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Guy Jodoin holds up his trophy for best game show host at the Gala Artis awards ceremony in Montreal, Sunday, April, 28, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Photograph by: Graham Hughes , THE CANADIAN PRESS
Quebec TV lovers pick their favourites
There is much that?s unique about the Qu?b?cois TV scene. For starters, folks here actually almost exclusively watch homegrown shows in the language of Tremblay. The Top 20 shows are always at least 90 per cent made-in-Quebec, a state of affairs that?s the envy of TV producers and network executives in the rest of Canada.
And it can be a ferociously competitive milieu, as evidenced by the sometimes bitter infighting that goes on between public broadcaster Radio-Canada Television and TVA. But in spite of all the success and the ratings competition, it remains a small, tightly knit community and Sunday night at the Gala Artis, the TV milieu felt like one big family more than anything else.
The awards ceremony was held at Th??tre Denise-Pelletier on Ste. Catherine St. E. and was broadcast live on the TVA Network.
This TV awards show is akin to a Quebec version of the People?s Choice Awards. The winners used to be decided by voters who cast their ballots via Tim Hortons ? I?m not making this up! ? or through various Quebecor publications. When that was the voting system, the awards show didn?t have an enormous amount of credibility and it tended to be a gala by and for TVA stars. (TVA is owned by Quebecor.)
But a few years back, they began picking the winners using a L?ger Marketing survey that polls thousands of Quebecers regarding their favourite TV stars. Since then, the Gala Artis has been much more inclusive and with the survey, the winners have come from both TVA and Radio-Canada. And that was the case again Sunday.
In fact, the two top winners, Claude Legault and Guylaine Tremblay, won for their starring roles in Radio-Canada series. Legault nabbed the hardware as male personality of the year and Tremblay was voted female personality. And it made perfect sense they won those prestigious trophies since they star in the two hottest scripted shows of the past TV season.
Legault plays the Montreal police office Ben Chartier in the terrific 19-2, the gritty cop series that is one of the first examples of the sort of in-your-face, often-disturbing police dramas that have been a staple on American cable networks for years. Tremblay plays a prisoner in the most talked-about series of the past 12 months, Unit? 9, a gripping drama set in a women?s prison in Quebec.
Both shows are great examples of the top-notch production done here en fran?ais.
The top-rated series this season was La Voix, the local take on the international format The Voice, and La Voix regularly pulled in 2.6 million viewers every Sunday night. La Voix host Charles Lafortune unsurprisingly won for best variety show host. If anything the surprise was that he didn?t also win as personality of the year given La Voix?s monster ratings.
Guy A. Lepage, one of the province?s most popular TV personalities, won as best talk-show host and in his acceptance speech, he gave a shout-out to La Voix, in spite of the fact that Lepage?s Tout le monde en parle and La Voix were locked in a heated ratings battle for much of the season.
He laughed backstage when asked if he was discouraged by the fact that Tout le monde en parle?s audience dipped when going head-to-head with La Voix.
?I don?t know if you?ve ever done something with an audience of one million people, but I don?t find that discouraging,? said Lepage.
He said he bears no ill will toward La Voix.
?I?m not in competition with any other show,? said Lepage. ?When I see a show that?s good, I?m happy about that, and La Voix was very good.?
I mentioned to Lepage that it?s pretty amazing that with 2.6 million people watching La Voix and another million glued to Rad-Can checking out the smart talk on Tout le monde en parle, that?s an enormous chunk of Quebec?s population watching two networks. It?s the kind of market share that?s simply unimaginable in the U.S. or the rest of Canada.
?It?s a false discussion to talk about ratings when your audience can fill several Olympic Stadiums,? said Lepage.
In the end, the Gala Artis is all about the health of our TV biz chez nous. Franco audiences like their local franco series and that?s why there was nothing to grumble about at Sunday?s night gala, hosted by comic Mario Tessier.
?It?s a gala for the public,? said Legault, on stage to accept the trophy as best actor, TV series. ?Thanks for liking TV. I?ve always been a big TV fan ever since I was a little kid.?
bkelly@montrealgazette.com
Twitter:@brendanshowbiz
? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Show+Chez+Nous+Gala+Artis/8307692/story.html
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