CBS to air Canadian cop drama
p2pnet news | TV:- It’s an ill in wind which blows no good and with the writers’ strike still unresolved in America and ratings falling, the CBS is buying the US rights to Flashpoint, a Canadian-made police drama slated for CTV.
With ‘Sniper’ as the working title, Flashpoint centers on a unit called Strategic Response Unit, based on Toronto’s real-life Emergency Task Force.
“They are highly-skilled enforcement officers that rescue hostages, bust gangs, and defuse bombs,” says CTV.
“The SRU are also trained to get inside a suspect’s head and find their emotional breaking point, or the ‘flashpoint,’ which triggered the crisis.”
This announcement comes, “after most of the major U.S. networks have thrown their pilot season into disarray by cancelling a number of production deals as they grapple with the strike that began in November,” says the Globe & Mail.
“If the strike drags on, industry watchers predict other conventional broadcasters will try to stock their programming shelves with other Canadian-made shows.
“Strong contenders are rumoured to include The Listener (a series from Shaftesbury Films about a telepathic young paramedic picked up last December by CTV, and now apparently on NBC’s radar) as well as CBC-TV’s new drama, The Border (currently being actively pitched at the trade convention for TV executives in Las Vegas this week).”
Flashpoint will be the first Canadian series since CTV’s “Due South” aired in network primetime in both Canada and the United States in 1994, says CTV, adding CBS has picked up 13 episodes.
Production begins in April in Toronto.
In the wings, “NBC Universal aims to shake up the way it does business, particularly with its pilot development and ‘upfront’ presentations,” president and CEO Jeff Zucker told the National Association of Television Program Executives’ 2008 Conference and Exhibition (NATPE) yesterday, according to Reuters.
NBC will take more projects, “straight to series, without pilots; green-light five or six pilots a year; sign fewer development deals; and likely forgo its glitzy May ‘upfront’ presentation in favor of meeting with advertisers one on one,” said Zucker.
Also See:
CTV - New CTV series ‘Flashpoint’ picked up by CBS, January 28, 2008
Globe & Mail – CBS scoops up drama from CTV, January 30, 2008
Reuters – NBC’s Zucker outlines new approach to TV programming, January 30, 2008
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