Holy Extreme Makeover! What the hank is going on at Global Television?

Gone are the bad old days when Cancon consisted of little more than Train 48. Original scripted programming on the net for 2007 includes seven series. Count em: seven. Hour-long preems are The Best Years, Painkiller Jane and Durham Country, new half-hours are Da Kink in My Hair and Love You to Death, and returns are Falcon Beach and The Jane Show.

(Though Durham, it should be noted, is a second window following The Movie Network/Movie Central, and the B.C.-shot Painkiller Jane is a shared effort with Sci Fi Channel.)

And while Falcon Beach is no Corner Gas or Little Mosque with domestic audiences, the names attached to a lot of this fare, The Best Years in particular, are solid enough to indicate that this is more than just lip service from what used to be nicknamed ‘The Love Boat network.’

Even Friends of Canadian Broadcasting spokesman Ian Morrison, long a thorn in Global’s side, says as much. ‘From the point of view of a viewer who is patriotic and wants to see a little shelf space for decent or even good Canadian programming on his or her television set, Global has become a player. More power to ’em.’

Why? And why now? It’s not like Leonard and the gang are suddenly chastened by the Cancon hecklers at whom they’ve been flipping the bird for so long.

Certainly, licence hearings in 2008 and that pending Alliance Atlantis purchase are strong motivators for CanWest to put on a bit of spit and polish for the CRTC, but it’s more than that.

The Aspers are business people first and foremost, and the old business model, almost exclusively featuring U.S. fare and Canadian ads, has simply stopped working. Part of that, Morrison believes, has to do with poor choices in L.A. in recent years. ‘The Susanne Boyce’s of the world have cleaned their clock,’ he says, referring to the can’t-miss programming chief at CTV.

But the business itself is also changing. They – and their Bay Street bankers – cannot have missed the coming of the multiplatform universe and the lowering of national barriers, or the success of CTV with Corner Gas.

‘Every program now has to go beyond just getting ratings and a 30-second commercial sold,’ Asper said at the Banff festival in 2005. So they went out and hired pedigreed executive talent Kathy Dore, Barb Williams and Cancon guru Christine Shipton. Shipton notes that her title is VP original programming as opposed to Canadian programming, underlying the point that Canadian programming is now a full partner in the schedule as opposed to living in a Traders-type ghetto.

Then they went to producers.

‘What’s so important with what Global is doing now is they’re getting on board at very early stages and aggressively looking to develop smart, fun and commercial shows with writers and producers that they know can get these shows made and sold.’ says Noreen Halpern, co-president of Blueprint Entertainment, the producer of both The Best Years and Love You to Death as well as Whistler for CTV.

Shipton’s not particularly interested in looking backwards, but she will say that Global’s CTF envelope has been rather slim ($1 million in 2005/06), and so the net has had to pony up above and beyond the norm for many of its projects, produced with little or no CTF money.

Necessity being the mother of invention, it has also forced Global to pursue aggressively several financing alternatives. In the case of Durham Country, it is sharing the cost with pay networks TMN/MC and taking second window. The broadcaster had a similar arrangement for Shaftesbury Films’ drama ReGenesis, but Showcase has taken over the second-window position for season three.

It has also become chummy with U.S. cablers and international sales agents. Sci Fi is Global’s partner for Painkiller Jane, The N for The Best Years, and Court TV for Love You to Death. The latter two will be unveiled at MIPTV by FremantleMedia. ABC Family runs Falcon Beach in the U.S., and the objet d’art is sold in 30-plus countries worldwide.

‘These series benefit from the two broadcasters’ partnerships,’ says Shaftesbury’s Christina Jennings, who produces ReGenesis and The Jane Show. ‘Clearly it’s a Canadian series led by Canadians, but it has attracted the interest of Americans, and that will hopefully include some marketing, which makes getting it out to Canadians that much easier.’

There is much more in the works, including a half-dozen documentaries with the National Film Board (yes, the NFB and Global) and two large as-yet unannounced miniseries with BBC, produced by the U.K.’s Power Pictures and Kudos Film and Television.

Shipton notes that the hardest part of this kind of transformation is the time it takes for the results to show. ‘It takes two to three years to turn a ship around, to develop programming to a state where it deserves to be commissioned.’

And in the meantime? ‘I’m going to bow off commenting on their motives and say, who cares?’ says Morrison. ‘We should judge them by the results.’