As a bittersweet year for scripted TV winds down, the Canadian industry is still struggling to get people to watch its shows.

One distressing trend apparent at the close of 2005 is that even some of the most critically acclaimed efforts of Canadian producers are not connecting with large numbers of viewers.

Nothing epitomized this more than the CTV journo drama The Eleventh Hour, which CTV pulled off life support earlier this year. The drama series, launched by Alliance Atlantis Communications - when it still did that kind of thing - won the recent Gemini Award for best drama series (for the second time in three seasons) but never found a sizable audience. In its lifespan, the program often drew about 400,000 viewers, one-third the number once achieved by the CTV/Alliance Atlantis legal drama The Associates, which it ostensibly replaced. And The Associates ultimately got canceled for low ratings and weak international sales.

So what went wrong?

Producers often blame the so-called drama crisis on mild broadcaster support, but, in this case, the broadcaster was actually getting thanked.

"To think that CTV actually agonized for three months whether or not to order a fourth season is a great example of their confidence in the show," said show producer Peter Simpson, who is known to speak his mind, backstage after the Geminis.

Perhaps the issue-driven series was too earnest for its own good. I recall when Fox premiered Melrose Place in 1992, that show was awfully earnest itself, featuring as it did a social worker as one of its central characters. It was revamped to become a sleazy, over-the-top soaper, and only then did it catch on. The Eleventh Hour tried to sex things up in its final season, but that wasn't enough.

Meanwhile, two days after The Eleventh Hour gang shed tears on stage for the mere 200,000 who tuned in to the Geminis (and that's another story), off in New York, CBC's The Newsroom snagged the International Emmy for best comedy series. Ken Finkleman's now-defunct satirical take on the egos and inanity that thrive off-camera on a TV news program was drawing even smaller numbers than The Eleventh Hour.

The plight of these shows is not endemic to Canadian television. In the case of The Newsroom, a comparison can be made to Arrested Development, the wacky, hilarious series about a capital-D dysfunctional family in the real estate business. Despite an ardent fan base and a U.S. Emmy Award, Fox - which made its name on out-there comedy - announced it was giving the Bluth clan the axe, as the show was recently recording four million viewers in a market 10 times the size of Canada, putting its numbers on par with The Newsroom.

The bottom line would seem to be that satire doesn't sell in Peoria, and it doesn't sell in Brandon, either.

The challenge, then, is to strike the right balance between cleverness and popular appeal - and, if you've gotten that far, pray your broadcaster will promote your show properly.