TORONTO – Many folks love to tell Canadian TV executives what they should – or should not – be doing. Really, anyone with a TV set does that regularly.
But when it comes to those with a keyboard and a national platform, or with a famous name or job, their gripes often offend and are taken to heart. At Thursday’s Content Industry Connect day put on by the Banff Media Festival, broadcast executive, investor and producer Peter Sussman kicked off the industry leaders panel by quoting noted thorn-in-the-Canadian-TV-industry’s-side, Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle. In a fall 2013 column about the so-called “golden age of TV” (essentially the period between the launch of The Sopranos, and now) Doyle wrote:
“What has Canada contributed to this? Pretty much nothing. Look at the last 14 years of Canadian TV and what you see is almost complete creative failure.” If you’re a maker of Canuck television… Ouch!
Bell Media president Kevin Crull responded quickly. “John Doyle must be a pretty miserable guy,” he said, to laughter and applause in an overflow room of TV producers and broadcasters at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. “I wonder if he goes home and kicks his dog.”
Crull went on to note that CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais has also called on the Canadian TV business to take more risks on edgy shows which might prove as popular as such International breakout hits as Breaking Bad or Homeland. “I question to what extent Canadians, whether producers or broadcasters, are taking those creative risks that seem to have been the hallmark of the current golden age of television,” Blais told The National Post last month.
The criticisms, said Crull, are off-side. “It’s unfair to take the tens of billions of dollars spent in Hollywood and mention the handful of breakout super-hits and say: ‘why haven’t you done that’?” he implored, adding everyone in the business wants “greatness from creative work.”
That said, Crull added: “Edgy appeals to certain audiences, but there are a whole lot of family audiences who don’t want to see sex and gore and criminals… I think we’re producing the best work we’ve ever produced which appeals to a wide variety of audiences with a wide variety of genres.”
Shaw Media president Paul Robertson added there can be no question the production values of Canadian-made television have gone way up, so no longer can viewers distinguish between a glossy U.S. production and a cut-rate Cancon copy. “People don’t distinguish between foreign or domestic programming,” he said. “We have to be good all the time. There’s no free ride on the schedule.”
CBC’s English services chief Heather Conway was the lone voice to defend Doyle – and other critics – before remarking that the big hits people now know like Mad Men and Breaking Bad were not hits right off the bat – and that technology helped them become as popular as they did. “I don’t think John Doyle is the enemy,” she said. “I like having independent critics,” because they keep everyone honest. They’re good checks on the industry who can deliver the voices of the public, “making sure the industry doesn’t just talk to itself all the time,” said Conway.
However, the still-new technology of digital video recorders, subscription video on demand and online viewing has provided an enormous boost in moving these shows from having critical acclaim and small viewership on cable channels to reaching the heights of popularity. “Breaking Bad was not a hit. Mad Men was not a hit. These were shows that grew over time,” said Conway.
The fact these shows debuted on cable and that viewers could easily catch up on the viewing their friends have already done, helped make them. In the not-too-distant past (yet still so every fall for some), broadcast shows had to be a hit from episode one and if not, they might not even get to a second or third episode. Now though, viewers can watch shows when they want to – and a hit can have more time to percolate as it waits for a larger audience to catch up. For example, a few new fall shows went from tepid to hot, when their ratings spread over a 30-day viewing window, rather than just overnight, were counted.
Hits or not, Rogers Media president Keith Pelley pointed to dark clouds he sees on the horizon when it comes time to renew the hard-fought Terms of Trade agreement with Canadian producers when it comes due in 2016. Pelley pointed to a recent afternoon where he and his kids binged on four hours of The Package Deal (a Canadian sitcom) and Mom (an American one), watching them back-and-forth. “There is no discernable difference in terms of the quality of those shows,” he said. “They’re fantastic shows.”
