BANFF, Alta. - The majestic mountains and towering pines might seem a certain distraction, yet deals were made, sales were celebrated and the future of the television industry itself was pondered Monday at the annual Banff World Television Festival.
Westwind Pictures, the producers of CBC's "Little Mosque on the Prairie," announced a deal with Twentieth Century Fox Studios, which aims to get an Americanized version of the show on the Fox network.
The deal also involves another Westwind Pictures show currently in development; Fox will help Westwind develop the show and then determine if it wants to buy it.
"It's taken a long time to get here, some due to the writers' strike and some due to just making sure that we had the right collaborator," Mary Darling, head of Westwind Pictures, said of the deal for "Little Mosque."
"The reason we pursued a deal with this studio is because we really feel we've found people who are in synch with us on the vision of the show. They're very earnest in terms of getting the tone of the show right, and yet they want to make it as funny as possible in order for it to play to a wide audience."
The CBC sitcom, about a community of devout Muslims living in a small prairie town, won't be changed drastically for an American audience, Darling added.
"It'll be 'Little Mosque in Minnesota,' if I have my way," the Minnesota-born Darling said with a laugh.
BBC Worldwide and Toronto's Temple Street Productions, meanwhile, announced Monday that they'd entered into a development partnership.
BBC Worldwide has acquired a minority stake in Temple Street, which is already producing the Canadian version of the BBC hit series, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" The reality show, hosted by Gavin Crawford, premieres this weekend on CBC.
BBC Worldwide already bid successfully for international distribution rights to Temple Street's time-travel drama "The Session," debuting in January on CBC.
And Toronto-based Shaftesbury Films, the country's biggest producer of dramatic and children's programming, announced it had bought Smokebomb Entertainment, a developer of original, multi-platform digital content.
But it wasn't all wheeling and dealing at Banff on Monday. A number of seminars were devoted to the very future of the TV industry, with "Digital Heavy Hitters" featuring industry insiders who were managing to find success on the Web stemming from their television productions.
The issue of piracy - people recording TV shows and posting them on YouTube, for example - and rapidly changing viewing habits were weighing heavily on the minds of most TV executives at this year's festival. The industry is grappling with the challenges posed by the lucrative younger generation of viewers who want to watch their TV on the Internet, on their cellphones and on their hand-held devices.
Nonetheless there was still time for celebration. Brent Butt of "Corner Gas" fame won the Peter Ustinov Comedy Award while Sofia Milos from "The Border" was honoured with the festival's excellence award at a glitzy luncheon at the historic Banff Springs Hotel, the home of the festival.
"When you're honoured, it's hard not to feel honoured by it," Butt said with a laugh. "I'm honoured and humbled and it's a tremendous award ... I'm sure they've mistaken me for someone else, but I'll take it."
Among other awards announced at the luncheon:
Blueprint Entertainment, the producers of shows including "Kenny vs. Spenny" and "Whistler," was given the the Lionsgate/Maple Pictures Innovative Producer Award.
ABC Studios, the producer behind such hits as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," was given the outstanding achievement award.
News from �The Canadian Press, 2008
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