A year ago CBC announced it was cutting back on glossy American programs like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy once used to lure in big audiences, and replacing it with “homegrown stories, humour and culture.”
“The benefit of something like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy is it kind of prepped us for the next stage of being able to really depend more on our Canadian programming instead of acquisitions,” Kirstine Stewart, head of CBC English language service told Marketing in January, not long after the announcement was made.
CBC's Republic of Doyle
“The strategy was always that we would have those kinds of shows in the schedule for as long as we needed them until we got the rest of the schedule up to a place where we could start making our own,” she said.
Maybe, but the public broadcaster also seems firmly committed to another famous import going forward, this one from the U.K. The contract for the two U.S. game shows isn’t up until the end of this summer, but Wheel of Fortune was moved to a late afternoon slot to accommodate a full hour of Coronation Street every weekday from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., with Jeopardy staying in its regular 7:30 p.m. timeslot.
Chuck Thompson, head of media relations at CBC, says the decision to run back-to-back episodes of the popular British series is to allow Canadian audiences to catch up with the series as it airs in Britain. In the past, CBC has been as much as seven months behind.
The rest of CBC’s fall schedule was generally light with the addition of its Cover Me Canada, Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays, Camelot, In The Kitchen With Stefano Faita and The Debaters.
Of these five shows, only The Debaters and In The Kitchen With Stefano Faita are part of the mid-season lineup. It’s still unclear if Cover Me Canada and Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays could live on for another season, though Camelot, the only non-CBC-produced show, was cancelled after 10 episodes. Also absent from the 2012 schedule was Being Erica, cancelled after a respectable four-season run.
Thompson says CBC’s television schedule is in a holding pattern.
“Some of those decisions are inextricably linked to funding and once we get a decision from the government we’ll be in a better position to make decisions about next year,” he says. CBC president and CEO Herbert Lacroix has said he expects the broadcaster will be hit hard by budget cuts. The Harper Government has asked that agencies and departments cut back spending by 5% to 10%.
Though the summer and fall shows are still up in the air, CBC is pulling in strong numbers with returning hits like Republic of Doyle, Heartland, Dragons’ Den and The Rick Mercer Report and winter schedule additions Arctic Air and Mr. D. The new action adventure drama Arctic Air drew more than one million viewers for its January premiere, which, according to Thompson, is the largest debut for a CBC drama series in 20 years. Mr. D also did well with more than 1.2 million viewers tuning in for the debut, making it the most successful premiere of a comedy series since the 2007 launch of Little Mosque On The Prairie (which is now in its final season).
CBC has also seen a boost on Friday nights with the return of long-running investigative consumer program Marketplace and The Fifth Estate. On Feb. 3 Marketplace brought in a little over one million viewers for its “Lousy Labels” episode that looked at questionable claims on food packaging. That same night, The Fifth Estate saw its largest audience in over a decade (1.3 million+) tune in for its coverage of the Costa Concordia shipwreck.
Mid-Season Scorecard
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Stay Tuned
CBC was still finalizing its schedule at press time, but who really needs scripted drama when you have the Stanley Cup playoffs?
