No ‘Rah-Rah Canada’ for Amazon Studios: Streamer On the Hunt for Half-Hour Formats That Aren’t Uber-Canadian

variety.com:

Amber Dowling Amazon Studios wants to beef up its content library in Canada. And the quickest way to do that, according to Brent Haynes, the studio’s head of originals in Canada, is with half-hour formats. “With the exception of ‘Three Pines,’ we are doing half-hours and that’s because they help quickly build our library.

But, that is also one of the gaps in our programming,” Haynes said recently during a Content Canada session in Toronto. “A lot of our other territories are doing one-hours and crime dramas, so we don’t need to repeat that,” he continued. “We are aware of what’s coming out around the world and we try to each make something that would help our other territories.” In order to achieve that robust library, Haynes revealed the goal is to have anywhere from 5 to 10 shows in development at a time. “In our minds, every single one of those is going to go,” he said. “We’re not naïve to think they all will, because they fall apart and our needs change.

But we’re finding because we love it, we want to make it.” Specifically, Haynes is looking for local and unique stories that have a global appeal.

What he’s not looking for are limited series or shows that are “hyper-localized” and inaccessible to mass audiences. “We want a unique Canadian perspective on everything,” he explained. “We’re not trying to tell stories that are rah-rah Canada, or are uber-Canadian, or check boxes that say, ‘This is what’s Canadian.’ But we do want something that we feel is unique to the territory,” he continued. “It has to hit a bar and that bar is really, really high.