The Bell Media Upfront25 held Thursday at Meridian Hall in Toronto may be the best Canadian upfront I’ve ever attended.
Bell does it old school. They rent the biggest hall, fly in the most stars and crank up the open bar for the ad community. They have the advantage of going last and thus can be the most recent to say “we won the year” or “the morning” or “sports,” juggling data whichever way it takes to leave that impression with their audience.
Putting together a 90-minute sales pitch is still a show and if you are a media company you better be able to entertain while making a compelling case for advertisers to buy “upfront” of a season. Bell did that better than any other media company this June. Let’s break things down:
Time: Bell started at the crack of 4 pm. CBC’s very long launch, which I watched virtually from home, took at least ten minutes to start while an off-screen voice kept urging folks to take their seats. As Air Farce’s Dave Broadfoot once told me, “Never let your audience get cold.” Bell also brought their show in at 90 minutes plus two and that slight overtime was pretty much caused when Tom Green insisted on explaining his series “Funny Farm.” It’s all in the title, Tom.
The Presenters: eTalk hosts Tyrone Edwards, Elaine Lui and Traci Melchor set the tone Thursday. They were well rehearsed, kept things fun and steered the show through all the clips and talent intros. Melchor could barely be heard over her glittering, sequenced purple jumpsuit, very Bob Mackie. Edwards’ T-shirt cannon was a bit much but the event needed a little genuine mayhem by the three-quarter point.
The Network Suits: often this is where things bog down, sorta like when the accountants from Price Waterhouse wreck The Oscars. Lui made Bell Media President Sean Cohan and Senior Vice-President Business Solutions Matt McGowan seem almost human on eTalk‘s big red couch. It’s not easy to read off a giant TelePromTer way at the back of a three thousand seat house, but Cohan seemed ready for his close up. There was no further clutter of network execs.
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The Talent: In past years, CTV has air lifted everyone from the cast of The Sopranos to several Desperate Housewives across the border. No expense was spared milking the star power. Those days are over, and the modern day Bell bean counters make sure that the talent can all fit into the same Uber ride. Chad Michael Murray (Sullivan’s Crossing) may have been the biggest name imported Thursday. Otherwise the stars were familiar network names such as TSN’s James Duthie, NFL commentator Luke Willson, Mary Berg and news anchor Omar Sachedina. In this year when we’re all waving the flag, that actually helped make things look more Canadian.
The Shows: Upfronts used to be all about the seven to ten new network imports a network had brought home from the Hollywood screenings for their main broadcast platform. With the American nets standing pat or only adding three shows and very few scripted offerings, new has less of an impact this spring. CTV has not had the best record in replenishing their lineups with hits in the past few years, Tracker aside. So Donnie Wahlberg’s new Boston-based Blue Bloods spinoff? Sure, why not, that was a gimmie and they didn’t even have to fly him north. Ditto franchise extension 9-1-1: Nashville. These are deals that you don’t even have to zip down to Hollywood to trigger.
The Message: This is why I think this year’s Bell Upfront was their best — it was seamless. There were almost no charts and graphs. You had to look close or be in the know when it came to the stats that were shared. Bell says CTV is No. 1 with Canadian viewers for the 24th straight year but they never had to base that on a particular demo before. TSN claims they are Canada’s most-watched sports network — on a monthly basis. Crave is coming off its best year ever (thanks mainly to The White Lotus). Find a way to say that you won. All the networks do it, wherever they can find it.
What I admired about Bell’s sales pitch was that they didn’t bury it in a lot of technical garble. It was easy and clear to see their integration between all their platforms and the way things would be measured. It was friendly, fleeting and compelling.
The Can-Con: All the media companies, even Bell, have to spend less. TV shows aren’t cheap, and streaming rivals are ramping up those “with ads” platforms. What is the best bang for your buck? Throw money at a beloved Canadian like Martin Short, steal some of his Muskoka cottage time and put him in a Montreal-based summer version of a favourite franchise such as Match Game, and fill in the blank (cheque). Bring back proven franchise winners such as Traitors Canada and The Amazing Race Canada. Like City, Bell is taking their various regional morning shows and stringing together a national edition. Morning Live on CTV will become CTV Your Morning merging elements from Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and across the regions.
Need to wave the flag further? Have the dudes from Shoresy take the stage hoisting beers and announce that Jared Keeso is working on his next Comedy Network hit.
In other scripted news, The upcoming Crave series The Borderline with Stephen Amell, Hamza Haq (both in the house Thursday) and Minnie Driver is a timely pickup given it is about cross-border smuggling. Another that jumped out for me: Hockey Fanatics, a perfect Canadian idea in that it is hockey-based and relatively inexpensive: talk to famous Canadians such as Mike Myers, Jason Priestley, Jay Baruchel and a few American stars about their favourite hockey teams. Eight episodes you don’t even have to bend over to pick up.
The Screen. If you are selling visual content, put it on the best possible screen. The giant one on stage at the Merridan was the star of the show Thursday. Holy cow the resolution. Everything looked sensational. At Corus, the screen cacked part way through with techies scrambling to re-boot the system (they did). At CBC, according to people who were there, the side screens looked borrowed from your parent’s basement.
The Food: The whole point of the Bell Upfront is to get happy ad buyers to the free bar asap. The Bell nosh was tasty and plentiful, with brisket and veggie samples, sliders and breaded shrimp, a tuna noodle dish, all hot and in full circulation. None of those cake-y cookies with the leather-y, not-made-from-nature icing and the inked logos or pics of the Big Bang Theory. Novelties yes but you might as well go straight to St. Michaels up the street later to have them removed from your colon.
The Extras: Even Bell is cutting back. They used to rent out the Meridian basement level with stations and photo ops and nooks where the stars went to chill. You could have played ball hockey down there Thursday. There was a big Oscar statue you could stand next to for a selfie, or you could pet Tom Green’s dog. Out the door you could grab a soccer scarf.
The Crowd: The place was packed, an unimaginable gathering during the worst COVID years. It seemed younger as well, and energized.
The Highlight: Tom Green singing the theme to The Littilest Hobo.
