OTTAWA – A grand project that would see the vast amount of Canadian content currently unavailable for viewing is beginning to make some progress, according to a panel at Prime Time.
Valerie Creighton, president and CEO of the Canada Media Fund, noted that a research report that was commissioned after last November’s International Institute of Communications (IIC) Canada event has only just been received and has yet to be fully digested. She was able to talk about couple of observations that should help guide the project along.
Some have previously suggested that a portal containing all this content might be the best approach (while both broadcasters and independent producers have serious reservations). Creighton noted that based on an initial quick review of the report this is not the case. “It appears that a standalone portal is not the best way to approach it. There are many other options that we are going to consider in partnership with several others,” she said.
The biggest obstacle identified in bringing this project to fruition is the content itself, Creighton noted. So one of the outcomes from the report will be see what it takes to digitize some Canadian content. “So one of the investigations that we’re going to pursue is going to take a look at how we can find the money, take a thousand titles of premium Canadian content in feature film, television and digital media and find a way to get the rights cleared and that content digitized so that we can make it as an offering in the market for VOD, SVOD services or others around the world,” she said.
There is some previous knowledge on this type of project on which to rely, Creighton said. Work being done in Quebec as well as National Film Board and CBC digitization efforts will offer some guiding light. “We’re not going in blind, but nobody is pretending that this isn’t going to be a big job with a lot of moving parts to it,” she said.
