Calling Dominic DaVinci! We may soon need an inquest into the fate of the Canadian drama series and what its probable decline says about the need for more, not fewer, domestic producers.

Why would we conjecture that a decline in drama series is coming, especially if we had read our own indie production Special Report this issue? The report concludes that drama series production is actually up a little this year, now that we’re not lumping comedy series in with the drama as we have done in years past.

The thing is, other categories are up by much, much more, especially MOWs and miniseries. In Playback’s survey of independent producers, production volume for calendar 2000 comes in $104 million higher than calendar 1999; TV movies and minis account for $64 million of that, or 61%.

Which means producers think those formats sell fastest and best.

Which means broadcasters are setting aside more time slots for two-hour or four-hour or eight-hour productions, rather than 13 hours or 22 hours. Buyers must perceive this is what audiences and advertisers want.

Which means viewers prefer short, rather than lengthy, bursts of creativity; so if producers are given shorter periods of time to engage audiences, it is all the more important to make sure a variety of different voices reach viewers, from a variety of sources.

All the more reason to limit cross-ownership between TV nets and newspapers (which also provide mainly short bursts of information on any given subject) in the same market.

Lest readers consider this point of view protectionist, note that at press time the FCC did not allow TV station owners to own newspapers in the same market. Some latitude on cross-ownership is evident within the FCC rules themselves, but the commission may be revisiting this.

Obviously, it’s way too late for this type of thinking in Canada, but in the spirit in which the U.S. has written its regulations, it’s not too late for Canada’s regulators to recognize that quietening the cacophony of diverse voices will have long-term implications we cannot fully predict.

The CRTC should consider all this – inasmuch as its mandate will allow – as it formulates its licence renewal decisions for CTV and CanWest Global. Troublesome, of course, for many reasons, the most obvious being that the CRTC exists to regulate TV and telecom, not TV and newspapers. It is a travesty that no federal agency is really in charge of regulating ownership issues that traverse media, particularly since consolidation on a grand scale has occurred blindingly fast in Canada.

Yes, the CRTC must rage against the dying of the drama series light. At least drama series DaVinci’s Inquest will be around for another season to help.