Released today, the Canada Media Fund (CMF)’s 2021-2022 Annual Report shows that our investments in Canada’s screen-based industries triggered a record-breaking $1.9B in production across the country. Every $1 of CMF funding generated $5.16 in production activity, the highest leverage ratio since the CMF was created in 2010, and played a key role in creating close to 217,000 jobs in Canada’s screen sector.
“The industry we serve is on the verge of a magnitude of change—and it’s long overdue,” says Valerie Creighton, President and CEO, CMF. “We are proud to generate record-breaking production activity across Canada’s screen-based industries, but even more importantly, we delivered over $60M for equity-seeking communities through our Equity and Inclusion Strategy. One of our main priorities is to ensure a truly accessible and inclusive screen sector that supports all storytellers in bringing their stories to screens here at home and beyond our borders.”
As the industry rapidly evolves, CMF programs delivered $359M in funding for the prototyping, development, production, promotion, and export of 1,433 television and digital media projects in 2021-2022. This level of investment and support was made possible thanks to the continued commitments of the CMF’s funding contributors: the Government of Canada, and Canada’s cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors.
As showcased in our 2021-2022 Annual Report, the CMF’s funding programs, as well as our extensive research and promotion initiatives, are clear examples of the fundamental role we play in driving Canada’s digital economy and supporting our nation’s cultural diversity.
Blue Ant Media – international producer, distributor and channel operator – and The Holmes Group, have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the extensive library of unscripted original series and specials of Mike Holmes, a pioneer in home renovation and one of the highest-rated stars of lifestyle television. The deal gives Blue Ant Media ownership of over 200 hours of programming from the past two decades, including all seasons of Holmes on Homes, Holmes Makes it Right, Holmes Inspection, alongside specials such as Holmes for the Holidays, Holmes in New Orleans and Mike’s Ultimate Garage, among others.
As current licenses expire, the beloved library of programming will launch in FAST exclusively on Blue Ant Media’s new free streaming channel, Homeful, which showcases real estate, design and decor projects that help make a house a home. Over the coming months, audiences in the US and Canada will see Homeful introduce the Holmes content on platforms such as Roku, LG and Xumo. Blue Ant International now holds the distribution rights to Holmes’ catalog, which will debut at Mipcom 2022 this fall.
As part of the new partnership, Blue Ant Media will also commission new original programming with Mike and his kids Michael Holmes Jr and Sherry Holmes, for its Canadian TV platforms and Homeful. More details on this commissioning will be announced in the coming months.
Having earned his place as one of North America’s most trusted contractors, Mike Holmes holds a loyal fanbase amongst audiences and is widely considered the face of the home renovation space. In every Holmes series, the beloved contractor fixes poor construction work while lending his incredible eye for detail and expert advice to guide homebuyers, homeowners, friends, and family into doing it right.
Newly-launched in spring 2022, Homeful features notable real estate, renovation and transformation series with some of the most well-known faces in TV home design. The new deal builds on Blue Ant Media’s already comprehensive library of original and acquired design and decor-inspired programs. The full list of Mike Holmes IP that Blue Ant now owns, includes: Holmes on Homes™ (Seasons 1-7), Holmes Makes it Right (Seasons 1-2), Holmes Inspection (Seasons 1-3), Holmes + Holmes (Seasons 1-2) Holmes for the Holidays, Lien on Me, Best of Holmes on Homes, Holmes In New Orleans, Holmes Family Effect, Holmes 10th Anniversary and Mike’s Ultimate Garage.
Blue Ant Media’s suite of FAST (free, ad-supported streaming TV) channels offer audiences curated, exclusive programming that is free to access on growing platforms like VIZIO WatchFree+, The Roku Channel, Xumo, Samsung TV Plus and PrendeTV. The company’s growing global portfolio of FAST channels include Love Nature, HauntTV, Total Crime, Homeful and HistoryTime.
