Montreal: Every year The Just For Laughs Festival sells more programming to markets around the world, but the event historically has been championed by players like Baton Broadcasting ceo Ivan Fecan, who helped anchor the festival in its earliest days by opening a window on cbc.

cbc’s investment made all the difference, says jfl topper Andy Nulman, particularly on the English side, and that’s essentially year in, year out since 1985.

Many of comedy’s primetime decision makers are attending this year’s 16th edition of the festival, which is headquartered at Montreal’s downtown Delta Hotel and runs July 15-26.

Execs on jfl’s confirmed list cover programming, production and casting and include Baton Broadcasting’s Fecan, SFA Productions’ Sandra Faire, Paramount tv’s Jeremy Gold and Walt Disney Television’s Gene Blythe.

Other business execs attending are Wendy Goldstein of cbs; Jennifer Craig, James Dixon and Mike August of The William Morris Agency; Rick Greenstein, head of comedy at The Gersh Agency; Kathleen Letterie of WB Network; Kim Haswell of Columbia TriStar; and Donna Rosenstein of abc.

‘Serious’ sitcom seminar

One of the industry program highlights is ‘The Sitcom Conference’ on July 23.

‘There’s always a fascination with the American sitcom,’ says Nulman, jfl’s ceo and author of a new book, How To Do The Impossible.

Nulman says the one-day seminar will offer an ‘insider’ look at sitcom development and production, from both the North American and European perspectives.

Participants include bilingual corporate comic/moderator Sylvain Larocque, l.a.-based exec producer/talent manager Rick Messina of Messina Baker (exec producer of the movie Santa Claus, coproducer of The Drew Carey Show), David Tochterman (Roseanne, Cybill, 3rd Rock From The Sun), Fox casting director Bob Huber, and Jordan Levin, vp programming Warner Bros.

However, this year’s festival will greatly miss one of its early patrons, the late Brandon Tartikoff.

Just too expensive

As for the state of the industry north of the 49th, Nulman says ‘you can’t look at an American model and apply it here. All the American sitcoms are financed by the studios and the studios make money if, and only if, the show goes into syndication. Basically it’s a horse race.’

According to Nulman, the key to Canadian comedy success is to ‘accept it for what it is and forget about everything that’s coming from down south.’

‘[Ken] Finkleman did it with The Newsroom,’ he says.

CBC’s comedy lineup

Instead, Canada has a flurry of first-rate sketch comedies.

cbc has seven or eight comedies on air this fall and more to come in the second half of the season, says George Anthony, cbc creative head, tv arts, music, science and variety.

The cbc ’98 lineup includes Air Farce; SketchCom, a new sketch outfit showcase from the producers of Air Farce; a sixth season of Salter Street’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes; Casting Couch, a new Salter sitcom, starring Rick Mercer as a ruthless Canadian film industry mogul; the stand-up series Comics, slated to hit the 100-episode plateau this season; the dark import Mr. Bean; 13 new half-hours of Les Films Rozon’s Just For Laughs; and 13 new half-hours and a Christmas special of S&S Productions’ The New Red Green Show, starring the ever-resourceful Steve Smith, the latest darling of the pbs fund-raising crowd.

According to Anthony, Canada is actually doing well in sitcoms, ‘but it’s not something that’s recognized because we don’t fit the American model.’

Canada’s comedy talent is ‘extraordinarily strong,’ says Anthony. ‘Considering the population base, we [shouldn’t] be able to produce this many funny people, but somehow we’ve managed to do it.’

The challenge, he says, is to stay fresh and inventive in the face of exponential audience choice.

CBC’s ‘funny rules’

Typically, cbc prefers written concept material rather than a completed pilot for comedy property pitches, says Anthony, who offers the following advice to producers:

Don’t pitch current affairs spoofs unless you can do it better than the two shows on the sked, and, ‘We can’t afford [to produce] American sitcoms and there’s no point in pretending we can.’

Blind luck aside, he says, the amount of trial and error required for u.s-style sitcoms is simply prohibitive, both in terms of cost and time. ‘We just don’t have that kind of dough,’ he says.

cbc does, however, manage a development (‘how to pitch’) process for independent comedy producers and invests anywhere from 30% to 50% of development costs, depending on who else is in, says Anthony. Projects can take as much as five years to surface, or as little as six months.

And the Corp normally has other priorities – not comedy – for cash from Telefilm Canada.

Wider reception

Specials being taped by foreign broadcasters at this year’s festival include four half-hours for South Africa’s M-Net, two one-hour specials for Japan’s nhk, and seven 30-minute specials for the u.k. cable/terrestrial tandem of Paramount Comedy/Channel 5 in coproduction with Rozon.

Bruce Hills, jfl’s vp international tv and head of distribution, says an increasing amount of the fest’s ‘music and visual series’ (non-verbal) material is being sold internationally to Spain, Japan, Brazil, etc. as well as to airlines and other ancillary buyers.

Hills says one of the unexpected spin-offs of specialization – cable proliferation – is the wider reception for English-language stand-up material, even in non-English-speaking markets.

As for a u.s. sale, jfl is repped by William Morris, and Hills says a new deal to replace the Showtime specials is in the works.

jfl owns 5% of The Comedy Network in partnership with Baton, Astral Communications and Shaw Communications. The festival’s annual budget is in the order of $10 million, excluding tv production activity. Nulman says about 600 media and industry guests, including the talent, attend each year.