Aden Young and Kathleen Munroe in Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, Season 2. The show has earned 20 nominations at the 13th annual CSAs.Steve Wilkie/Lark Productions/Supplied
Thank the hockey gods: With no NHL playoff game scheduled for this Sunday evening, the 13th annual Canadian Screen Awards will air live on CBC television, a last-minute reversal of the original plan in which the gala would be exclusively live-streamed on CBC Gem.
The move to not telecast the CSAs was first announced this past March, a decision that would have marked the first time, other than the pandemic-era years of 2020 and 2021, the gala highlighting the best in Canadian film, television and digital media would not be broadcast on CBC either in a live or pre-taped format. Tammy Frick, chief executive officer of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, noted at the time that there was a higher level of accessibility and flexibility by moving solely to CBC Gem.
“Being on a streaming platform affords us an opportunity to engage with audiences in a different way,” Frick said this past spring, noting that the academy would be able to air a longer show on Gem than the one-hour slot it received from CBC in 2024.
But with the potential conflict of hockey now out of the way, the CBC’s linear broadcast network will be able to air the entire two-hour CSA show, which will be hosted by comedian Lisa Gilroy. (The show will also be live-streamed on CBC Gem at the same time.)
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The last-minute, back-and-forth switch might not have been necessary, though, had the academy scheduled its awards for an earlier date on the calendar far away from any NHL playoffs. In the past, the CSAs have been held in early April, with the academy only shifting to late May last year.
“We do look at all of that when we contemplate times of the year, but we found that the timing of the end of May works on so many other levels that we want it to remain static in our place on the calendar,” Frick said this week, noting that this time of year aligns with the upfront season, in which broadcasters gather advertisers in Toronto to showcase their wares, and is sandwiched between the Cannes and Banff media festivals.
“All I can say at this point is we’d like to be consistent with this timeline. What that looks like from a streaming or broadcast perspective might change.”
In terms of the kind of show the academy hopes to deliver this year, host Gilroy says she’s learning from such past emcees as Mae Martin to focus on the kind of “juicy awards” material that balances entertaining general audiences while honouring members of the industry.
“We’re going to be a mix of pre-tape and live monologue – it’s going to be an action-packed show, and bringing some manic energy to it,” says the L.A.-based Gilroy, who has been spending the past few weeks writing the show with fellow Canadian comedians Natalie Metcalfe and Mark Little. “You know Pixy Stix, those little tubes of sugar? I’m going to be like that – a little of me goes a long way.”
This year’s CSAs – whose major nominees include Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent with 20 nominations and Matthew Rankin’s Winnipeg-set comedy Universal Language, with 13 nods – arrives at a particularly poignant time for Canadian culture, given the trade-war tensions with the country’s neighbours to the south.
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“I’m so proud and excited to be doing this now, because our country is not for sale, and because we’re getting push-back from the States, it’s giving us a chance to show that we’re here and we’ve always been here, and we’re proud,” says Gilroy, who got her start on YTV’s The Zone before scoring roles on such U.S. productions as Hulu’s Interior Chinatown and Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ series The Studio. “We’re Canadian – we’re not going to always be shouting it from the rooftops like Americans are. But if you push us, we’d love to tell you how much our country means to us.”
What the CSAs mean to the country, though, is another question, with the show having struggled to engage audiences over the past several years. The 2024 show, in which director Matt Johnson’s comedy BlackBerry swept the awards, earned an average audience of 141,000 in the “2+” age market – a 4-per-cent increase over the previous year’s broadcast – but a 32-per-cent dip when it came to the coveted “25-54” demographic. Meanwhile, the show’s performance on CBC Gem was unknown, as the service does not publicly disclose viewership figures.
“We work beyond the actual broadcast. It’s about capturing those special moments during the show, and making sure we have eyes on them, whether it’s through social media, word of mouth and people seeking it out after. We look at all of that as part of the success story.”
The 2025 Canadian Screen Awards will air on CBC on June 1 at 8 p.m. EST, and also be available on CBC Gem.
