‘What do you do when you’re out of money?’

That was the question posed, by a foppish British colonel, on a recent rerun of Sharpe, a BBC series about the Napoleonic wars that History Television is good enough to rerun every once in a blue moon. It stars guilty pleasure Sean Bean as a low-born army grunt who – in between rescuing Spanish maidens and killing the French – takes a lot of guff from nitwit upper-class officers, such as the one quizzing him about cash-flow problems.

His answer? ‘You do without.’

Good, homespun, earthy wisdom, that. You ran out of Windex? Use vinegar. Can’t afford Banana Republic? Go to Old Navy. Can’t bankroll any more lavish, big-budget TV dramas? Well…

TV producers have every right to be pleased that the federal government last month made good on its promise to again kick in $100 million to the Canadian Television Fund and, let’s say it again, all those lobbyists deserve a good share of the applause for so effectively hollering in Ottawa’s ear over the past 12 months.

But many – including Arthur Lewis, our guest opinion writer this issue – caution that producers should not kick their heels so high that they lose sight of the bigger picture – that the feds intend to cut their contribution again in two years and, we can all be certain, will begin quietly moving back in that direction as soon as this month’s Department of Canadian Heritage meeting in Ottawa.

CTF will face its Waterloo again in 2006. So what do producers do in the meantime? Lewis and others are calling for further lobbying. They want the government to do more to permanently support Canuck entertainment, mainly drama.

That’s all well and good, if you’re the sort of gambler who bets on three-legged horses, or the sort of businessperson who invests heavily in steam engines and carrier pigeons.

Producers should use the next two years to back away from low-demand, high-cost genres like drama and retool their operations to the current market. That means formats and kids shows, if the early returns from MIPTV are any indication, plus docs and lifestyle for the international market and other more affordable genres here at home. Variety seems to be catching on at CTV and Global and reality shows, like it or not, are still with us. In other words, do without.

Yes, to stand by drama is commendable from a cultural point of view, and ‘culture’ is a word that carries a lot of weight with this country’s politicians. But culture is not always good business, and unless Ottawa is truly, foolishly loose with our money in the years ahead, it seems very unlikely that anyone will be able to turn out high-end drama at levels anywhere near those seen into the 1990s.

Producers have to ask themselves – and answer quickly please, time is money – if their business is lobbying the government or if they are in the business of producing TV.