In the Quebec market, the people who produce television series for young teens have seemingly struck a responsive chord with buyers. And while it is said that buyers are more innovative and daring than in the past, producers only succeed if they pay close attention to the broadcaster’s specific scheduling and marketing requirements, and if they’re able to produce many episodes on strictly limited budgets.

This season, three of Quebec’s top series for teen and youth audiences, Zap, Watatatow and Chambres en Ville, continue their runs, and two shows, Radio-Enfer and Pignon sur rue, are making their debut.

Budgets range from a low of $1 million for 37 half-hour episodes of Pignon sur rue to a high of $4.5 million for 26 hours of Chambres en Ville.

According to Trinome Inter vp Jean Tourangeau, the company behind Pignon sur rue, tv buyers are braver than in the past.

‘They have the courage to say yes. They’re ready to take risks and they are ready to defend concepts in committee,’ he says.

Tourangeau says buyers are looking closely at ‘content’ that meets exact audience requirements, and are more aware than ever ‘of the difference between what the broadcaster thinks the public wants and what, in fact, the public actually wants.’

And while Tourangeau says ‘trash tv,’ defined as weak, advertiser-driven concepts that are little more than infomercials, has fallen out of favor, the advent of advertiser/program measurement tools such as tva’s Target System confirms the growing importance of market research.

More like U.S.

‘Merchandising and derivative benefits are key issues,’ he says. ‘It’s much more like in the u.s. now.’

In Quebec, many producers seem pleased with the new generation of senior programmers associated with youth and drama series. The new crop includes Vincent Leduc and Michele Raymond at Television Quatre Saisons, Andre Provencher and Jocelyne Deschenes at tva, Stephane Laporte and Michel Lavoie at Radio-Canada, Carmen Bourassa at Radio-Quebec, and Monic Lessard at Canal Famille.

With an eye on the competition, Tourangeau asserts teens, and perhaps the rest of the audience, want more reality in their program mix.

‘The Quebec tv audience wants truth,’ he says. ‘In our experience with focus groups, we’ve found series like Chambres en Ville lose credibility because the same actor will also appear on Watatatow. Teens are telling us they want to tell their own stories. That’s why Zap works, because the writers actually go out to the schools and talk with the kids.’

Pignon sur rue

Licensed by Radio-Quebec and tvontario’s La Chaine francaise, historically an important force in youth programming in Quebec, the concept for Trinome’s Pignon sur rue is in the general vein of mtv’s Reality Show and the Dutch tv series Number 28. In this series, seven young adults aged 18 to 25, including two franco-Ontarians, leave the regions and come to the big city where they take up residence in a boarding house.

The ‘creative documentary’ approach on the series uses real people instead of actors, consequently the producers don’t have to deal with Union des artistes.

The concept took two full years to sell, says Tourangeau.

Cinema verite

The show uses an extra-light Betacam production format and a three-person crew to create a ‘cinema verite’ approach and 37 half-hour episodes on a budget of $1 million. And there’s only three weeks between the shoot date and going to air.

Investors include the broadcasters, whose combined licence fees make up more than 40% of the budget, the Cable Production Fund and the Quebec tax credit.

Tourangeau says Louis Laverdiere, Telefilm Canada’s Quebec operations director, offered encouragement but neither Telefilm nor sodec has invested in the somewhat experimental production.

‘All the networks – Radio-Canada, tqs and tva – said no, but now they’re telling us they should have said yes,’ says Tourangeau, who’s coproducing Pignon with company president Pierre Blais.

Zap

Verseau International is shooting 20 new one-hour episodes of Zap from mid-July through to the end of February.

In its second season last year, Zap won Gemeaux for best youth series and best actor in a youth series (Marie-Claude Lefebvre). By the end of the current season, 56 one-hour episodes will have been completed.

Verseau was mandated to produce Zap after Radio-Quebec issued a public tender calling for producer proposals for a series dealing with problems faced by teens. Last season, Radio-Quebec sold rebroadcast rights to Zap to Radio-Canada, where it has a second window.

Seen in primetime, one of the show’s strengths is its determined three-person research team headed by Marie Lamarre.

Tour de force

According to Zap delegate producer Sylvie Trudelle, Lamarre et al speak regularly with school personnel and kids, in person and on the phone. ‘The series deals with problems in a (high) school setting, but its tour de force is that it’s very dramatic, and not at all didactic,’ she says.

The themes are familiar, ranging from drug usage to teenage pregnancy, quitting school and the effects of divorce. One of the central preoccupations in the new season is violence among young couples.

‘Guys don’t suddenly become violent at 35. It starts well before that,’ explains Trudelle.

Zap has a combined weekly Radio-Quebec/Radio-Canada audience of between 700,000 and 800,000.

Each one-hour episode is shot on videotape over three days, two days in studio at Tele-Metropole and one on location, with a tight per show budget of $185,000.

Trudelle says shooting with a three-camera setup on 16mm film would require at least six or seven days, and the editing process would be more expensive.

