How the Writers Strike Is Reshaping the Market for Reality TV Buyers

As Hollywood braces for a potentially long writers strike, Canadians can expect even more reality TV fare beyond popular series like The Voice and Survivor dominating screens in the fall.

That’s because private Canadian broadcasters astride a giant U.S. TV market have primetime grids that, where possible, mirror those of the U.S. networks to boost audience and advertising revenue. So, unsurprisingly, that has upcoming fall-winter TV schedules north of the border upended by the Writers Guild of America strike and a production industry hiatus for scripted series.

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“We were probably bidding a bit more on unscripted content than we might have in other years. And that certainly added a complexity to what is already a very hectic and busy week for Canadian buyers,” Troy Reeb, executive vp of broadcast networks at Corus Entertainment, told The Hollywood Reporter after returning from the recent Los Angeles Screenings in Hollywood.

Reeb oversees the Global Television network and cable channels like local versions of Food Network and HGTV in Canada. Along with rival private broadcasters, Corus faces the possibility of few, if any, new American scripted series in the fall the longer the labor unrest continues.

And with their primetime schedules already a mishmash of the ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox network schedules refreshed at the LA Screenings via longstanding output deals, Reeb and his programmers have had to zig as the Americans zag as the summer goes on.

That has Corus planning for two vastly different programming strategies for the rest of the year and into 2024. The first banks on new U.S. scripted series should the WGA strike end soon, allowing a fresh schedule filled with buzzy returning U.S. studio dramas and comedies after the Canadians’ recent annual shopping expedition on studios lots in Hollywood.

New scripted fare to possibly anchor the fall 2023 schedule includes Matlock, starring Kathy Bates, and Elsbeth, led by Carrie Preston and based on The Good Wife character.

But Plan B — contingent on a much longer U.S. writers walkout and an uncertain return to production for American scripted shows currently without scripts — would see Reeb and his team schedule more reality series, especially competition and game shows, for the fall.

Corus will also also look to buy more overseas shows, mainly from Australia and the UK, and allows more of its own homegrown Canadian scripted and unscripted series to flourish in primetime. “Canadian audiences are still going to find a lot of really big shows through the early part of the fall, regardless of when those big scripted Hollywood titles start to make their way back to TV screens,” Reeb said.

Rival Bell Media, which operates CTV-branded linear TV channels, is also turning to unscripted series that can be produced during the strike to help tout what it calls a strike-proof TV schedule to Canadian advertisers at its own Upfront presentation in Toronto next week.

“We will have less scripted than we would normally have in the fall,” Pat DiVittorio, Bell Media vp of programming, CTV and Specialty, told THR, as she points to homegrown dramas and comedies like Transplant and Children Ruin Everything, in addition to singing competition series and game shows also underpinning the upcoming fall schedule.

“We made a decision to go in with something that will not be impacted because that creates disruption for our clients and our [ad] sales teams,” DiVittorio added. Among recent series purchases by Bell Media at the LA Screenings was the game show Snake Oil, hosted by David Spade, the Fox reality series Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, which is based on the British format SAS: Who Dares Wins, and Jamie Oliver: Cooking for Less.

Of course the earlier 2007 Hollywood writers strike also had the U.S. networks doing a beeline to reality TV shows to fill their schedules, which ushered in boom times for unscripted TV producers. But DiVittorio doesn’t see the latest WGA strike ultimately steering the U.S. studios away from scripted series as a foundation for their TV schedules.

“I don’t see a world where the writers’ strike will ever permanently change how we look at scripted content. You need those stories on network television and you need unscripted … This is putting disruption in the industry, but it’s not permanent,” she argued.

Beyond the immediate loss of late night talk shows and the Hollywood labor unrest derailing and delaying a raft of U.S. series that shoot mostly in Vancouver and Toronto, the impact of the WGA strike won’t be felt until September when Canadian TV schedules for the fall begin rolling out. Until then, private Canadian broadcasters will continue thinking outside the box to nail down content that returns big audiences and ad sales into 2024.

For example, prolonged labor unrest threatens to disrupt a key business model for private Canadian networks: simultaneous substitution, or the long-standing practice of substituting Canadian commercials into U.S. program feeds so American ads don’t appear, all to protect program rights acquired by the Canadian broadcasters from American studio suppliers via output deals.

“All things being equal, two things maximize audiences. Number one, if you have fresh new content that’s exclusive to you and, number two, if you can get it into simulcast. And those two things may bifurcate for a while this fall,” Reeb warned. Ensuring U.S. programming has local commercials replacing American ads will even extend to U.S. networks should they air re-runs stateside when Canadian viewers expect fresh content.

“That’s going to take close coordination with our U.S. network partners for those shows that we have rights to … What we don’t want is for Hollywood repeats to not happen in simulcast,” Reeb adds as he pulls the curtain back on an often byzantine North American TV market where the primetime grids of private Canadian broadcasters ideally mirror those of the U.S. linear TV networks south of the border to maximize TV ad sales.

At Bell Media, DiVittorio says her network’s strike-proof fall schedule should mitigate against lessening any reliance on simulcasts of U.S. shows. “I don’t think our simulcast is going to be impacted this fall, based on the schedule that we created,” she insisted.

There’s some bright spots from the Hollywood writers strike, including more possible purchases by U.S. networks of local TV series developed by Canadian broadcasters. The CW amid the WGA strike already bolstered its comedy lineup with the Canadian series Son of a Critch, Run the Burbs and Children Ruin Everything and also acquired the Canadian dramas Sullivan’s Crossing  and The Spencer Sisters.

That’s a repeat of 2007 when distributors looked to turn homegrown dramas and comedies into sales to U.S. networks during that earlier standoff between studios and writers. Amid that Canadian invasion of U.S. TV schedules, CBS picked up the cop drama Flashpoint and NBC bought The Listener, both shows developed in Canada by local broadcaster CTV, and set and shot in Toronto.

Those earlier acquisitions ushered in buys of Rookie Blue by ABC, The L.A. Complex going to ABC, Orphan Black to BBC America and NBC picking up the medical drama Saving Hope.

Barbara Williams, executive vp of the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, in 2007 was executive vp of content at CanWest Global Communications Corp., an earlier incarnation of Corus Entertainment, and recalls the bonanza for local indie TV producers plugging a gap in fresh content for the U.S. networks as scripted series went off air during the earlier screenwriters strike.

The CBC, while not impacted by the latest WGA strike after the pubcaster long ago jettisoned U.S. TV series to focus on local content and distinguish itself from private sector rivals, looks forward to seeing more local series it developed follow earlier breakout CBC shows like Sort Of, Schitt’s Creek and Kim’s Convenience into the American market.

“If the strike goes on, sure, there’s probably an opportunity for any of us making Canadian content here, or broadcasting or financing it, to encourage the American system to pick up some of the Canadian content and give it a second life,” Williams told THR.

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