The first season of The Social is memorable to Cynthia Loyst for a couple of reasons. Back when it launched in September 2013, Loyst was, as she describes, “a sleep-deprived new mom pumping my breasts backstage between rehearsals.” And, secondly, there was a chemistry between the hosts at that time—Melissa Grelo, Lainey Lui, Loyst and Traci Melchor—she noticed right away.
With Season 10 of The Social returning this week at 1 p.m. ET on CTV Grelo, Lui and Jess Allen, Loyst looks back on the past nine seasons.
Congratulations on your upcoming 10th season of The Social. Cynthia Loyst: I cannot believe it’s the 10th season of The Social. I was literally pregnant when we were doing auditions for this show. And then when we launched the show, I was a sleep-deprived new mom who was pumping my breasts backstage in between rehearsals and things. So we’ve come a long way. I have this boy who’s going into Grade 4.
Back when you were doing the auditions and you were pregnant, what were your thoughts at the time? Were you thinking, ‘What were they thinking when they asked me to do this? Or what was I thinking when I agreed to do this?’ CL: Well, it’s interesting because there were rumours of a show being developed that was kind of going to be a Canadian version of The View for a long time prior to this. Even when I was doing the audition, I was like, ‘Well, is this thing even going to happen?’ But then it seemed like it was becoming more of a reality. And I thought, ‘Well, there’s no way they’re going to hire me,’ because the timeline was such that I would’ve been just after giving birth. So I thought, ‘I’m probably out of the running,’ But then I got the call and was told that I was going to be part of the cast. I was shocked. I went through a variety of emotions. I was shocked. I was elated. And then I was terrified.
And was there chemistry between the hosting panel back then? Was it immediate? CL: There were a bunch of different people who auditioned. The producers threw us in different combinations and configurations and the very, very first test group was the original four of us who were actually hired. There was really good chemistry, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. But looking back, it was clear that there was a kind of electricity with that first initial four. And clearly, other people felt it too, because my understanding is they went through a bunch of different combinations and then they showed them to test audiences to see what people really were resonating towards. And so I think part of that was what was immediately picked up on.
You can’t fake chemistry on television. CL: We didn’t know each other all that well, but there was a mutual respect right away. And even though we didn’t come from necessarily different political backgrounds, a la The View, we were definitely very different women. We’re not the type of women who would necessarily be thrown together and have come together naturally. For whatever reason though, I think there was just a combination of stage of life, experience level, and I think passion for hot topics and a willingness to speak out that brought out some kind of interesting magic and alchemy.
What were your expectations during that first season? CL: I think my expectations were just to stay treading water. I couldn’t really think beyond the end of the day. Because I was sleep-deprived and because I was this new mom, everything felt very new and I don’t remember thinking that it would last past the season, but I don’t remember thinking it wouldn’t last past the season. I was just kind of like, ‘Let’s keep this thing as long as we can.’
Can you walk me through the process of how the content of an episode of The Social is decided? CL: Every evening or afternoon, we get a lineup of pitches. Our producers and us have contributed anything that comes across our feed that we feel passionate about or excited about. And somebody assembles that into a short list. Sometimes it’s as many as 40 pitches and they have links attached to them. We go through them, we pick our topic, like six or seven, and we send that in. Then the producers meet early in the morning before we are part of that and hammer out what they think will be our hot topic topics from segments one, two, and now three. And then we meet all together in person and we kind of hash it out around the table. During the pandemic, it was all on a Zoom call or on a phone call.
Sometimes we’re able to immediately go, ‘OK, yeah. That lineup is amazing. Let’s run with it.’ And other times it’s quite a struggle. It might be that we feel it’s too much of a personal ask to go down a certain road. Or it might be that there’s a topic in the news that we feel like we don’t have enough information about. We don’t feel comfortable, let’s shelve that for tomorrow. Those are the types of discussions that we have at any given point in time.
Segments four and five now are lifestyle segments, so those are planned way in advance. It might be an author, a celebrity, a chef, or a fashion person. The show was conceived as feeling like you’re either going through a magazine or surrounded by a really interesting dinner party. It feels like that’s sort of spirit and energy of the show.