Zap is produced by Aimee Danis and Lyse Lafontaine. Jean-Paul LeBourhis is the head writer. Yvon Trudel, a high-profile teleroman director previously at Radio-Canada, Regent Bourque and Stephan Joly are the directors. The 1995/96 budget is $3.7 million. Investors include Telefilm ($271,000), the cpf ($850,000), and both the provincial and federal tax credits.

Radio-Enfer

Radio-Enfer is a Tele-Action sitcom for young teens which makes its season debut this year on Canal Famille and La Chaine.

Producer Claudio Luca says unlike other shows for ‘les ados,’ Radio-Enfer is short on real-life problem-solving.

‘It’s in the tradition of American sitcoms and is being produced with the goal of entertaining the public. This is something very new,’ he says.

For the new season, Canal Famille program vp Monic Lessard says she was looking for a ‘fun show’ aimed at teens, a tough demographic to crack for the largely kiddies’ network.

Luca had produced a live-action show called Un faim de loup for Canal Famille in 1991, and says he was aware that the cable channel was on the lookout for an original sitcom.

Tele-Action shot a successful pilot for the series, says Luca. ‘We put the money on the writing and actors and reduced locations.’

Live studio audience

Radio-Enfer is shot on videotape two times each episode live in front of a young studio audience at PMT Video. This is the same production approach used on Quebec’s best-known sitcom, Avanti Cine Video’s La Petite Vie. It takes 45 minutes, using three cameras, to shoot one show, and Luca says the best scenes from the two tapings are edited into the final broadcast version.

The show is set in a high school radio station and has five teen stars and two adult roles, the school principal and a shrink.

English pilot

Tele-Action is producing 26 half-hour episodes of Radio-Enfer this season at a cost of $1.4 million. Investors include the broadcasters, Telefilm, the Maclean Hunter Television Fund, the cpf and the federal and provincial tax credits.

Luca says Radio-Enfer is highly exportable (in Europe) ‘because the kids look North American.’ As for the English market, he says he has convinced Telefilm to invest in a pilot, and now Luca is looking for an English Canadian broadcaster who can find $10,000 to complete financing on the pilot.

Chambres en Ville

Seven years ago, Chambres en Ville was Quebec’s first drama series for teens. Over the course of its successful career, the show has an average network audience of between 1.7 million and 2.4 million, and was the top-rated teleroman on Quebec tv in ’94/95. The adult demographic has grown, says producer Jean-Francois Mercier, because the show ‘opens a window for adults on the world of teens.’ Mercier says the show’s high ratings make it easy to finance.

This is not the case for most youth series.

Chambres en Ville is technically not a teen series and so tva can sell commercial airtime, otherwise, Quebec broadcasters have been prohibited from selling advertising aimed at youth 13 and under since the early 1980s. No doubt this restriction also explains why there are no original youth series on either tqs or tva.

Earlier in the year, Productions Points de Mire purchased the rights to Chambres en Ville from Cleo-Clip, a company headed by producer Charles Ohayon, now program director general at Radio-Canada.

Scripted by Sylvie Payette, 26 one-hour episodes are being shot from May to February 1996 on a budget of $4.55 million. Investors include Tele-Metropole, Telefilm (via a significant interim-financing arrangement), the cpf, the producer and the Quebec tax credit. Chrysler is a major sponsor.

This season, the storyline jumps three years into the future when the kids have left Cegep (junior college) and are dealing with themes like finding a job, having kids, finishing university and buying that first condo.

A ‘traditional Quebec teleroman’ shot on video using three in-studio cameras at Tele-Metropole, the set for Chambres has 35 configurations. The series is directed by Marilyn Lemire.

Watatatow

Produced by Productions JBM, Watatatow is a top-rated youth series broadcast this season weekdays on Radio-Canada. The show is in its fifth year and has a reported network audience in the 750,000 range.

In past seasons, Radio-Canada has programmed primetime specials based on the show. When it first went to air, an accompanying monthly theme magazine was published, with an eye to merchandising.

Shot in the basic teleroman style, Watatatow is directed at an early teen audience, 12 to 17, and deals with problematic issues such as love and sexuality, bicycle safety, and poor grades in school. And like its competitor Zap, this season the series will take special aim at the subject of male aggression, says Manon Chevalier, a publicist on the show.

She says Watatatow fulfills a useful social role.

‘Kids often find they have questions, but parents are so busy, sometimes there’s no one around to answer,’ says Chevalier.

The show uses four basic decor setups, including a youth club, a family home and a poolroom.

The concept is from writer/producer Jean-Pierre Morin, who has worked on other youth shows in the past, including Passe-Partout and Les 100 Watts. Following the bankruptcy of the show’s original producer, Spectel Video, Morin sought out a new partner, creating jbm in association with Productions Pixart president Jacquelin Bouchard, the show’s coproducer.

At press time, Telefilm said it was evaluating an investment in Watatatow. Ninety half-hour episodes are planned for ’95/96.