TORONTO – The new board of the new Canadian Media Fund launching in April is new and much smaller – with a much more prominent voice from the companies which must funnel a piece of their revenue into it – but how, exactly, will the administration of this $300 million money pot change as compared to the old CTF?
The BDUs (Rogers, Shaw, Bell, et al), which have to contribute 5% of their revenues to this fund to create Canadian content challenged the way it was run almost three years ago and said they should have more say in how it works. Last year, they got their wish when Heritage Minister James Moore created a new fund, combining the $288 million Canadian Television Fund with the $14 million New Media Fund, after digesting a CRTC report on the CTF to his predecessor as minister.
On Wednesday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, over 300 industry stakeholders gathered for the Hogtown focus group – part of a series of cross-Canada gatherings intended to hear from as many folks as possible before finally deciding on what the new fund will look and act like.
Some of us media types were allowed to observe today’s proceedings (so we have to say it was interesting to hear the traditional Cancon TV types who make documentaries about Canada for Canada in the same room with the video game folks who must design their content for a global stage. “Space Beaver Games” would have a limited audience, said one developer.)
The current executive of the CTF (including president Valerie Creighton) is leading the focus groups, which have identified two streams of funding: Convergent and Experimental, as Cartt.ca has previously reported.
Convergent is more along the lines of the traditional CTF, where funded projects will have to have some sort of multiplatform component to go along with its must-have platform, TV. And is regular TV and cable VOD two platforms, asked one?
And why isn’t YouTube considered VOD anyway, asked another?
Experimental – which is a bit of a misnomer, Creighton acknowledged, is funding for cutting-edge, interactive projects exclusively for online or mobile platforms that don’t necessarily have to have a link to television.
However, noted one writer, we’re not very good in Canada marrying TV content and interactive and we’re falling behind the rest of the world in trying new things. We need to push, he said.
There are a number of new requirements of the new fund which were not a part of the old one, such as requirements for HD (acknowledged as a transformation happening organically anyway) and to make shows that demonstrate the most potential for return on investment.
And that last bit was a big part of the discussion among some at the focus group yesterday. As in: How do we define ROI? Does it always have to be about ratings and the almighty dollar? To that end, this year the CTF will report on the audience results of the shows it paid for, for the first time.
But what about other cultural and environmental returns one might accrue somehow by producing a documentary that moves people, suggested one producer.
What about writing into the guidelines some sort of quality requirement, asked another few folks?
Given that “quality TV” is a pretty subjective argument, it’s hard to see how that could be accomplished since one person’s quality television is a nature doc and another’s is World’s Scariest Animals. Same genre, way different shows.
Other subjects that cropped up (and to be fair, we couldn’t stay to the end of the meeting) was the conclusion that, as an industry, we’re pretty good at storytelling, but we waste a lot of time and energy trying to get projects off the ground financially. “The deals are often more creative than the content,” said one writer.
Key to the future though, agreed many, is that broadcasters have to stop thinking of their Canadian content as a loss leader instead of legit, revenue producers and potential breakout hits. “We need people in positions of power to be champions (for shows) within their organizations,” said a producer.
And since that mind-shift hasn’t yet happened, maybe we should think about mandating Cancon be shown in a newly defined prime time of 8-11 Monday to Friday and 7-11 on Sundays, said the Writers’ Guild’s Maureen Parker.
A scary bit of business for the independent sector is allowing broadcaster-made content access to some of the CMF loot, which is another funding alteration. “What is the proper percentage level of that?” asked one producer. According to the CTF reps in attendance however, the Department of Canadian Heritage does not want to make it all that big of one of a change so that the independent production sector is destabilized.
There are a number of stages of refining to go through still but the new guidelines are to be ready in February, in time for the CMF launch in April 2010.
