CANCON’S RULES AND regulations are much like a series of bandages slapped onto the television industry – one here to cover a scrape, another there as salve on a slash. It’s almost impossible to rip any away from this complex patchwork without damaging a broadcast arm or independent production limb.
The tales of woe – accompanied by an orchestra of tiny violins – come from both the broadcast and the creative side of the industry, and the TV doctors have differing opinions on which medicine is the cure for our ailing Cancon system. So what’s the spoonful of sugar that’ll help the medicine go down?
Exhibition and Expenditure
“We have a totally outdated set of content regulations,” says Kevin Shea, a former CTV and Global Television executive turned consultant. “Packaging rules and hours per dollar on channels have been invented at different times. The (CRTC) should be simplifying them.”
It seems impossible to approach Cancon without getting tangled in other regulations. The group licensing hearings this past April elicited a cacophony of griping from the creative set about tightening and expanding the Cancon rules.
The OTT submissions to the CRTC last month moaned about the future of Cancon from broadcasters like Shaw Media, which called for the elimination of funding agencies such as the Canada Media Fund (CMF) and Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF), claiming they are an unnecessary financial burden.
“They want to take away the exhibition quota, but it doesn’t work,” says Norm Bolen, president and CEO of the Canadian Media Production Association. “It just means Cancon will be marginalized. To me it’s a Trojan Horse.”
Whether it’s the one from Greek mythology or the more recent computer virus variety, both are sneaky and destructive.
Good health, goes the argument from the traditional broadcast docs, comes from the business model of renting U.S. programming to fill out the Canadian broadcast schedule. But alternative practitioners argue for the need to try new, and perhaps more difficult, solutions.
“The BDUs want to deregulate (Cancon) for OTT,” says Maureen Parker, executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada. “We’re saying no way, unless you want to give up your privileges. Broadcasters were built on their protection from competition. What we’re waiting for is the result of the group licensing hearings. Levels of PNI, expenditure requirements – we need to ensure the percentage is set at a reasonable level. We’ve asked for 10%.”
VisionTV CEO Bill Roberts says that public funding is vital for independent broadcasters and producers.
“Canadian content will be in the crapper if the CRTC does not tighten the distribution and access rules as part of the recent vertical integration hearing,” he maintains. “The Shaw position on OTT underlines that with even greater certainty. Funny that Canadian BDUs don’t mention that American BDUs like Comcast see OTT as promising new revenue sources. Comcast owns content and ISP services – just like the vertically integrated BDUs here. And Comcast happily sees new markets for second-run programming with OTT services, as well as a financial windfall in charging OTTs with increased bandwidth costs. So the vertically integrated BDU sky is not falling, by any stretch of the imagination.”
For Shea, the cure lies in streamlining Canadian content contributions and allowing foreign ownership investment capital.
“Pick the number, whether it’s 20% or 25%, and say 50% of that has to be used with independent producers. The broadcaster can say 5% is for news, 5% is for international sales and 10% is for Canadian producers, and that’s where it should end,” he says.
Corrie Coe, CTV’s senior vice-president of independent production, has adopted a wait and see attitude.
“So many people have contributed to that debate: whether there should be hour exhibition requirements during prime time, or not during prime time. Whether there should just be expenditures. Whether you should have both. I think the CRTC has tried to balance all of those. They came out with their policy, which we’re all applying in September. I think we should see how it goes before we reinvent that wheel. I think there are a lot of very healthy discussions on it. The CRTC tried hard to balance out all the points of view. I feel, for now, that we’re in the right spot. We have to see how it goes.”
Foreign Capital
If there’s no more money to be had in Canada, look elsewhere, says Shea. According to him, Canada’s financial and reward systems aren’t set up to capitalize on the international market system. The Broadcasting Act is outmoded and must be dramatically updated, simplified, and focused on emerging markets.
“Our current broadcasting systems don’t need protection,” he argues. But what they do need is venture capital and competition.
