Street Cents is YOUR 100% Canadian show. Although we’re based mainly out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, we have people working for us all over the country so that all voices and issues can be heard and represented.

Gelareh and Allie

Eli

Gelareh and Allie are the hosts of Street Cents and they are joined by Halifax reporter Eli.

We know you’re wondering – so we’re gonna tell you. Here’s how a show comes together at Street Cents: Every week we all meet for a big story meeting. Everybody brings a few ideas and we brainstorm and develop the ideas all together. We’re constantly watching commercials, talking to people, and reading different mags, newspapers, websites and blogs looking for ideas would be good to do on Street Cents and be of interest to all of you. We get story ideas from lots of different places…but we get our best story ideas from our viewers who write or talk to us – that’s one of the reasons why we love to hear from you!

Story Meeting

At these story meetings we decide what ideas would make a great Street Test, what we need to check out, what’s fit for The Pit and what the issues are that we should be taking a deeper look at. Our Senior and Executive Producers then look over all the ideas that have been pitched and decide which ones will make it into a particular episode.

Once the story ideas have been chosen, the Street Cents research team gets to work. They are the ones that “chase” a story to find out if it’s viable or not and sort between what’s fact and what’s fiction. They call, email and visit with all the experts possible to ensure that the story that you see has all the right info and that nothing has been left out.

Ken calls around for the perfect shoot location.

From the researchers’ hands the story passes to the field-producers who take all the information and make it into a script if it’s a host or reporter fronted story. Or if it’s not, the producers will find volunteers from local schools to participate and give their opinions in the story. It’s the field producers’ job to scout out good locations for shoots, to find the right props and in some cases, depending on the story, to hire actors. Once all the scenes have been shot for a particular story which can take one or two days – the producers take the raw tape to the edit suite where they work their magic with an editor to bring to life what was, not so long ago, only an idea in our heads.

Once all of the items are complete, the Street Cents post-producer pieces it all together to create the final flow of commercial-free stories you see on your TV.

The camera operators, lighting techs, producer Jenn and Eli huddle in for the low-down on the next shot.

But there’s no time to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, because the next story meeting is approaching and we’ve got to do it all over again!