What does it take to get — and keep — diverse stories on Canadian TV?

CBC's The Porter isn't getting picked up for a second season, despite leading the Canadian Screen Awards with 19 nominations.

TV creators RT Thorne, Floyd Kane and Zoe Leigh Hopkins join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud take stock of the Canadian TV landscape, its financial reliance on networks abroad and the challenges in getting diverse Canadian stories on the air.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: RT, I'm going to start with you. Let's talk about The Porter and how it must have felt a little bit disorienting to have, in the same period of time, all of these CSA nominations and also finding out that the show is not returning for another season. Take me through the experience. What was that like?

RT Thorne: It's incredibly bittersweet, you know? I mean, on the one side, it's a beautiful thing. A show is such an insane endeavor. You pour so much of your soul into these projects; BIPOC creators, you pour so much of yourselves into these works, and they take a lot out of you over the years, so it was incredibly gratifying to see the show being recognized like that — and not only the show, but also our crew, the craftspeople that really put their work in — from our peers in the academy. But then the day after, you get the announcement that we're not continuing with the season that we thought we were continuing with. So, you know, it's heartbreaking. I can't lie. We had so much more story to tell on the show. But you have to make sure that that you are at peace with your work, with the work that you put in there and the people that it has touched. And you have to keep that in your in your heart and try to move forward.

Elamin: In your answer there, RT, I hear sadness. I also hear the struggle of trying to get a show like this made. Let me ask you, Floyd: you ran Diggstown. That was the first primetime drama in Canada to be led by a black woman. It ran for four seasons. Set the scene for us. How difficult is it to find a television show in Canada without the help of networks abroad?

Floyd: It's almost impossible. The the reality is, to make a show at a budget level where it's internationally competitive, you have to have that international piece to the financing. Most of the times that comes in the form of an international distributor, but sometimes that comes in the form of a U.S. partner. And it's across the board — whether the show is led by racialized protagonists or not, across the board it's extremely challenging to get television made in this country. But what I would say is that for a show with a racialized protagonist, it's twice as hard, if not more so.

Elamin: Zoe, Jennifer Kawaja — who's an executive producer on The Porter — told the Canadian Press that when they tried to find another network to replace BET+, the response that they often got was, "we're not really interested in a Canadian point of view." Does that sound familiar to you?

Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. I think that as an Indigenous media maker, I think that we have also the added constraint of people saying, "Indigenous stuff doesn't sell," and that's a double whammy. I think that things are changing a little bit, with seeing all the big prizes Indigenous films are winning, but I think that at the industry at large, especially overseas, it's like really catching up up to that still.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.