Montreal: The Tournament, a new mockumentary series for CBC, centers on a small town’s peewee hockey team and the obsessive hockey parents pushing their tiny champs towards an all-important novice tournament in Chateauguay, QC.
The $3.1-million series will kick off Jan. 3, 2005 with a one-hour pilot on CBC primetime followed by five half-hour episodes. The Tournament, currently shooting, brought An American in Canada creator Howard Busgang together with the creators of Just For Laughs to form a new Montreal production company, Adjacent 2 Entertainment.
Courtesy our sister publication Playback, November 8

Could an edgy show with lots of sex and swearing, ample nudity and four really hot women help boost homegrown television? Two of the country’s top producers think so and have come together on a gritty, new HBO-style comedy.

CTV has a new MOW in production called A Friend of the Family. Alberta Filmworks is coproducing the $4-million TV movie with Toronto’s Slanted Wheel Entertainment, for delivery February 11. Laura Harris (24, Dead Like Me), Eric Johnson (Smallville) and Kim Coates (Pearl Harbor) star in the story about notorious rapist and murderer David Snow.
Courtesy of our sister publication Playback (October 11)

Over the last four years, broadcasters across North America have been abandoning the traditional September-to-May TV season in favor of premiering new programs throughout the year, even during the summer season, long thought to be a ratings wasteland. For some, the new approach has quickly paid dividends, but other broadcasters continue to struggle.