“The ratings based on simultaneous substitution, for Mom, is three times (bigger than Package Deal). But when you look at the costs, Package Deal is three times the cost for us than Mom is.” – Keith Pelley, Rogers Media
But, “the ratings based on simultaneous substitution, for Mom, is three times (bigger than Package Deal). But when you look at the costs, Package Deal is three times the cost for us than Mom is.” The inference of course is that is not sustainable.
Pelley told the crowd Rogers wants to be able to share the international sales of shows it has backed as the first window broadcaster – something the current terms of trade agreement does not allow. “If we want to build Canadian content, there has to be a reason for the broadcaster to want to do it, other than the fact that Kevin’s got $175 million in social benefit dollars,” Pelley said, pointing to the amount of benefits package dollars Bell Media’s Crull has to spend to produce and promote CTV’s Cancon thanks to the recent multi-billion-dollar merger with Astral Media.
“I want to produce Canadian content and we want to produce more Canadian content – and we want to be able to share in the upside as well,” said Pelley. “It’s going to be tough and that’s why I encourage all of us to work together in coming up with a model that encourages us to increase and build our Canadian programming and not do it just based on the fact we have conditions of license and not based on the fact we have social benefits money.
“If you didn’t have social benefit dollars – would you be as incredibly supportive of the Terms of Trade?” he asked Crull. “I think the terms of trade will have to evolve for sure,” responded Crull. “I think it could be a little more customized because a one-size-fits-all is always hard.”
“We would love to have the ability to produce Canadian content and monetize it,” continued Pelley. Current regulations, of course, stipulate that Canadian broadcasters must spend most of their Cancon dollars on shows made by independent producers.
Sussman backed up the panellists noting that even CBS CEO Les Moonves has said he can’t make money on home-grown productions just in the U.S. market, needing to sell his shows around the world to make a profit.
(Ed note: At around that point, Reynolds Mastin, chief negotiator for the Canadian Media Producers Association spoke up and as diplomatically as he could said – and we’re paraphrasing here – don’t expect independent producers to be backing down on anything in the next go-around.)
Pelley encouraged the panel, well, the whole room, really, to start thinking differently. For example, co-productions with other foreign broadcasters have often been very successful roads to get costly dramatic programming funded and created. “We need to, as an industry, work together, and do co-pros ourselves. What is wrong with us doing a co-pro with CTV or CBC?” he asked.
Shaw’s Robertson noted his company’s recent co-pro Vikings (which has debuted to critical acclaim), done in conjunction with History Channel (U.S.), Irish broadcaster RTE, Octagon Films and Take Five Productions was a “very complex” deal and added that often the structure of financing television in Canada is sometimes as creative as the show’s plotlines.
“Netflix has taken off not because they’ve done anything special… they have a value proposition where they don’t charge for transport." – Kevin Crull, Bell Media
Finally, with the ad market flat at best, the executives agreed the industry has to pull together and work collaboratively in other ways, as well. “There’s no question the industry needs an SVOD. We’re going to have to figure that out and there will be more information coming on that real soon,” added Pelley, perhaps referring to this, although he wouldn’t elaborate when asked by Sussman.
While broadcasters are generally viewing Netflix as complementary, so far, to their existing traditional viewing models because the Netflix user is someone who loves video and generally still has a pay TV subscription, too, they don’t expect this to last. Shaw Media’s Global Go mobile viewing app is one way Robertson’s company is dealing with consumer demand to watch content they’ve paid for anywhere, be he added Shaw will “continue to look for other solutions to participate in that market and slow down the advance of Netflix.”
Crull also condemned a regulatory system he says punishes his company while Netflix can ride in and out of Canada with all of its profits, not even paying taxes or employing anyone. The cable, satellite, telco TV business model charges for both content and delivery where Netflix, since it rides on the internet, needs to charge solely for content while customers pay someone else for the transport of that signal. “Netflix has taken off not because they’ve done anything special… they have a value proposition where they don’t charge for transport,” said Crull.
