If only English Canada would take its TV personally, like Quebec does, CBC EVP Richard Stursberg lamented at a recent Montreal conference on the pubcaster’s future. ‘It’s hard to have a clear conversation about TV in English Canada. Here it’s so much easier,’ he said. ‘So few people in English Canada are preoccupied by our TV.’

It was fascinating to hear Stursberg, in nearly flawless French, praise this province’s thriving TV industry, which, like so many elements of Quebec popular culture, is a mystery to most English Canadians. Most would likely be surprised to learn, for example, that of the 30 most-watched TV shows in Canada, 27 (at last count) are made in Quebec for a home audience.

Why is Quebec TV so successful? And can it be used as a model for English Canadian TV?

The simple, but inaccurate explanation for why Quebecers are addicted to their TV is language. The Quebec industry has a captive audience, so the argument goes, while English productions have to compete with American TV. Yet while American movies dubbed in French draw 80% of French-speaking filmgoers, those same consumers tend to watch local TV, rather than dubbed versions of popular U.S. shows.

One of the fundamental reasons for the success of Quebec TV is that the presence of the magic box coincided with a major cultural revolution here. Repressed by the Catholic Church and the Duplessis government, writers, journalists and artists in post-war Quebec needed a creative outlet, and TV provided it. Within the walls of Radio-Canada, a federal institution, they were protected from the province’s conservative censorious elites. And Quebec’s emerging creative and intellectual class, among them René Lévesque and Pierre Trudeau, seized the opportunity to reach millions. By 1958, Montreal was the third-largest television production center in North America, behind New York and Los Angeles.

While Quebec’s elite was embracing TV, English Canada’s cultural mandarins were indifferent to it. The 1951 Massey commission report on culture – set up to figure out how to protect Canadians from an onslaught of American mass culture (and which influenced the development of most of Canada’s cultural funding agencies, including Telefilm and the CBC) – gave TV only cursory recognition. For Vincent Massey, pop culture was something to avoid. He was more into promoting Canadian unity with high culture, and thus helped establish the long-standing ‘we know what’s best for you’ school of making Canadian culture that has been a disaster for both Canadian film and TV, especially fiction.

So Stursberg is not only battling declining audience revenues, cutbacks and a less-than-supportive government, but a deep-rooted cultural indifference to Canadian TV. While Quebecers have been watching their history and experience reflected back to them in their teleromans for more than five decades, English Canadians have been honing their appetite for American fare.

But the CBC exec has a vision to turn things around, and it’s a surprisingly populist one. As most CBC watchers have pointed out, often with horror, high-budget miniseries and movies-of-the-week are out and reality TV, sitcoms and game shows are in. ‘We are now making TV based on the North American, rather than European model,’ he told the Quebec industry, which had been brought together by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

Of course critics argue that getting into ‘factual entertainment’ so late in the game is yet another sign that CBC is out of touch. And there have been a number of sitcom flops, among them an adaptation of a Quebec show, Rumors. But there have also been successes such as Little Mosque on the Prairie, Heartland and Being Erica. And although I’m getting tired of their omnipresent mugs, The Rick Mercer Report and The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos continue to be a bright spot for the public broadcaster.

While Stursberg’s goal is popularity, his counterpart, SRC VP Sylvain Lafrance, is preoccupied with distinguishing his network from TVA, which offers Quebec audiences a steady stream of cheap made-in-Quebec soaps, game shows and reality shows that are extremely popular. ‘The personality of the SRC is important. Our brand must be distinctive,’ says Lafrance.

And while SRC is an integral part of the Quebec identity, its audience share has dropped by nearly half to 15% in the past two decades – TVA’s is 30%.

Like CBC, Radio-Canada has been trying to figure out what people want, and in the process has made a few controversial programming decisions of its own. When it launched the Quebec version of a French talk show, Toute le monde en parle, in 2004, critics cried that SRC no longer cared about culture, only ratings and entertainment. (Sound familiar Mr. Stursberg?) Five years later, TMEP is appointment TV for more than 1.5 million Quebecers every Sunday. Hosted by star comic Guy A Lepage, the entertaining, fast-pasted show features a steady lineup of engaging beautiful people, many of whom are Quebec celebrities plugging their latest book, play or film. And while TMEP, like The Hour, focuses on people in the news, it aims, thankfully, beyond people over 25.

But like so many conventional broadcasters, SRC, like CBC – and, in fact, any business in North America that wants to sell something – appeared for a time to be obsessed with attracting the elusive 20- and 30-something hipster crowd with a series of unimpressive dramas and sitcoms. (Note to all TV execs: nothing makes you look more behind the times than shows for young people programmed by baby boomers.)

But these days the dust has settled. Shows such as Les Parent, a comedy about modern parenting, and Les Boys, based on the hit films about a garage league hockey team, are attracting more than one million viewers to SRC weekly. And its very original Les Invincibles, about four boy-men in their late twenties, drew a substantial following.

Like Stursberg, Lafrance is experimenting. And of course his job is made easier by the fact that Quebec society is smaller and bound by a common history and language – although as the province becomes more multicultural, viewing habits are changing. If SRC is to survive, its target audience can no longer only be white francophones. What seems to be working for SRC these days is a mix of glitzy, fast-paced infotainment such as TMEP and well-written dramatic comedies aimed at diverse niche audiences, not simply urban yuppies.

And Stursberg is making progress as well. He says CBC’s audience share has increased from 6.7% to 8.7% in primetime under his watch. And perhaps it is time for CBC to try its hand at being popular. Nothing else has worked so far.