What is it that you particularly look for when all these pitches are brought to you or all these segment ideas? What gets you excited? CL: My background is in sexual health and I’m a sex educator and that’s what I did first. I was producing for documentary series about sexuality. Relationships and love are big to me and I’m a parent, so I feel like whenever there’s something that kind of comes up in the parenting realm, often ignites something in me and I think a lot of our viewers. But then sometimes there’s unexpected stuff that comes up in the news, where you’re just like, ‘Even if I don’t immediately have an opinion or thought about it, I know it’s an important thing to delve into.’ And so then it becomes this sort of puzzle of doing research quickly to come up with something that’s articulate and thoughtful without just being like news. Because we aren’t the news.
We come after the news. But we aren’t news and that’s not what we’re supposed to be. We’re trying to add to an insight or a personal take or something that maybe people wouldn’t have thought of related to maybe a news topic. So it’s always different things that ignite. And sometimes I’ll read something and think, ‘Oh, I’m not that interested.’ But then in the meeting, someone will say something and they’ll spur on some kind of inspiration towards it.
Is there a standout moment for you or two over the last nine seasons? CL: We obviously had a really hard time, like everyone else did, during the pandemic. It was hard doing a TV show where you’re used to communicating in real-time and having an audience and a connection. So that was a real challenge, but I think something beautiful came out of it. After the murder of George Floyd, the conversation immediately became, rightly so, about Black lives. And we had Tyrone Edwards from eTalk on the show and it was a moment that went viral.
He was so emotional and spoke from the heart and it was just an unforgettable moment and a really important one, I think, for viewers most of all to see that. I think it helps change a conversation and illuminate things that maybe hadn’t been seen on daytime TV before.
Anything else? CL: I have this gigantic crush on Jason Momoa from Game of Thrones and Aquaman. He came on the show, and one of the producers, unbeknownst to me, had assembled a little montage of me talking about Jason Momoa. She played it for him on the show, much to my mortification, but he was a great sport about it. I wanted to climb out of my own skin and maybe hide behind the couch.
The pandemic lockdown was a strange one for stand-up comedians used to performing on stage. Many, like Steve Patterson and Ron James, chose to go the virtual stage route, selling tickets and performing on a Zoom or similar platform. Sophie Buddle went the other route.
“I did nothing,” the Ottawa-born comedian says. “I was just so depressed the whole pandemic. I did a little bit of online stuff, but I really feel like what stand-up comedy is is a vibe in a room.”
Buddle is making up for that lost time in a big way, with two projects (and her continuing podcast, Obsessed with Sophie Buddle) on the go. The first for the 2020 Juno Award-winner is Smile, Baby, her new half-hour comedy special available right now on Crave. The second is a guest on Comedy Night with Rick Mercer, set to debut Monday, September 13, on CBC.
We spoke to Buddle about both projects, a bit about her background and writing new material.
Your stand-up language delivery is very different from your podcast delivery. Sophie Buddle: Podcasts are way more conversational and it’s just chit chat. When you’re on stage as a stand-up, it’s sort of presented like you’re just talking. It’s a conversation, but it’s not. It is like a speech or a monologue, so you do end up having different pacing than a regular conversation. I was teaching a beginner stand-up class for a little while, and that was the entire advice I was giving. I feel like anybody can be funny and everybody knows what’s funny and everybody makes their friends laugh, but to be a stand-up, you just need to learn how to say your stories or your jokes or your ideas in a stand-up way or in a stand-up format.
It is sort of a weird rhythm just because you do need to end at the part where the audience laughs. You’re supposed to have the funniest word at the very end of the sentence. If you could have the misdirect be the last thing you say, then that’s the easiest because it is sort of a conversation, but the only thing the audience can really contribute to the conversation is laughing or booing or whatever. Mob mentality is half of the conversation.
