Ottawa: No one can say CBC executive director of network programming Slawko Klymkiw is not a good sport.

With scheduled participants from the public broadcast sector, including Paula Apsell of WGBH/NOVA and Genevieve Guicheney of TV France having dropped out of a Prime Time session titled ‘Does Public Broadcasting Have a Future?’, Klymkiw found himself the lone public broadcaster panelist facing a barrage of questions from independent producers on stage and in the audience.

The CBC, he said, is looking to create more big-ticket MOWs and minis that can generate a buzz – what he described as ‘Trudeau-esque’ projects. The programming exec cited Trudeau and Random Passage as the model: ‘water-cooler’ dramas that ‘create a sense of event,’ that Canadians will talk about even before the programs are broadcast and have the potential to create debate. The CBC is looking to broadcast seven such productions a year.

But top of mind for many in attendance were recent moves by the CBC to take productions in-house, particularly the recent launch of CineNorth, devoted to in-house documentary production. ‘We’ve been in the documentary business for years and we won’t be chased out of that by the independents,’ Klymkiw said. Besides, he added, the broadcaster will only produce a small fraction of its total output on its own.

Panelist Arnie Gelbart, president of Galafilm, said producers ‘fear that the CBC will take all the best projects… big-ticket, ambitious projects, in-house,’ leaving the independents to pick from the scraps.

Panelist Julia Keatley, producer of Cold Squad and CFTPA chair, wondered whether the plan was to take drama in-house as well. ‘There’s no ideological predisposition to go it alone,’ Klymkiw responded, pointing to the fact that CBC continues to work closely with small drama producers such as Chris Haddock.

Keatley expressed the concern CBC is edging away from drama altogether based on the cancellation of Tom Stone, its only other one-hour drama series beyond Da Vinci’s Inquest.

Drama, she said, is a cornerstone of a nation’s understanding of its culture. ‘If the CBC gets out of drama, it will lose audience because of it,’ she said.

But Klymkiw insisted that the CBC has no intention of getting out of drama. Rather, he said, the plan is to put more money into ‘the front end’ for development in the hopes of stimulating alternate one-hour formats.

But coming up with such alternate programming choices will also mean a lot of experimentation, he said. ‘We’re going to have to be prepared to celebrate significant amounts of failure, otherwise we’ll never take a chance.’