Low-budget programming running counter to mainstream has its place

Bureaucratic hassles and the increasing difficulty level of producing high-end television left some producers singing the praises of reality TV and other low-budget programming at a recent conference. "Cheaper programming is great because you can make it. It becomes a way of life," said Steve Levitan, president and CEO of Toronto-based Protocol Entertainment Inc. "You buy cheap suits, you buy no-name at the grocery store and get cheap haircuts. You start to embrace it. I think that what is extremely important is that just because the budgets are bigger doesn’t mean that the programming is better." Speaking during the Cheap TV or the Formats of Tomorrow? session at the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) annual conference late last month, Levitan indicated that he had turned to low-budget production to avoid having to deal with the bureaucracy involved with securing government financing for bigger projects. "I would rather not do low-budget programming – although I’m having a ball doing it. The reason that I’m doing it is that I can’t stand the system that works in this country. I like to make shows. I don’t like to deal with government," he added. He suggested that his ability to remain independent of the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) and the government for things such as tax credits rests on making reality TV and other low-budget shows. He added that he had sat through sessions at the two-day CFTPA conference, listening to producers bemoan the crisis in tax credit funding and the CTF, much like he had been doing for the past 25 years. "What attracted me to this whole genre is not having the continual worry about will you get government funding, will there be a government program so that we can make the TV program?" he noted. "I’m tired of the paranoia of this or that subsidy disappearing. The question is: Can you do an alternative program that is doable based on what the broadcaster can afford?" Mike Volpe, president of Topsail Entertainment Ltd., noted that Canadian producers can’t afford very often to go with big budget productions. "We can’t try to do that like the Americans who have lots of money for sets and extras and the riches of the medium. You can’t try to be more than you can afford," he noted. "You have to work within your financial limits and try to push (the envelope) within that." For example, Volpe suggested that shooting high-end professional drama on tape normally wouldn’t work even though it would be cheaper. The medium must suit the genre and project, he noted. Volpe’s Topsail Entertainment produces the low-budget Trailer Park Boys, which airs on Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc.’s specialty TV channel Showcase. "Certainly the thing about Trailer Park Boys is that the buzz out there in the community is creating an appetite," said Levitan. "That’s when you are educating the audience away from the kinds of things that everybody says our system can’t afford. So let’s do the stuff we can afford to make. We don’t need another cop show; we don’t need another hospital show; we don’t need another show about lawyers. That’s what America churns out with basically ten times the amount of money we can spend. " Ira Levy, executive producer of Breakthrough Films and Television Inc., noted that new technologies, such as editing on computers, have reduced the cost of production but noted that reality TV and low-budget programming was not new. He pointed to the French New Wave of filmmaking, which made extensive use of the handheld camera due to financial constraints. "Everything that is old is new again," he stated. Levitan also noted that back in the early days of television, when radio was still the mainstay, TV programming was low cost. "It started really small and grew," he noted. One of the appealing things about low-budget programming for Levy is the "simplicity of the ideas" in the shows. "You are forced to simplify everything down to what the meat is because you’re so limited in resources. It’s much more relationship driven," he stated. "And I think people are always interested in characters." The problem with low-budget programming becoming successful is that it creates high-budget pressures, according to Michael Snook, executive producer at WestWind Pictures Ltd. "When the show starts becoming a success, the immediate pressure is to build a success," he pointed out. "Suddenly you have directors who want painted sets and you’ve got crews who want more money because everyone wants to share in the wealth but the wealth isn’t there. So one of the challenges is to keep the show streamlined." But session panelist Tony Atherton, a TV reporter for the Ottawa Citizen, questioned to what extent audiences would be generated if adequate funding isn’t spent on programming. "What is our definition of cheap TV?" he asked. "We don’t make Survivor because in Canadian terms that is not cheap television." Levitan disagreed, suggesting that Survivor-type programming appeared on French-language television in Quebec years ago. With audiences fragmenting, Atherton said that much of the low-budget programming ends up on specialty channels or niche TV stations. "The fact that we’re talking about cheap TV, I hope that is not what you’re aiming for," he stated. "Because we need some bigger budget, high-end stuff. We can’t simply say we’re giving that up to the Americans and Brits and we’re going to do all this other stuff."

Low-budget programming running counter to mainstream has its place

News | 02/13/2004 5:00 am EST

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