producer Colman Hutchinson and Scott Sternberg of Scott Sternberg Productions.

On the awards front, 100 nominated programs from 44 countries will challenge in 22 program categories for the Banff World Television Awards, to be handed out on June 9. The Playback Best Canadian Award will be presented to one of the Canuck shows nominated in the international categories (see nominees list, p. 28).