Looking back, Christine Shipton insists the successful six-part series launch of Bomb Girls on Global Television in January may have looked fortuitous. But it was anything but.

Shipton and top Shaw Media programmer Barb Williams spotted a six-week main network window to fill with the Canadian period drama before Survivor returned to Global Television in the third week of February.

Looking ahead, Shipton, who oversees Shaw Media’s series production as senior VP of drama and factual content, talked to Playback Daily at the recent Prime Time conference in Ottawa about Canadian-content plays, clever scheduling ploys and what indie producers should know before they pitch Shaw Media on new projects.

PB: Indie producers heard at Prime Time that expenditures by private broadcasters on independently produced English language programs of national interest, or PNI shows, is headed upwards. What does that mean for Shaw Media?

CS: What does it mean to me? It just puts some shape and definition around what we are already doing. We have all these channels and we have to do Showcase PNI and we have to do History PNI. And I just checked with my team to see if we’re on track with PNI spending because I make assumptions and we just barrel ahead and make all these shows. I’ll be very curious to know if we’re doing more than we need to, and I actually think we are.

PB: Industry consultant Peter Grant, in unveiling his PNI expenditure calculations, said broadcasters scored a victory at the recent CRTC group license renewal hearings. Your reaction?

CS: I personally take offense at that. It’s not a victory that I only have to spend 5%. Speaking as a champion of Canadian content, not all broadcasters hate doing Cancon.

PB: You base your shows on ideas and scripts at hand from indie producers as much as PNI expenditures?

CS: Well, I also work to what I need. The group CPE for us means a budget for commitments of between $140 million and $150 million, and you literally have all your channels, including Global Television. We have to apportion how much will be spent on content for each of those channels. Sometimes you say those are shows that can play on both Global and History, and you decide which channel a show should premiere on. It’s all that kind of puzzle. And I see myself running a studio that supplies content to channels and schedules. Somebody else schedules the shows creatively, and someone else is buying U.S. content. Of course we work together. But it’s my job to create hit programming and shove it at those schedulers and marketers to ensure it becomes a hit.

PB: Speaking of the intersection of content, scheduling and U.S. series acquisition, tell us about Bomb Girls, which first prospered in a six-week window on Global Television while you waited for Survivor to return.

CS: I went to Barb [Williams] and said I want to do this and it’s hard because people like to get simulcast Canadian dramas, and you just can’t keep doing three of those a year. I said this show [Bomb Girls] has to go on Global, it’s big enough for Global. It could have gone on History. It could have gone on Showcase, and we were down to a certain amount of money. The six episodes, I saw them as a pilot. We didn’t know. It’s period. It’s women. But Barb, who always has the schedule in her head, said we know Survivor always comes back in the third week of February. You have six weeks. Can you make it? We were pressed, but we knew if we didn’t hit that zone, we were floating. We didn’t know where we would get to.

PB: You’ll do the same for the second season?

CS: We will aim probably for season two to also go in that six weeks, and we will construct stories to have a cliffhanger at the end of the sixth (episode) and then go off schedule and find another six-week slot. Maybe Glee goes off the schedule for six weeks, as is its habit. The Americans can’t always keep up with production, just like everyone else.

PB: Aside from Bomb Girls, what else are you programming on the Shaw Media channels these days?

CS: When I look at HGTV, we’re taking that to another level. We have a show on there called Massive Moves. It’s about physically moving houses from one place to another. It’s the emotion and drama and stakes of a family having to move and how you get a house down the road. It’s a departure for HGTV. And it’s about taking it up. If we’re going to have our own Pawn Stars that just propels the channel, you have to think outside the box. And the goal is to have an addictive program on every one of our channels.

PB: What should producers keep top of mind when developing shows for Shaw Media?

CS: Think characters, stakes and the journey those characters take. You can apply that to Home and Garden, to Food, to drama and comedy. It’s really about character. It also comes back to what content will – I like the word balloon – really move into the space, and it will be character-based. Whether they are real or fictitious characters, it will be that. And our challenge with producers is we need complex characters. Otherwise we will all get so bored, so quickly. And I mean that in the reality shows as much as the scripted shows.

PB: The Americans are big on casting to get engaging characters in their shows. Are Canadians keeping up?

CS: Look at Swamp People. They’ve taken million dollar production values and put them on a very simple premise: guys hunting deer. And you ask any producer in the unscripted world right now and they’ll tell you the top priority is casting, casting, casting. Certain companies in our country were well ahead of the game and hired casting directors on staff three years ago.

PB: Who’s that?

CS: Cineflix. They were ahead of the game. And everyone’s catching up. They have casting people in the States, Canada and the U.K. American Pickers is their show. And Canadian Pickers is their show. I applaud them. And now they’re doing drama. We bought Copper.