By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The Broadcast and Telecom Legislative Review (BTLR) panel report, released last week, has much to say on the creation, production and discoverability of Canadian content amid the realities of an-ever expanding global market where viewers have equally growing choices of accessing content online.
However, the report only referred to “intellectual property” twice in its massive report, and did not address how Canadian creators can better protect that precious commodity while competing internationally. So, it was left to the industry to discuss IP as the “currency of the future” in the final panel on the closing day of the Canadian Media Producers Association’s 25th Prime Time conference in Ottawa on Friday.
“It’s very easy to steal our content,” said lawyer and four-time Emmy nominee Stephen Stohn, executive producer of the storied Degrassi series franchise. “We need not just to own our content but to actually be able to enforce that copyright. We need a robust ownership model that allows us to, in the case of foreign piracy services, cut them off at the source, whether it’s delisting their IP address or from search engines.”
Stohn, founding partner of Toronto-based entertainment, digital media and copyright law firm, Stohn Hay Cafazzo Dembroski Richmond LLP, believes that in “an increasingly divided, shortsighted and intolerant world, it is important that we are able to not just tell our Canadian stories to ourselves, but to impart and reinforce our Canadian values – and Canada has a tremendous role in exporting those values to countries around the world.”
“We can be part of saving the world, but we can’t do it if we don’t own our intellectual property.” – Stephen Stohn
“We can be part of saving the world, but we can’t do it if we don’t own our intellectual property,” he said.
Catherine Winder, CEO of and executive producer at Wind Sun Sky Entertainment, added that Canada has “leverage” within the global industry. “There’s never been more opportunity, and we’re needed – they need our stories, they need our crews, and our tax credits.”
But inasmuch as they are “phenomenal,” those credits have their limitations, she pointed out. “The reality is that as you work with our southern counterparts, the expectation now is that you give up all of your tax credits and that all goes toward funding content,” she explained. “I feel there has to be some mechanism for Canadian producers where some of that money goes back in to develop and build our companies and/or help in the development of IP.”
Panel moderator Valerie Creighton, president and CEO of the Canada Media Fund, suggested that Canada could follow the tax-credit path taken in the United Kingdom and pay, say, 80 or 85% of the credit in advance once the financing structure and production schedule have been finalized.
“I don’t know if banks would like it much, but I didn’t know Canadian cultural policy was to help banks make a ton of cash,” she said.
Stohn added some OTT (over-the-top) streaming services don’t pay for some Canadian shows they have purchased for up to two or two-and-a-half years. “So in effect the tax credits are going to pay the interest on what in effect is a loan to them – entirely inappropriate,” he said.
Stohn called for a code of conduct that requires payment of a license fee during production rather than holding back some of that fee upon delivery.
“Having a billion-dollar company actually looks pretty tiny against Apple, which has a trillion-dollar market capitalization.” – Troy Reeb, Corus
Troy Reeb, executive vice-president of broadcast networks at Corus Entertainment, said the problem Canada faces is one of scale. “As the industry has become more global,” he explained, “having a billion-dollar company actually looks pretty tiny against Apple, which has a trillion-dollar market capitalization.”
“I think it’s a great point of pride that there are 400 independent producers in this country. But at the same time, that doesn’t suggest an industry that’s at scale to compete against global players.”
TV veteran Robert Cooper, creator and executive producer at Mezo Entertainment, said the Canadian industry faces a “huge challenge” in just getting noticed. “The leverage that used to come from in the traditional model was in ratings where you could say, ‘My show is the highest rated, and my show is worth more’,” he said. “We’re dealing in a world now where there’s no transparency.”
He said he was encouraged that the BTLR report recommended that the Broadcasting Act be amended to include information gathering powers similar to what’s found in the Telecommunications Act. “We just don’t even know how much money is being made and what our contribution is actually worth,” he added.
“The next step will be us getting better at promoting ourselves because that’s the other point of leverage.”
Reeb said that Corus is a “huge believer” in Canadian IP, and had 50 Canadian series in production over the past year.
In a post-panel interview with Cartt.ca, Reeb, a former journalist, shared some of his views on the BTLR report. “We are, more than anything else, looking for equitable treatment with the foreign payers and looking for something to happen urgently. So on those two items, [the panel] clearly put forward proposals to try to level the field and they want to do it quickly. How they do it, I think, is a whole other matter,” he said.
“We’re an entrepreneurial company in our DNA and we’ve always advocated for a more open and flexible system, not a more regulated system. Most of the [panel’s] proposals veer toward more regulation as the solution as opposed to lowering the regulation we as broadcasters face.
“We would hope that as the debate goes forward that there will be consideration given to whether the same outcomes can be achieved through less government intrusion.”
Reeb said Corus and other broadcasters face “unnecessary complication” regarding programming and reporting added to their licensing regimes.
“We hope that as the government and the CRTC start to look at these recommendations, they will consider whether there are ways that they can achieve the same goals – leveling the playing field between the domestic sector and the foreign OTTs by potentially being less proscriptive with us as opposed to being more proscriptive with them.”
