It’s been a turbulent year for the producers of Madison.

Last year they had a hit television show on their hands. Critics were calling it ‘Beverly Hills 90210 with brains’ and ‘one of the very best primetime television shows ever made in Canada.’ Madison won Forefront Productions and its four partners – Mickey Rogers, Gillian Lindsay, Teri Woods McArter and Helena Cynamon – a slew of international awards and the series sold to seven countries.

But in May, just as Madison was gearing up for its third season, CanWest Global dropped it.

Undaunted, the producers approached WIC Western International Communications, which already had Wired, another Forefront production in development. wic liked the show and Madison was resurrected in June.

‘It’s been a good lesson for us as a production company. You may get a no, but that doesn’t mean no forever,’ says Rogers.

‘Madison has been our learning curve, and the experience of not being picked up was just another thing we learned from and learned quite well.’

Madison is a gritty half-hour show set in a high school and aimed at teens – 90210 with a bleaker landscape – without the Porsches and the fat farms and the glitter.

It started life in 1992 as fodder for educational television. Global liked its realism and teen appeal and picked up the original seven episodes and asked for six more.

When Madison first aired in the fall of 1993 it was an anthology series, focusing on different characters and stories each week. Then, armed with data from teen focus groups, the producers took a gamble and turned Madison into a serial format.

It may have helped wield the ax.

Says Rogers: ‘We’d been instructed that Global wanted an anthology rather than a serial, but we got the go-ahead for the second season because they knew we could do what we needed to do.’

Certainly, it was still theme-heavy, packing a wallop of crises into 22 minutes.

The cast of 12 regularly face parental infidelities, teen pregnancy, adoption, lesbianism, death and environmental activism.

Rogers says they realize it’s time to lighten up for the third season.

‘We’ve established some really key characters, made it more entertaining and more fun. Not that we won’t tell realistic stories, but I think we have to realize that in high school there are stupid things that you do and I think we’ve concentrated more on ‘The Problems’ rather than some of the really dumb things you do as a kid.’

wic has contracted another 13 episodes and Madison is now in preproduction. The new series looks likely to air in November or January and, Rogers hopes, in a time slot that will improve ratings.

‘It played in Vancouver on Saturday nights at 7:30 when no kids were home. Then in Toronto, it was moved four or five times over the course of 15 weeks. So in terms of building an audience, it was difficult.’

The show’s budget will stay at $350,000 per episode and Rogers’ goal is to see Madison run to 65 episodes – the magic number for syndication. She says a run over a two-year span will also keep the largely teen cast realistic.

A major part of Madison’s success is market research and adapting feedback from Canadian teens into the scripts. Last year, e-mail brought instant feedback from across the country and that will be expanded this year.

Rogers thinks a change in marketing strategy will also help boost ratings.

‘The things that are really important to kids are fashion, beauty and music. We’re looking at cross-promotional opportunities, at things that kids do, through contests and fantasy dates on the set, and working with a record store.’

In May, Forefront Releasing was launched, a distribution arm for the six-year-old company.

Rogers says it will give them access to a larger number of broadcasters and also to money.

‘We’ve been selling Madison internationally since the beginning of this year and it’s been a great calling card. What we want to do is sell other people’s products as well.’

Forefront Productions has about 25 shows in various stages of development, and Cynamon says in some ways they have all come out of Madison.

‘Madison has always been our passion, our drive, and from our gut. Everything about Madison is about us, is about Forefront,’ she says.

‘What Madison also taught us is that a teenage primetime show in drama is a limited market and we’re looking at other revenues besides a broadcasting licence.’

Their latest venture is The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, a sort of Murder, She Wrote for children, being coproduced with Britain’s Winchester Entertainment. ytv has committed to development financing and u.k.-based merchandise designers, ibh, will come up with everything from decoding kits to fingerprint-revealing pens to boost program revenues.

Another children’s show, Castaway Island, which Cynamon is billing as Home Alone meets Lord of the Flies, was chosen for market simulation at the Banff Television Festival in June.

‘Everything that’s played out in Madison about choices, about opportunities, about passions, desires, fears, can be played out in the small island,’ she says.

This time, Cynamon is hoping an international cast and Barney Cohen, a well-known American writer, will help make inroads into the elusive u.s. market.

‘When we were making sales of Madison internationally there was a whole bunch of ways that people wanted to sell it. nbc said to us, ‘This is great, but we can’t possibly pick it up as a series, but please duplicate it in a movie.’ So Castaway brings all the elements of what we can do well in Madison, but in a movie form.’

(eve lazarus is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.)