While the Gémeaux Awards gala attracts criticism from all sides every year, host Pierre-Yves Lord plans to adopt a more unifying tone during the ceremony this Sunday, which will not prevent him from sharing certain aspects that bother him in the Quebec television horizon.
“The controller no longer looks like the controller I used to have. On the new connected TVs, there are three buttons: volume, Netflix and Prime. I have nothing against that, but when my children hold that controller, what do they do?” he explained in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press.
“If I want to listen to “Lakay Nou”, if I want to listen to “Les Chefs”, if I want to listen to the hockey game, what do I do? […] I feel like sometimes I have to make an effort as a viewer to find content.”
Will Lord’s words be the ones that will stir up controversy this year? “No, no. But we have to be aware of the world we live in.”
He emphasizes that this gala remains a celebration, where we must celebrate what has been done in local television.
Pierre-Yves Lord is hosting the gala for a second year, after taking over from Véronique Cloutier. But new quarrels have arisen in the past year: production companies are boycotting the gala, which means that the very popular show “STAT” will be largely absent from the categories.
Fans of the series will still be able to vote for it as part of the “Prix Gémeaux du public Fonds Cogeco”. The show will compete against nine other popular series.
Pierre-Yves Lord says he wants to offer a more unifying evening, despite these notable absences.
“It remains the party of television. There are people who are going to win prizes, who are going to experience great emotions on stage and I roll out the red carpet for them,” he explained.
“This is an opportunity where all positions move to the same position. […] There are few shows that praise all shows, across all channels.
Asked if he himself had any television favourites this year, Lord preferred to keep them to himself, so as not to give the impression that the choice of winners was influenced by him.
“I listen to everything. I tried to take a look at everything that was underlined, everything that was named,” he stressed.
After this year of devouring Quebec television and cinematographic works, he also believes that they should be shared more in schools so that young people do not have to “guess” Quebec culture.
And that is also why he wants to get the message across to make local television more accessible, with modern tools.
“We must put it in their hands; we must not blame them for not knowing who Micheline Lanctôt is. […] It must be accessible at your fingertips.
“If we stay in our small ecosystems […] When something is too hard to find, you give up and everyone loses.”