You will no longer hear these classic phrases from Pierre Bruneau, Gino Chouinard or Dave Morissette at the microphone of the Artis gala: it is for you that I practice this profession, it is an enormous privilege to enter your living rooms every day. , thank you for your loyalty and your love.
Posted at 7:08 p.m.
It’s kaput for the Artis gala. Ter-mi-na-do. While gala ratings are collapsing across North America, TVA has torpedoed its audience award after 36 editions. No more golden statuettes attributed by a notoriety survey conducted by the firm Léger.
The reasons ? Logical and honest, really. According to TVA, “what used to be a guarantee of success is no longer always so relevant today. This is the case with traditional galas, which no longer correspond exactly to their original mission. Moreover, the interest for this kind of evenings is in decline throughout the world”.
How can you contradict this statement? That’s a fact. Viewers shun galas, and not just because of the pandemic. Too long, redundant, predictable, not punchy enough, disconnected from reality, the reasons to zap – or to connect to Netflix or Crave – multiply like the thanks of Guylaine Tremblay, recipient of 23 trophies.
Consequence: the Artis gala lost a third of its audience between 2019 and 2021, slipping from 1,728,000 to 1,176,000 viewers. Clarification: the Artis award was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19.
Even with the best captain in town, Louis-José Houde, the last ADISQ gala at Radio-Canada drew only 677,000 music lovers, down sharply from its 1,015,000 fans in 2020 and its 1,230 000 followers in 2019.
As for the Les Olivier Gala, which should have been an email, according to host François Bellefeuille, it was almost beaten by Big Brother Celebrities on Noovo. Final score: 676,000 for the comedians and 644,000 for the comical Mecs alliance (plus Karl).
The formula of the Artis gala, which bore the name of MétroStar in its infancy, dates from a bygone era. It was the time when “voters” filled out coupons in Le Journal de Montréal or at Tim Hortons. A time when generalist TV outrageously dominated the ratings. And a time when the stars did not have as many platforms to exchange with their admirers.
We are no longer there at all. Today, with Instagram or Twitter, artists chat directly with their fans, comment on their Facebook statuses and thank them for following them in their projects. This contact is instantaneous and updated almost daily.
The Julie Snyder and Véronique Cloutier, for example, perfectly master these digital tools, which break down the barrier traditionally separating the star from the good people, in big quotes, of course.
Photo Hugo-Sébastien AUBERT, LA PRESSE archives
Véronique Cloutier receives the Personality of the Year trophy in 2012
In this context where “likes” replace prizes, the Artis gala is no longer of much use. The love of the public, members of showbiz see and receive it every day, on a panoply of different screens. What’s the point of orchestrating a glittery evening for them to thank them for existing?
It is obsolete, even archaic, as a process. Especially since the list of nominees to the Artis – always conventional and agreed – no longer reflected the diversity of the Quebec media universe or the rise of digital platforms.
TVA made the right decision by unplugging its popular festival, which shines the spotlight on Radio-Canada, the only channel to broadcast galas here. But for how much longer?
Our galas live on borrowed time. First, the current rectitude – and the fear of causing a scandal! – purge the texts of any bite, which makes the celebrations smoother than a botoxed face. Also, the experienced animators, the best, do not rush to monopolize these risky contracts. Leading a gala is six months of upstream work (brainstorming, filming thumbnails, rehearsals), in addition to promotion, for a fairly low fixed fee, well-informed spies tell me. Same situation for experienced authors, who pocket a lot more money by writing elsewhere than for a gala.
Who now has the taste to a) screw up in front of an entire industry and b) take very harsh criticism the next day? The game is no longer worth the candle.
Also, Radio-Canada co-produces these ceremonies with professional associations, which have aims that are more corporate than artistic, let’s say. Behind the scenes, it’s a war to determine who will appear on stage or what prizes will be awarded on Sunday evening. There are big clique issues and the conflicts go all the way up to senior management, I am told.
The problem is that the cultural mandate of Radio-Canada imposes these galas that are energy-consuming and complex to organize, and that no one is watching anymore. How to get out of this quagmire?
Conspiracy theorists will argue that the last Gala Québec Cinéma was a well-calculated act of radio-Canadian self-sabotage. After such a disaster, who will raise their shield to denounce the death of this boring party? There it is, the exit door.