In Smile, Baby, you mention the pandemic. How did it, as a creative person, affect you? I know stand-ups like Steve Patterson and Ron James went the online route and did performances that way. What did you do? SB: I did nothing. I was just so depressed during the pandemic. I did a little bit of online stuff, but I really feel like what stand-up comedy is is a vibe in a room. I really do feel like so much of it is about being in the room with a group of people and having that energy. I did a little bit of online stuff too, just to feel like myself, but I was really missing that connection. We filmed all the Crave special sort of right, you could say at the tail end of the pandemic, but it’s still sort of ongoing, just as stuff was starting to open up a little bit.
I was feeling really rusty. I had not performed in a really long time and all my new stuff was sort of untested, so I was really nervous going into filming this. It was limited capacity in the building. I’ve been doing stand-up for, I think, 13 years now. As soon as I started doing it, I was doing it at least once a week and then more than that and then multiple times a week for years and years and years. The pandemic was the first time I ever wasn’t doing it and so I felt like definitely at my most rusty that I had been ever in my life. It was pretty scary to film something that’s such on a higher profile while feeling sort at my worst, but I’m still happy with how it turned out. It was just very scary going into it.
I watched your set on James Corden and you did your joke about your boyfriend having a school girl thing. That is also in Smile, Baby. How much new material went into the Crave special? SB: Yeah, that’s a great question. So that joke, in particular, is actually my oldest joke that I still do. I wrote that when I was 16. I literally remember the first time I tried it. I was 16 at the Ottawa Yuk Yuk’s, and that was one of the first times that the Ottawa comedians started being nice to me. Everyone thought that was a good joke.
I really like doing new material. The only time that I feel down about stand-up is if I’m doing my A stuff too much or my showcase set too much. If I’m getting ready for a taping, that’s always when I feel bad about stand-up because what’s fun is trying new stuff. But sometimes jokes like that do just sort of stick around forever. One of the ways to retire them is to record them, basically. And so I was really just trying to get the last juice out of that joke before I can, hopefully, finally put it on the shelf forever. But I would say about half of the Crave special is brand new to the eyes of comedy people and maybe the other half I had recorded on my album or on the late night or something like that.
I had some new stuff, but all of it was pretty untested at that point because it’s stuff that I wrote during the pandemic or stuff that I was working on right when stuff shut down. And also, it’s very hard to decide as a comic when a bit is finished because there’s always something you can add to it. And so even if something is getting a couple big laughs, you’re always telling yourself that you should have maybe a couple more little ones in between in the lead up. Whenever you’re recording anything, you’re sort of forced to be like, ‘OK, well this stuff is finished and I just have to just be OK with it.’ But all comics talk about as soon as you record something, you think of so many new tags for it, so many new angles and that’s true for this special too. As soon as I recorded this and then you watch it back, you’re like, oh I have so many more ideas for these shows, but you don’t really want to do them because people have seen the special, so it’s very annoying.
What’s your writing process? Do you set aside time in the day to sit down and write jokes or are you out in the day and doing stuff you think of something funny and you just recite it into your phone? SB: I’m not a sit down and write kind of comic. I’m definitely, something funny comes up or I think of something funny, I’ll write a little note in my phone and then I do most of my writing on stage. I’ll usually know what the punchline is or at the very least what the premise is and then I find it only possible to really do it while I’m on stage. I also am pretty conversational too, so I want it to come out naturally. I find if I write it and then I’m worried about memorizing the exact wording, then it’ll come off too stiff.
You’re working your stuff while you’re out there on stage in front of a live audience? SB: Yeah. That’s one thing that’s really fun about being a headliner and having longer sets is you can still do well, you can still do all of your material that you know is good. And then by doing that, you have a lot of trust with the audience. So what I do usually, if I’m doing an hour or 45 minutes, maybe about 20 or 30 minutes into my set, I’ll go, ‘OK. I have a couple of new things I want to try. We’ll see if they’re anything or not.’ And then I can just give it a go. If it gets anything, that means it’s worth working on and if it gets nothing, you just throw it away.
