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| Mon Mar 20, 2006 Da Vinci's Leads Cancon Pack in U.S. Publisher: Playback Magazine Author: Sean Davidson | |
| Playback Magazine by March 20, 2006 Da Vinci's City Hall may have left before its time, but its predecessor has found new life in the U.S. Da Vinci's Inquest - which bowed out after seven seasons on CBC to make room for its freshly killed-off spin-off - is playing to strong numbers in U.S. syndication, thanks in part to the ongoing craze for police procedural dramas. Inquest is drawing three to four million viewers per week in markets covering some 98% of the U.S., according to its stateside distributor, Program Partners. Those numbers bear repeating. Three to four million. That's a bit of a bump from the roughly 600,000 it drew per week in Canada during its regular run, where playing to the mid six figures counts as success. "There's a huge trend with networks and these procedural dramas, and we saw the same need in the syndication field," says Program Partners principal Josh Raphaelson, pointing to the CSIs and more recent imitators such as Bones, Without a Trace and Criminal Minds. Program Partners works in tandem with Vancouver-based distributor Thunderbird Films, which picked up Inquest in 2004 and made a splash at the 2005 NATPE. "At the time we were looking at the syndication market as one of the possibilities, but we were quite fearful of the amount of work, capital and focus" it would take, says Thunderbird principal Michael Shepard. "But the market has really responded to it." Inquest is just one of many Canadian shows that have also been picked up in the U.S. to some acclaim. Degrassi: The Next Generation is a tentpole attraction on Nickelodeon's The N, which also airs Instant Star and is set to air the ski resort drama Whistler. Naked Josh and Show Me Yours have both gone to the women-aimed Oxygen, while Trailer Park Boys airs on BBC America, and the Sundance Channel has Slings and Arrows. Program Partners and Thunderbird also handle Cold Squad, the forensics drama formerly on CTV, and Stone Unturned, which is what they call Tom Stone, the Mountie series that ran for two seasons on CBC. As a package, they have sold to 70% of the U.S. market, says Raphaelson. Why are Canadian shows catching on? Buyers and sellers say it's because of changing attitudes in the U.S. and better product. American tastes are slightly "less provincial" than before, says Raphaelson, and more open to foreign shows. (But not so open as to embrace British crime dramas like Prime Suspect or A Touch of Frost. Those accents are still a problem.) | |
