GATINEAU – The Canadian Television Fund should be split in two: one with public money to meet government policy objectives, and the other with private money to support hit shows, Rogers Communications told the CRTC on Tuesday morning.
During day two of the week-long hearing into the CTF’s revenue and governance models, executives told commissioners that increasingly the CTF—originally the Cable Production Fund supported entirely by the cable industry—“is viewed as a public policy instrument for the Canadian government” instead of a way to encourage broadcasters to air popular shows, said Rogers’ Vice Chairman Phil Lind.
To qualify for the private money, Canadian programs should only have to meet two criteria: high ratings, and demonstrated return on investment, Lind said. The fund should be expanded to support all genres of Canadian programming except news, sports, reporting, and actualities, he said. Drama would still get more weight, as it does under the CTF. The CTF money goes to underrepresented genres that are typically more expensive to produce.
In addition, the privately supported fund should lower Canadian content requirements, Lind said, though he didn’t elaborate.
The private fund’s board of directors would have representatives from cable, including members of the Canadian Cable System Alliance, satellite providers, broadcasters, and independent producers. “It would be like the old days, in a way,” Lind said.
To counter objections from artists on Monday, who opposed the commission’s CTF task force report last summer that the revenue be split into public and private streams because it would be too costly to administer, Rogers suggested that its proposed private fund would be operated daily by the CTF through a service agreement.
The public fund, with contributions from the Department of Canadian Heritage, would support public broadcasting, mainly the CBC/Radio-Canada, and other government policy objectives, including third-language programming, Rogers executives said.
When Commissioner Michel Arpin asked the Rogers panel what would happen if the department decided to end its contribution, VP Regulatory Ken Engelhart replied that he hoped the commission would recommend it continue to provide funding.
Lind noted that as a BDU, Rogers is one of the largest private contributors to the CTF, though its broadcasting arm gets one of the smallest envelopes of money from the fund.
Rogers also objected to the task force recommendation that part of the CTF money be used for new media production, which Lind said is outside the fund’s mandate, would “dilute the CTF’s limited resources,” and would support a non-regulated industry. Lind also pointed out that Telefilm Canada has a $14-million new media production budget that producers can access.
The communications giant rejected calls from some intervenors to make distributors put all of their 5% gross revenue Canadian content contributions to the CTF (Rogers spends half that on the CTF and the rest on independent production funds and its vast cadre of community channels) and even to raise that to contribution to 6% of gross revenues. “Rogers will strenuously oppose any such move by the commission,” Lind said.
Competing in the fast-paced technology business requires “heavy investment” and companies like Rogers can’t compete with unregulated new media if they are subjected to additional programming fees, Lind said. “The BDUs are not money trees.”
