The 10th annual Canadian Screen Awards are heading back to the CBC this year.George Pimentel
The 10th annual Canadian Screen Awards are heading back to the CBC this year, albeit virtually.
On Monday, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television announced plans for its 2022 Canadian Screen Awards, which celebrate the best in homegrown film, television and digital media. This year’s marquee gala will be broadcast on CBC and streamer CBC Gem April 10 at 8 p.m. ET, though owing to the uncertainty of the pandemic, the show will not be live but in the form of an hour-long pretaped studio production.
Featuring the sketch comedy troupe TallBoyz whose eponymous series runs on CBC, and produced in partnership with Toronto-based production company Makers, the CSA gala will feature a “selection of prominent categories” and tributes to this year’s Special Award recipients, who include TSN host Kayla Grey, broadcaster Amanda Parris, journalist Kathleen Newman-Bremang and actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan.
Last year’s CSAs were also a pretaped affair, but were live-streamed on the Canadian Academy’s social-media channels instead of being broadcast on the CBC, as had been the case for all previous in-person CSA telecasts. (Last year’s big winners included the film Beans, which won both the Best First Feature Film Award and Best Picture, and CBC’s Schitt’s Creek, which won Best Comedy Series).
While some entertainment industry ceremonies are scheduled to go the in-person route – the 2022 Academy Awards are set for a live presentation March 27 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, while the Juno Awards will be held May 15 at the open-air Budweiser Stage in Toronto – the spectre of ever-shifting public-health restrictions has forced other organizations to pivot to digital presentations (IDA Documentary Awards, ACE Eddie Awards) or to shift dates to later in the spring (Critics’ Choice Awards, Grammys).
“The pandemic has disrupted the status quo, but it has given the Canadian Academy the chance to examine what it means to honour the artistic contributions of our Canadian creators and how we bring our marquee show into the homes of Canadians across the country,” Beth Janson, chief executive of the Canadian Academy, said in a statement. “We are excited to work alongside the CBC to once again celebrate these incredible creators with a reinvention of the award show as we know it.”
This year’s Canadian Screen Week, which culminates with the marquee CSA gala, will also take place in an entirely virtual format. Nine separate shows, featuring a host filmed live in a closed studio setting, will be live-streamed from April 4 through April 8 via the Canadian Academy’s social-media channels. Winners will use virtual meeting platforms to deliver acceptance speeches from their homes.
The nominees for this year’s CSAs will be announced Feb. 15 at 7 a.m.
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Barry Hertz