While there is no doubt that the Canadian television industry will heed the Banff cattle call and flock west in droves June 7-13, flooding the gates with overseas delegates has been top of mind for the 19th annual event.

‘Our mandate has been to increase the international participation while keeping our first obligation to maintain the festival as Canada’s premiere television event,’ says Banff Television Festival ceo Pat Ferns.

The 1997 festival tallied a record 1,522 delegates, roughly 25% of which were non-Canadian participants. The 80/20 Canadian/international split has been maintained over the past few years, says Ferns, as overall registration has increased. In fact, each year as the overseas component rises, Canadian participation increases at the same rate.

At press time, registrations were 20% ahead of last year’s mid-May figures, with roughly 1,700 delegates expected to attend. The international component is again estimated to be in the 20% to 25% range.

Overseas efforts pay off

The past year saw the Banff contingent trot around the globe in a stepped-up tour of staged events and strategic alliances with other festivals to raise the international profile of Banff.

Four market simulations were programmed by Ferns at each of mipcom and mip-tv and the Banff festival had a presence at natpe and the World Congress of Science Producers in Denmark. Ferns moderated an event in Dublin for the Irish tv industry as well as The Big Pitch session at Australia’s Small Screen, Big Picture conference and hosted Three in a Room at Scotland’s Sharing Stories.

At the Second World Summit on Television for Children in London, Ferns inaugurated The Scheduling Game, a new format featuring four programmers bidding against each other to construct a competitive schedule for kids.

Best of Banff, a cross-Canada tour of a selection of prize-winning programs from the 1997 festival, hit all major Canadian cities with evening receptions and screenings. It also traveled to Paris, New York, London and Los Angeles and screened at The Arts in a New Matrix at the Aspen Institute. Over the next year, the circuit will be broadened internationally, says Ferns.

The aggressive international campaign is bearing fruit in stepped-up delegate representation from Latin America, Israel and the Netherlands, as well as increasing interest from the Asia Pacific region, says Ferns. Chinese participation has increased steadily from two participants a few years ago, to 12 registrants representing two delegations last year and 22 participants representing five delegations this year.

In the u.s., Ferns has focused on bringing in reps from pay and cable outlets as they are the most frequently accessed partners for Canadian producers, although the networks are always represented strongly at Banff.

Rockie entries up 37%

Their promotional efforts have also resulted in a 37% increase in submissions to the 1998 Rockie Awards competition. This year 989 programs representing over 40 countries are entered compared to last year’s all-time record of 722. A significant increase in entries from Israel and the Netherlands has been noted.

A new category has been added this year to reflect the booming market and new outlets for history and biography programming. The new History & Biography category received 111 submissions, with high representation of American, Canadian, French, Australian and Dutch docs. Social and Political docs, traditionally the category receiving the most submissions, has 153 entries this year, followed by Popular Science with 128 submissions and History in third place.

The u.k. and the u.s. lead the race for Rockie awards with 18 nominations each (and are copro partners in an additional nine and eight programs respectively). Canada is vying for 12 awards. A total of 19 countries are represented among the 81 programs in competition.

Another change for the ’98 Rockies is a relaxation of the rule that all entries must already have aired on television. Programs scheduled for a later airdate and those as yet without broadcast sales are now eligible for submission.

Festival senior vp Jerry Ezekiel explains that the aim is to showcase newer programs and address the frustrations of emerging producers seeking festival exposure for their shows in order to snag broadcast deals.

Rockie nominees were named at a high-profile reception at mip-tv in April, earlier than in past years to ensure international nominees had lots of time to organize their June schedules around Banff.

U.S., U.K. in the spotlight

The conference lineup this year includes a strand heavily focused on the u.s. pay/cable market and featuring programming heads from Disney/abc, Viacom and Time Warner.

Latin America has not been represented at Banff in past years, so a conference exploring opportunities in the Hispanic territories has been programmed to lure producers and broadcasters from Latin America. Benelux countries are also the focus of a conference.

The spotlight is being turned on the u.k. this year, beefing up the British presence. The 1998 Global Outstanding Achievement Award is being presented to BBC Drama and among the reps in attendance will be Colin Adams, controller, drama production; Michael Wearing, head of drama serials; and David Thompson, head of films and single drama.

bbc chairman Sir Christopher Bland will deliver the keynote address and internationally popular u.k. writer John Mortimer will be honored with a special Lifetime Achievement Award

The Producers Alliance Cinema & Television in Britain received government support for a mission to Banff and Ferns has worked with media, a European promotional group for indie producers, to bring over a contingent.

A growing list of sponsors is evidence of the increased profile of the event, says Ferns. British pubcaster bbc and u.s. specialty The Learning Channel have added their weight to the list of ‘official sponsors’ (donating $50,000 or more to the festival in a single year). The only other non-Canadian official sponsor is a&e. A total of eight new official sponsors came on board in 1998, bringing the total number to 18, up from 12 last year.

Emphasis on `The Pitch’

Opportunities to pitch commissioning editors are bountiful at Banff, but the festival is seeking to provide a more structured format to facilitate networking. Last year’s experiment, Take a Decision Maker to Lunch, has been expanded to include breakfasts where the festival matches delegates one-on-one with a cross-section of international, u.s. and Canadian broadcasting execs.

A new innovation this year, delegates can also choose from a variety of Masters Classes, limited to 20 participants and facilitated by leaders in the fields of writing, acting and directing.

Presenters include Cracker writer James Sadwith discussing series tv, Brideshead Revisited’s John Mortimer from the u.k. on adaptation, American director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) on fiction, and Soho Stories director Chris Terrill from the u.k. on documentary.

If these workshops prove successful, Ferns is considering holding another session in January with previous Rockie winners leading the classes.

Two in a Room will once again zone in on international coproductions, this time with Paul Hamann, head of documentary and history for bbc production, and tvontario’s creative head of documentaries, Rudy Buttignol, coming up with a project which will suit both their respective strands. Eager producers in search of development cash will pitch the duo.

This year, Hamann has £30 million to pass around among his strands, which include Inside Story (investigative and observational films, 45-50 minutes each), Timewatch (historical one-hour episodes), Rough Justice (investigative one-hour episodes), Reputations (biographical hours), and Modern Times (observational films of 40 minutes).

Financing opps for new projects, not selling finished product will remain the business focus of the festival, says Ferns.

‘While there has been pressure to become a market for finished programs, I don’t think we are in the right place at the right time for that,’ he says. With the high costs of stands and booths, Ferns says distributors have told him that they concentrate on mip, mipcom and natpe. ‘The appetite for a side market at Banff just is not there.’

However, acquisitions reps do attend the festival to screen programs from the Banff catalogue, which contains all submitted films.