Are you rare in that you do it that way or am I just ignorant and didn’t know that most comics do it that way? SB: I don’t know how rare it is. I know that not everybody does it like that because I think that it can be a bit stressful.
But for me, that’s the only way I can really decide what to work on because I don’t want to write a whole thing. It’s honestly, maybe, more about laziness. It’s like, ‘I don’t want to write a whole thing and then find out it doesn’t work and then have wasted my time writing something.’ So I usually have the very core of the idea that I’ll just try on stage and if that gets a laugh, then I’ll think about it more and try to build around it. I’m more of a pile on to a core idea as opposed to a sculptor that’s pulling away.
CBC sent out media screeners for Comedy Night with Rick Mercer and you are in the first episode. With Rick doing stand-up, then having comedians do a short set and then talk to him afterwards has a very late-night feel. SB: I’m obsessed with Rick Mercer. I was a fan of him from Talking to Americans and from his initial rise in Canada. And then I was on tour with him with this JFL tour, which I was not supposed to be on. At the time, I was living in Halifax because I was writing on This Hour Has 22 Minutes and they were just about to start this huge cross country, Rick Mercer, Comedy Night in Canada tour. Debra DiGiovanni was one of the people on it and she was having some visa issues getting back into Canada. So they were starting on the East Coast and they were like, ‘OK, who’s around the East Coast right now that could fill in for a show or two while we wait for Debra to get her paperwork?’ They called me and were like, ‘Hey, can you come babysit Debra’s spot for a couple of nights?’
I said, ‘Of course, I would love to do that. So fun.’ The producer of 22 Minutes let me go and I did first couple shows and it was great. And then Debra still didn’t have her paperwork and they’re like, ‘OK, well let’s bring you all the way through to Ontario.’ And so they brought me there and then Debra came, and they let me stay for the whole tour, with Debra, as well, obviously. Rick was hosting and it was Ali Hassan, Ivan Decker, Debra, Rick and myself. It was really just so fun and so cool.
When he got the Comedy Night in Canada show, I was really excited and it’s really cool because I just really feel like he’s the perfect person to be in a position to do sort of a comedian Letterman-style conversation. I think Canada has always really wanted something like that. I can’t think of somebody that fits the bill more than Rick.
I’m constantly flipping around the TV channels, looking for interesting programs to check out. One of those, Moosemeat & Marmalade, has been on my radar for a while. I’d always catch a stray few minutes here or there, not knowing too much about it. Now I do.
Season 6 of Moosemeat & Marmalade kicks off Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET on APTN, promising more adventures, stories, laughs and—of course—food.
Hosted by Art Napoleon and Dan Hayes, Moosemeat & Marmalade—offered in English, French and Cree— follows bush cook Art (the Moosemeat part of the equation) and the classically-trained chef Dan (the Marmalade) as they seek out culinary adventures worldwide. A slight tweak to this new season has the pair sticking to Western Canada, and I think that’s a good thing.
In Tuesday’s debut, the duo are in Victoria, hunting a critter many of us see loping around our backyard: the grey squirrel. After being given permission by an Elder to hunt the invasive species, Art and Dan are off to meet trapper Mike Webb. Mike, who hunts humanely, explains the greys took a shine to Vancouver Island and quickly began devouring songbirds and their eggs and destroying bird habitats. While they wait for some protein to be caught, the pair forage for sides like nettles before catching up with Emilee Gilpin, who schools Art and Dan on hunting the traditional way, with bow and arrow. Needless to say, Dan is not a natural, leading to many funny moments and gentle teasing. Nor is Art, as it turns out.
“Despite popular belief, not all Indians are good at bow and arrow or canoeing,” Art says to the camera. After collecting several squirrels and a tobacco ceremony, it was time to eat a chicken finger-inspired recipe with potatoes and a nettle salad.
Upcoming instalments feature trips across British Columbia and Saskatchewan, highlighting Indigenous food sovereignty, ethical and sustainable food preparation and practices, and inter-tribal food traditions.
Moosemeat & Marmalade airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on APTN.
