VANCOUVER – Most conference panels don't end up on highlight reels, and this year’s Merging Media financing roundtable might have been no different, until U.S. digital guru Robert Tercek took Bell Fund executive director Andra Sheffer and Canada Media Fund CEO Valerie Creighton to task over whether Canadian-content subsidies for digital content work.
Tercek argued Internet players like Starz Digital Media and Hulu offer no upfront investment for digital content. They instead expect producers to prove themselves by amassing 500,000 to one million YouTube followers before doors open to receive a pitch.
"No one is out there saying, here's some money I have for you. You guys may the only people in the world doing that right now," Tercek told Sheffer and Creighton in the funding hot seat.
A sweeping statement this provocative – that the Canadian TV and film production industry faces decision time to come into the 21st century – naturally produced a lively exchange. Both Creighton and Sheffer rejected Tercek's argument the Canadian industry is in a bureaucratic rut, depending on subsidies out of habit or exhaustion.
Their message was clear: Canadian industry funds, and the creators they back, are playing in the 21st century with march-in-the-streets energy. "We're not looking at Canada. Basically all the Canadian rights are gone from the beginning anyways. The (content) commercialization will be international, and that's the audience we're going after," Sheffer told the Merging Media audience in Vancouver.
"No one is out there saying, here's some money I have for you. You guys may the only people in the world doing that right now.” – Robert Tercek
Creighton said Tercek wrongly assumed a fund sourced in Canada was focused on Canada. "The reverse of that is true. The really successful content that comes out of the CMF is sold in 200, 300 territories worldwide. It's not about standing on the 49th parallel and looking up," she argued.
"I would just challenge you Robert, of course anybody can do a stellar piece of work, shot on their phone, get it on YouTube, but how many actually reach 'the billion' viewers?" Creighton added.
The vigorous debate wasn't accidental. Merging Media 5 revealed an industry with increasing options in a digital world of abundance, but no easy answers on how to reach, and sustain, global audiences.
"The only way to find answers is to build it," Elan Lee, chief design officer at Xbox Entertainment Studios, said when asked about the future of digital gaming. "We work in a very practical industry. We get to build amazing things and then determine if they work. Instead of saying, ‘do I know’, I'd rather say let's build it and find out," Lee added.
But that Field of Dreams vision, coming from a legendary gaming exec backed by the economic heft of Microsoft, came with an oft-heard warning: Audiences won't come to what you build without a sophisticated strategy to identify and grab them.
"You might think it's a great idea, but why would the audience care and do as you wish?" – Alison Norrington, Storycentral
Alison Norrington, CEO of London-based entertainment studio Storycentral, argued digital producers need to ask what they want audiences to do on which platforms, and will they follow through. "You might think it's a great idea, but why would the audience care and do as you wish?" Norrington questioned.
The answer is to dialogue with fans, before, during and after production and product launch.
Here, the Bell Fund's Sheffer said Canadian digital's real-life international growth is underpinned by a strong focus on marketing to reach audiences. "In order to make these things work, you have to have an audience. It's not something you can leave up to the broadcasters and any other gatekeeper. That becomes part of the producer's job," she argued.
"The secret to making money is to have those audiences, which means you have to be brilliant at marketing.”
