OTTAWA – With two major crises reaching public climaxes just before Canadian film, TV and new media producers gathered here for their annual Prime Time conference last week, the event could easily have become two long days’ journey into denouement.
Instead, although frequent quips proved tensions still simmer following the ACTRA strike and the uncertain future for the Canadian Television Fund, PT’s agenda (which included a speech from new CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein) focused on improving industry performance amid some encouraging 2005-’06 news.
Volume up
The Canadian Film and Television Production Association’s annual Profile report says total production volume rose 5.8% to $4.8 billion in 2005-06, thanks to “recoveries from last year in both foreign location production and theatrical-release production.” Total volume hasn’t surpassed the $5 billion level as it did in 2002-03, but guest production recovered $203 million of the $441 million it lost in 2004-’05 while theatrical production regained $139 million of $159 million lost in ’04-’05.
Domestic TV production – the largest industry segment, accounting for 38% of total production, 3% higher than foreign service – recorded a 1% increase, while broadcaster-in-house volume was down 9%, the first decrease in nine years.
Putting the motion picture, video production and post industry in a broader economic context, Profile says real GDP grew by an average annual rate of 2.2% between 1998 and 2005 and an annual rate of 1.5% in 2005. Also, the export value of Canadian production – which comprises foreign presales and distribution advances for CAVCO-certified production, estimates of these revenues for non-CAVCO productions, plus the total value of foreign location production – increased 11% to just under $2 billion.
Co-pro-problems
During Thursday’s opening panel discussing the Profile findings, producers returned to the subject of export value several times, and to international co-productions in particular, since these declined by 25% in 2005, to 64 productions worth $349 million.
Historically, treaty co-production deals require that budgets be dispersed evenly among participating countries. But while Canada has treaties with 53 countries, many are seldom used and recent nationalistic trends favour intra-European co-productions over deals with Canadians or others outside the EU.
“Canada is behind in terms of letting money into this country to finance co-productions,” said Sandra Cunningham, a producer with Strada Films, Toronto. “Sovereignty is one consideration, (but remember that when) we talk about European co-production, they often have more financial co-productions that are not creative co-productions. The time has come for more flexibility.”
“The treaty co-production office needs a clear mandate,” added Trish Dolman, president of Vancouver’s Screen Siren Pictures. “Is it cultural or industrial? If we’re going to have treaties with (so many) countries, we have to make them work… We have the reputation of (requiring an) onerous review of applications.”
“Animation is a disaster,” claimed St. John’s producer Paul Pope of Pope Productions. “No kind of animation can be done without some kind of co-production. Domestic audiences have to have local content but public broadcasters especially need international co-production financing.”
Panellists were not worried about the coming CRTC Task Force review of CTF operations, prompted in response to complaints by Shaw and Videotron. “I think the CTF will stand up to the review. The Videotron proposal was so ridiculous,” said Pope, referring to the company’s Feb. 12 proposal to re-direct its funding to its own Fonds Quebecor, for use by Quebecor’s broadcast properties.
Zone 3 vice-president Vincent Leduc added that Videotron should not have called independent producers an “unnecessary evil” because six of the top seven shows in Quebec are produced by independents and all air on Videotron’s TVA. “I think the CTF has a great story to tell…. (The Heritage Minister’s) $200 million renewal is a solid endorsement.”
As for the BDUs’ complaints that 37% of CTF money goes to producers making shows for CBC/Radio-Canada, panellists said the more broadcasters, the better, since each adds “shelf space” for Canadian programs.
More screens need more money
One intriguing aspect of the CTF review will concern how the fund plans to cope with requests that it support productions aimed at new digital platforms. At the moment, new media producers seeking public money apply to the $14 million Canada New Media Fund or the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund. They and the CTF are oversubscribed and there’s no sign the CTF is getting a raise.
Asked later in the day whether CTF is supporting “the auxiliary platforms,” CTF president Valerie Creighton said it has “always supported the primary properties.” But with business models so variable, it’s hard for the CTF to “find the sameness on which to base funding principles… But the time has come to take a look.”
This will be good news for producers such as kids specialist Decode Entertainment. President Steven DeNure says the company credo is, “A screen is a screen is a screen. We are developing shows for different kinds of screen experiences.” Rather than budgeting TV show add-ons separately, Decode does one budget and sees “the property as a whole.”
Of course, with no more money in the system yet, Creighton had to be practical: “If the fund were to look at accepting those (new Media) elements as part (of the budget), then there’s a pressure on resources.”
Which leads to the subject of finding new money. Although the Capital Cost Allowance tax structure, which offered tax breaks to private investors, is no longer in use, Pope said the CFTPA is “running a committee” to study possibilities for accessing private capital.
In his opening keynote, Telefilm Executive Director Wayne Clarkson explained it’s joined the search and has received a report from business consultants KPMG. But while Telefilm asked for help sourcing enough cash to maintain a high volume of French-language feature films, KPMG proposed a national fund.
“Telefilm will be following through on the report’s recommendation for the creation of a public-private national investment fund,” Clarkson said. “We will be consulting with our working groups and investment firms as to how to best structure the fund to attract potential private and public partners.”
Telefilm said the project is at an early stage.
The effects of OD-ing
Details were also in short supply from panelists discussing how conventional and specialty broadcasting will remain viable in an on-demand world. Execs from CBC, Astral Television Networks, CanWest Global and Corus Entertainment agreed on several points: TV establishes brands, aggregates content and drives viewers to seek programs and characters in digital media; content aimed beyond the TV screen must be for more narrowly defined target markets; content must be “platform agnostic”, in the words of CBC’s Kirstine Layfield.
This all makes video, often user-generated, the format of choice; and, with PVRs bypassing ads as fast as a remote can perform, the ads get shorter as the product placement techniques improve – in both broadcasts and online.
“So it’s not just a can of Coke in front of (American Idol judge) Simon Cowell?” asked moderator and CFTPA chair Ira Levy. “No,” replied CanWest’s Christine Shipton. “Ad agencies are demanding Top 10 shows but they want to be part of the overall experience.” For instance, she said, Tim Horton’s wanted to be associated with Debbie Travis’s From the Ground Up and wanted her to set up shop at one of their summer camps for kids.
Fair enough, said Alliance Atlantis exec Norm Bolen. Sure, TV-linked content is still dramatically outdrawing independent content on the Internet and digital handhelds. But things are changing swiftly and broadcaster complacency will prove fatal. “We shouldn’t be complacent about the fact that television seems to be holding its own. The big trend around the world is the growth of video….Even radio stations are starting to put video online.”
He noted that while there’s not much money available to pay for new media extensions of content, analysts are “expecting there to be much more eventually. Right now, the Canadian presence in mobile and online is tiny….We’re a life raft on an ocean of American content.”
Bolen added his voice to the call for “getting our act together, our regulatory act together.” And he pointed out the recent, strike-ending conclusion of a new Independent Production Agreement between the CFTPA and ACTRA members helps “to give us a sense of the cost” of putting content onto digital media.
All of which begs this question: if the CTF crisis was partly resolved when Heritage Minister Bev Oda promised $200 million in renewed government funding for the next two fiscal years, and system stability was restored when Shaw and Videotron resumed their monthly payments to the fund, pending the CRTC task force report, what will happen when producers ask for still more money for more types of content?
Susan Tolusso is an Ottawa-based freelance writer who often covers production issues for Cartt.ca.
