OTTAWA – "It’s a missed opportunity," says Guy Mayson, summing up the Canadian Film and Television Production Association’s overall reaction to the CRTC’s new over-the-air TV policy.
Speaking to Cartt.ca from the streets of Cannes, France, where he’s attending the film festival, the CFTPA president explained that while the policy shows the CRTC has noted producer concerns about the need to increase broadcaster investment in original, Canadian, priority programming, it delayed taking action.
“We’re a little disappointed that the Commission didn’t act” to require conventional TV broadcasters to meet minimum program expenditures and to schedule more of this programming in prime time, he says. “I think they understand the issues. They see there’s a problem….But they’ve delayed any action until licence renewal time. I understand that. But they missed an opportunity to do something now.”
Other representatives in the creative community are less forgiving of the CRTC. The Directors Guild of Canada, which represents directors, editors, production designers and other crew members, said in a release it’s “extremely disappointed” with the new policy. “Without these regulatory mechanisms, we will continue to see the freefall of spending on Canadian drama by English conventional TV,” notes Monique Lafontaine, DGC general counsel and director of regulatory affairs.
ACTRA, which represents 21,000 Canadian performers, says that without regulation, English-language programmers “will continue to fill their prime-time slots with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of U.S.-made programming.” In a statement, Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director, adds, “We must not let the presentation of Canadian stories continue to be marginalized on our public airwaves.”
The CRTC’s data supports the guild and union concerns. While the commission’s figures indicate French and English OTA TV broadcasters increased spending in proportion to revenue gains over the past five years, English-language broadcasters’ spending on Canadian programming has “diminished as a proportion of total programming budgets” between 1999 and 2006. It’s a point raised often by interveners during last fall’s policy hearing. Spending on Canadian shows has fallen from 50% to 40% of total outlays. French-language programming budgets have been about 90% Canadian, by contrast.
The news for high-cost drama is also about decline. Between 2001 and 2006, says the commission’s data, English OTAs lowered spending from about $62 million or 4% of revenues to about $40 million or 2.3%. All of this, it concludes, “is cause for concern.”
But, continues the argument, because OTAs still face the potential for declining audiences in the multi-channel and now in the unregulated multi-platform world, this is a bad time for the regulator to re-enact the spending requirements it dropped in 1999. Instead, it will review the issue, in the spirit of the Broadcasting Act’s assertion that broadcasters must make “predominant use” of Canadian creative and resources in producing programming, when each licensee comes up for renewal.
Mayson is glad the CRTC did not rule out “the re-imposition of expenditure requirements” or rules on when Canadian priority programming must be aired. But he and other observers note that deferring an appraisal of broadcaster spending on Canadian production, priority or otherwise, until individual broadcasters next face licence renewal creates a number of tensions and contributes to others. First, it will take a long time to resume the discussion.
“The renewals will probably be Gazetted sometime in the next year,” said Lafontaine in an interview. “There probably won’t be any decisions (on licence renewals) until the end of 2008, which means,” if the CRTC gives broadcasters time to adjust to new rules, even if it implements minimum spending strictures, nothing would happen “until easily two to three years from now.”
Also, says Mayson, deferring the expenditure debate until renewal hearings means those advocating for minimum spend levels have to make their case one broadcaster at a time, over and over again. “To me, (the commissioners) are going to be too mindful of the health of the broadcaster and not mindful enough of the health of the Canadian production sector.”
“I’m worried,” says Lafontaine, “that if the regulations finally do change, well I’m wondering if there’ll be anyone left” to make the programs. “There’s $38 million worth of (English) Canadian production now, compared to $73 million in 1999. God knows where we’ll go this year, although there might be a tiny spike (ahead of) licence renewals.
“The key regulatory requirement to ensure that original Canadian drama is made and supported is an expenditure requirement. The second key is a requirement for a minimum number of hours of original Canadian drama to be broadcast,” she says.
Mayson is encouraged the policy document suggests broadcasters will have to include at least draft-stage Terms of Trade agreements with producers, as part of their licence renewal documentation. “That gives a sense of urgency (to the ongoing negotiations),” he says. “It’s been an uphill battle, and it’s going well,” he adds, but would like the commission to assume “some role” in supervising the administration of these agreements.
Lafontaine adds a caveat that directors and the creative community will watch closely to ensure the agreements compensate artists fairly.
While some groups advocating for producers, performers, directors, screenwriters and other contributors to programming, including the Canadian Coalition of Audio-Visual Unions, supported broadcasters’ call for increased advertising minutes, Lafontaine says they wanted any additional revenues to flow into Canadian programming.
But the commission is not explicitly requiring this. In return for dropping the 12-ad-minutes-per-hour limit effective this September and eventually deregulating minutes-per-hour altogether, the commission says it “expects” to see more Cancon produced and aired.
“That’s a big problem with the decision today,” Mayson says. The policy represented a “huge opportunity” for the commission to make a statement supporting independent production in the Canadian broadcasting system.
Adds Peter Murdoch, Vice-President, Media, for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, in a release: “Rather than clear rules that will benefit our broadcasting system, the CRTC is giving Canada’s private TV broadcasters more advertising time and revenues. Is this so they can keep spending more money on foreign programs, than on the Canadian programming which Canadians want and which employs thousands of Canadians in this country?"
When the new ad policy takes effect this fall, it will effectively reverse the position the CRTC took in adopting the drama incentives regime recommended by former CTV and CBC executive Trina McQueen. Her plan saw broadcasters – especially CanWest – rewarded with extra ad minutes if and when they increased their Cancon production.
Three of the four unions that the CCAU was representing at the fall hearings – ACTRA, the DGC and the Writers Guild of Canada – are undoubtedly pleased the new policy does not include any increases to existing time credits for shows qualified as Canadian content. CTV had asked for the upper limits for these bonuses, in which certain programs receive credit for up to 1.5 programming hours for each hour produced, to rise to 2.0 per hour produced. One speaker called the whole concept of time credits “abhorrent”.
Producers who have been asked more and more often in recent years to produce, or at least finish, their production in high definition are wondering why Canadian broadcasters will have until 2011, under this policy, to convert analogue signals to digital, especially with the U.S. moving ahead two years sooner.
Meantime, Mayson says, one issue not addressed in the policy is “who’s paying for HD? Producers are not really being compensated for it. It’s expected (that you’ll produce in HD) but they’re not necessarily being given additional licence fees.”
Perhaps it will come up, along with so many other issues, at renewal time.
Susan Tolusso is an Ottawa-based freelancer who covers the production industry for Cartt.ca
