Gwen Jones McCauley: "We look to acquire meaningful, thought-provoking stories"

CBC & Radio-Canada Distribution is the international content licensing arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - Canada’s English language national public broadcaster and Radio-Canada - Canada’s French language national broadcaster. The company works closely with independent producers to finance, showcase, market, and sell their content. Mia Desroches heads up the Radio-Canada team, focusing on Scripted and Kids content, while Gwen Jones McCauley heads up the CBC team, where she oversees Unscripted content and Formats.

"We have an incredible talent pool here in Canada to work with, composed of some of the best storytellers in the world. We have an extensive library of programs with over a thousand hours of programming," detailed Gwen Jones McCauley in an exclusive chat with Señal News. On the unscripted side, CBC & Radio-Canada Distribution has had a lot of success with its 4K nature series "Wild Canadian Year" (4x52) which they sold across nineteen territories. The series was created by award-winning producer Jeff Turner, and CBC is currently selling the follow-up "Wild Canadian Weather" (4x52). Other highlights include the Sandra Oh narrated "Trimates" (2x52), which tells the story of how Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas inspired the next generation of women primatologists, and history documentary "Prosecuting Evil" (1x52), which follows the story of the extraordinary Nuremberg trial lawyer and social justice advocate, Ben Ferencz.

CBC & Radio-Canada Distribution has also just introduced several new unscripted titles at MIPTV, including: "The New Human" (1x52) follows evolutionary biologists as they predict the next step of human evolution. "Ice And Fire: Tracking Earth’s Climate Crisis" (1x52) explores how scientists are using data to predict the impact of climate change on our environments in order to build innovative tools to combat it. "Gespe’gewa’gi: The Last Land" (13x30) is a high-stakes factual entertainment series set in an Indigenous commercial fishing community. "The past few years with the pandemic have offered us a unique opportunity, and we’ve embraced new ways of doing business. We’re certainly taking those lessons with us into this year. That being said, we’re thrilled to be traveling to markets again - there’s nothing quite like connecting with buyers in person," noted Jones McCauley.

CBC & Radio-Canada Distribution has content across various genres, but "the common theme for us is that we look to acquire meaningful, thought-provoking stories that you can really sink your teeth into and that have international appeal," she specified. "In terms of tapping into specific territories, we are looking to broaden our reach in Latin America, as we have a growing selection of Spanish dubbed unscripted content available that we’re excited to present to broadcasters," she added.

FORMATS CATALOGUE
The Canadian distributor has just launched a dedicated formats catalogue. "We’ve had a lot of success with our cooking competition, 'Fridge Wars', the German adaptation is set to premiere on Sat.1 this month. We feel there is a lot of opportunity there, and we’re excited to be growing that side of the business. We’re also picking up more series, and have a few exciting projects in the pipeline," she concluded.

By Romina Rodríguez