Canadian broadcasters at the Prime Time conference in Ottawa praised their homegrown shows, but warned a lack of scale, audience focus and talent holds back the production and promotion of a sustainable content pipeline.

Rogers Media executive vice president of TV programming and operations Malcolm Dunlop pointed to his network’s bet on Canadian comedies, which includes veteran Canadian showrunner Andrew Orenstein returning from Los Angeles to make Package Deal in Vancouver, and the recently-launched sperm donor sitcom Seed.

The hurdle, Dunlop added, was a giant American TV market where a slew of TV talk shows endlessly focused on popular primetime series.

“In the U.S., it’s such a huge market. There’s so much buzz around these shows before they come to the air,” he told a Prime Time panel where TV industry leaders discussed Canadian content.

Dunlop applauded rival CTV promoting Motive during the Academy Awards and ahead of its post-Super Bowl slot launch.

“That’s great, but it’s hard to use the same scale as they have in the U.S. As Canadians, we expect that buzz for our shows,” he insisted.

That challenge emerged when City recently launched Seed.

“We were really proud that (Seed) it did 600,000 in its first week. We think that’s a great number. But… how do you promote this? How do you tell Canadians that this is a great show. It’s very challenging,” Dunlop said.

Bell Media president Kevin Crull told the Prime Time panel that a fast-changing TV landscape was throwing up other hurdles, including declining ad revenue and a leakage of viewers due to Netflix and other digital alternatives, DVRs and VOD and time-shifting.

All of which made Canadian content plays essential to allowing national networks to compete, especially as staple American shows could no longer be counted on to produce sizable audiences.

“We’re seeing American dramas of 400,000 and 500,000, and we’re seeing Canadian shows that we’re really getting behind doing over a million,” he argued.

Crull added Canadians were carving out a niche in their story-telling.

“It took a series like Flashpoint… to not just focus on the heroes, but the toll that being a hero takes on personal individuals,” he said.

Crull also pointed to Motive, a whydunnit cop drama recently sold to ABC stateside for its summer lineup.

“There’s a million police procedurals out there, but it took a Canadian writer to focus on why a crime is committed, not who did the crime and what the crime is,” Crull said of Motive from from former Dexter and The Mentalist executive producer Daniel Cerone and Foundation Features and Lark Productions.

Shaw Media vice president of original content Christine Shipton, who has had recent primetime success with series like Bomb Girls and Big Brother Canada urged indie producers to do more to keep audiences in mind when creating series.

“I don’t think we think enough about what people want to watch and where they want to watch it. Every day we get pitches and we just say, where would that show go, and what brand would that show align itself with?” she told the Prime Time panel.

Shipton also pointed to a need for more training of new talent to meet the production demands of upcoming Canadian series.

“When shows get a greenlight, there isn’t enough talent to support what has been greenlit,” she said, urging more training programs for production and creative talent.

Shipton added the industry should embrace big formats like Big Brother Canada, The Bachelor Canada and Amazing Race Canada as they too trained new production and creative talent.

“We shouldn’t be afraid of big formats. Big formats coming into this country are an opportunity. It affords training,” she argued.