Hit TV series Corner Gas to run out in 2009
KATE TAYLOR AND UNNATI GANDHI, Globe and Mail.com
Jackass! They won't be pumping gas in Dog River, Sask., any more.
Saying he wants to retire at the top of his game, Canadian comedian Brent Butt has announced the sixth season of Corner Gas will be the last. The popular sitcom set in a Saskatchewan gas station will air its final episode some time in spring, 2009.
"It was a very tough decision to make, but it was time," Mr. Butt, the show's star and creator, said in an interview yesterday. "The only way for you to end the show in a way that people are not going to think it's too soon is to do it when it's too late. And Corner Gas, it's too special. I couldn't stand to watch it get to where people were ready for it to leave."
Mr. Butt said broadcaster CTV "was very upfront" about wanting the series to continue, but he told them he wanted viewers to remember the show at its peak.
The sitcom, routinely watched by more than a million viewers on Monday night and hitting the two million mark with special episodes and finales, is considered a breakthrough in Canadian television: a prime-time, made-in-Canada hit on a schedule increasingly given over to U.S. programming.
"If that is the legacy of the show, there would be nothing that could make me prouder," Mr. Butt said. "There are so many funny, talented people in this country who are making about 80 bucks a week telling jokes to drunks. If more of them have the opportunity to do what I did for the last six years, it would be terrific."
The CBC launched a rival show, Little Mosque on the Prairie, in 2006. Set among a 
Muslim community in small-town Saskatchewan, it broke the million-viewer mark in its first season before settling down to a strong second place with an average of about 800,000 viewers this season.
Corner Gas stars Mr. Butt as gas station owner Brent Leroy, Eric Peterson as Brent's father, Oscar (notorious for the epithet "Jackass") and Janet Wright as his mother Emma.
The show has won six Geminis and is seen in 26 countries around the world, including the United States. Mr. Butt said he believes the show is so successful because he and his co-writers didn't go into production with an "agenda."
"The only kind of mandate I put forward to anybody was, 'Walk away from this thinking we made a funny show.' That was it."
While Mr. Butt said his decision was in the best interests of the show, he said he has accepted an offer from CTV to work on future television projects. He hinted at another one-camera comedy.
But for now, he said, his focus will be on completing the final 19 episodes of Corner Gas, which begins production for its final season on May 15.
Nowhere did news of the series' looming end hit harder than in the 400-person town of Rouleau, Sask., where Corner Gas has been shot for the past five years.
Much of the fictional Dog River's attributes, such as the combined liquor and insurance store, are based on Rouleau's existing landscape. The town's grain elevator was repainted to read "Dog River" instead of "Rouleau."
Rouleau's mayor, Allen Kuhlmann, said the show's impact on the town has been tremendous. It has pumped about $800,000 into the economy.
"To put that into context, that's about eight years of taxes in the town," Mr. Kuhlmann said, adding that doesn't include the financial boon from the hundreds of tourists, many international, that often visit in a single day.
"We knew the day was coming some day that Corner Gas wouldn't be there any more, but that doesn't make it any less painful."
*The Globe and Mail
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