The blackout experienced throughout Ontario and the northeastern U.S. Aug. 14 was less a swift kick and more a grazing blow to Toronto’s recovering production industry, which, aside from some minor logistical dilemmas, emerged from the dark mostly unscathed.

For Canada’s major broadcasters headquartered in T.O., there were a few anxious moments. CTV has five backup diesel-powered generators, says the network’s director of programming communications Mike Cosentino, and they kicked in instantly as the power went out, keeping the CTV signal uninterrupted. Even so, no TV signals were available to southern Ontario television viewers, except for satellite subscribers using generators.

‘The transmitter [on the CN Tower] and Rogers Cable were both down for the whole night, so even though we were putting the signal up it had failed at the distribution end for those two places,’ Cosentino says. ‘Bell ExpressVu stayed up on emergency power.’

CBC Toronto also has generators, says Ruth-Ellen Soles, the CBC’s head of media relations, but luckily CBC Newsworld was emanating out of Calgary and then moved to Vancouver, as scheduled, at the time of the blackout. The generator kept the signal up, but again, with the transmitter on the CN Tower and Rogers Cable out of action, Ontario CBC viewers wouldn’t have known that. CBC and Newsworld were simulcast for the bulk of the evening (Peter Mansbridge aborted his vacation to anchor the evening’s programming).

But for CTV, it wasn’t so simple.

After a two-hour news special called Blackout 2003 aired from 6-8 p.m., the primetime lineup, quarterbacked by the second-last episode of the strong The Amazing Race 4, aired throughout the nation – except in Ontario. Big bucks are spent advertising on primetime programming in Ontario, and Cosentino says ‘there have been some informal discussions within the broadcasting community about how to, in general, rectify the situation that Thursday night created for advertisers.’

CTV replayed The Amazing Race 4 episode on Friday night.

Generators also saved the day at ChumCity in Toronto, and VP of finance and administration Peter Palframan says for viewers outside of Ontario there was no signal interruption for any CHUM specialty television brands. He adds the ChumCity building had been running on two-thirds generated power until the Friday of the week following the blackout, shutting the generator down just hours before Premier Ernie Eves lifted the state of emergency.

Palframan says there were also generators at the ChumCity affiliates in Ontario – the New PL in London, the New RO in Ottawa and the New VR in Barrie – and although the three stations did suffer a break in signal immediately following the blackout, they were operational again inside of an hour.

The blackout also saw the impromptu debut of Toronto 1’s news team, which sent reports to its sister A Channels in Alberta as the crisis unfolded. Three units shot footage around the city while news anchor Ben Chin phoned in coverage from T1’s darkened headquarters.

‘Nothing had been set up yet – we’re still in the process of setting up the station,’ says Chin. ‘We had some backup power, but not enough to power everything.’

According to Global Television’s VP, programming Adam Ivers, Global faced a similar situation to City, CBC and CTV – backup generators kicked in when the power went off and the network had to juggle news updates with its strong Thursday night lineup, headed by Friends.

On the production side, the Canada/U.K. coproduction Resident Evil 2, currently shooting in Toronto, didn’t experience any sort of disturbance in production.

‘We provide our own power,’ says film publicist Joel Green, the film’s publicist. ‘It caused some logistical problems for the ADs, making sure people could [still] get calls, faxes and e-mails, and having to make sure the people were there. Other than that, traffic was an issue for us, but it was for everybody.’

Alliance Atlantis Communications’ The Eleventh Hour was also unaffected by the blackout, according to production manager Tina Grewal. She says that day’s shoot schedule called for nighttime exteriors, but even if studio work had been done, the power wouldn’t have been gone for long at the series’ Downsview Air Force Base production offices.

‘A lot of series don’t carry their generators unless they’re working outside,’ says Grewal, who has been following Ontario’s hydro situation closely for the last three years. ‘I made a deal with our generator’s supplier to carry it for the whole time in case we did have a power failure. Everybody on the show thought I was crazy.’

Not all productions in Toronto were as lucky. At least one unnamed production is reported to have sent everyone home on the Friday because of persisting power issues. At another production, the situation became so troublesome that its production manager may be filing an insurance claim to cover the costs lost during the blackout, sources tell Playback.

As for exhibitors Famous Players and Cineplex Odeon, similar approaches were taken after the blackout. All of the Ontario theatres operated by the two companies were shut down immediately on the Thursday, and although most remained closed on the Friday, a select number did open. Some, like the Famous Players Paramount in downtown Toronto, opened on Friday because not only were many other businesses and retailers in the area open, but there was also a large lineup of moviegoers hoping to escape blackout boredom and the heat.

Both chains report that when theatres did reopen over the weekend, the lights were dimmed in all facilities, background music didn’t play, and the digitally projected ads and trivia slides were turned off. Additionally, the outside lobby monitors, video games and anything deemed electrically extraneous were eliminated.

‘We operated modestly, making sure we had all the safety measures in place,’ says Famous VP of corporate affairs Nuria Bronfman. She says no major financial losses were suffered.

With files from Sean Davidson.