“I believe foreign ownership rules will open up under this government and I think the time has come. But when that happens, we should have clear and understandable Canadian content rules. Right now we have this hodgepodge. If we asked the chair of the CRTC to write an essay on Cancon rules, it’d be a book.”
Co-productions
Co-productions are certainly one legitimate way of bringing in foreign capital. And, some of them are incredibly successful. Take the Canadian/Irish/Hungarian co-production The Borgias, for example, which was nominated in six Emmy Award categories. Or how about the popular Irish/Canadian co-production The Tudors?
Kirstine Stewart, executive vice-president of English services for the CBC, agrees that co-pros are one of the least expensive ways to produce Cancon. “(And) when you have to fill 24 hours, seven days a week, it gives me more money to spend on a truly 100% Canadian content show”, she said.
Does it really matter if Canadians don’t know that there’s any Canadian content, as long as they know it’s a show that they want to watch?
“We’ve become a player in a much larger production than Canada alone,” Stewart continues. “We’re giving an opportunity for writers and actors to play on a world stage and show off their talents in a combined system where they’re beside an American or British or whomever the co-production partner is; you get the opportunity to work on that world stage and people have gone on to great success because of it. You get a world perspective and bring back that talent to Canada and use it on other programming.”
But Will Dixon, a television writer, director, and instructor in the film and media department at the University of Regina, disagrees. He started an energetic Twitter conversation with the hashtag #wantcancon a few months ago to solicit strategies for increasing the demand and visibility of Canadian content. “I DON’T believe the answer is to do more U.S./Canada movies or TV co-productions or relax funding rules to allow Hollywood types in #wantCancon,” he wrote.
All this talk of funding and quotas and tax credits sidesteps the heart of what’s hurting Cancon, according to television writer Denis McGrath. Discussion should instead focus on what the audience sees – the final product.
“Frontloading all that means we have this ludicrous situation with minority co-pros, which count as full Cancon with 20% of the funding, one actor and an editor being Canadian and the rest being British or German or whatever. And that’s ‘Cancon’. It’s silly”, he says.
Marketing and Promotion
Few would argue that’s there’s enough money in the system. This year’s CMF budget is $370 million, and it annually funds 400 to 500 projects plus experienced an 80% increase in applications.
In March, Telefilm and the CMF announced a joint project designed to stimulate demand for Canadian content through marketing and promotion.
“When we invest a half billion a year, what role do we have to ensure that content gets in front of the audience?” askes CMF president and CEO, Valerie Creighton. “We see this (project) as a digging of the roots and shining a light on it.”
Last fall, she met with Parliamentarians to share with them the success of the CMF in its first year. Contained in that report were pages of programs that had been sold to other countries.
“One, Bo on the Go, a famous kids series out of Halifax, sold to 198 places,” she says. “The thought I had was ‘this is interesting that I am the head of CMF and have zero degrees of separation and I didn’t carry this in my head at the time’. Now I do. So I think we have some challenges. My project is to look at ways to position content in a more aggressive way and how we can collectively tell stories of success to our public and internationally. We’re well positioned as a country to build content in the international marketplace.”
Dixon agrees. “More Cancon on more movie screens/TV channels/websites all being better promoted will go long way to increase demand/visibility #wantCancon,” he tweeted.
But if that means embracing the digital revolution by launching a Canadian channel on Google TV, Creighton’s not so sure. “Do we want to wave the Canadian flag? If the content is so good, why do we want to ghettoize it?”
The time is right to embrace and celebrate Canada, she says, citing initiatives like the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s ‘We’ve got it going ON’ campaign and the Olympics’ ‘Own the Podium’ idea.
“Underneath was a pride of place,” Creighton added. “Something made us want to expose ourselves to the world…The psychology has always been that we live next to the greatest entertainment behemoth in the world. It’s time we break that paradigm down.”
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