Overview

Friends makes several suggestions regarding the future direction of the Canadian Television Fund (CTF), including:

• Maintaining the CTF model where supply and demand for funds are in approximate equilibrium
• Otherwise, terminating the CTF and redirecting funds to be allocated through Telefilm
• Removing BDUs’ discretion over the disposition of subscriber contributions
• According the bulk of the funding to drama and children’s programming, reflecting forecasted audience numbers
• Ensuring appointments to the Telefilm board are at arm’s length from government

 

Full Document

Three page fax

Mr. Jean Guérette
Director General
Broadcasting Policy & Innovation
Department of Canadian Heritage
3 – 15 Eddy Street
Hull, Québec
K1A 0M5

Dear Mr. Guérette:

Re:  Future Directions of the Canadian Television Fund

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting welcomes your invitation to comment.

During the early years of its existence as a cable production fund, the predecessor to the CTF enjoyed substantial success, owing in large measure to its simplicity of operation, its focussed approach and a relative balance between available funds and the demand generated by the production community.

In recent years, the CTF has adapted this early approach to rapidly increasing demand by maintaining, with increasing difficulty, a market-driven approach through the addition of multi-layered rules designed to manage demand, thereby suppressing it to match a relatively constant supply of resources. The result: an increasingly dysfunctional organization built upon compromises among competing interests.

Such an approach is ill-suited to the creativity which lies at the root of quality television production. It is also ill-suited to the creation of quality television focussing on Canadian subject matter which can resonate with the largest number of Canadian viewers.

Instead, public policy should ensure that taxpayers' and cable subscribers' funds invested in the audio-visual system are allocated to those creative projects which command substantial audiences. The focus of public policy ought to be the ratio between these financial inputs and the Canadian audiences they generate.

A public instrument already exists with this mandate and capacity. Over the years, Telefilm has developed expertise through specialized professional staff located in offices in various parts of Canada to undertake due diligence: evaluating budgets, scripts, distribution, recoupment and regional allocation of the creative proposals it receives. Culturally-oriented and discretionary, Telefilm is well positioned to make the kinds of judgments which can ensure creative investments.[1]

Public policy should recognize and build upon Telefilm's expertise and capacity.  Friends' advice to the federal government is that a fundamental choice should be addressed.

On the one hand, if Ministers believe that the supply of public funds can increase in pace with the demands projected by the creative community, a continuing investment in a CTF-like structure is a sustainable option because the CTF model has worked when supply and demand are in approximate equilibrium.[2]

If, on the other hand, Ministers consider that public funds to encourage Canadian programming in the audio-visual system will continue to be scarce in future years, Friends recommends that the CTF be terminated and that available funding – both from the taxpayer and from the cable subscriber – be focussed where it can do the most good: within Telefilm.

We also note that broadcasting distribution undertakings are merely collectors of their subscribers' contributions, and as such, BDUs should be accorded no discretion in the disposition of these contributions.

We suggest that Telefilm be given policy direction on the allocation of funds along the lines of the CRTC's 1993 guidance that drama and children's programming should receive the lion's share of support (80%), with the balance going to documentaries and performing arts.[3]  

Further, Telefilm should also be guided through policy to ensure that allocations to individual projects reflect approximately their potential downstream audience numbers. 

Finally, appointments to the Telefilm Board should be made on an arms-length basis from governmental patronage, and should reflect a balance between the interests of viewers and creators.  

Cordially,

Ian Morrison
Spokesperson

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[1] Telefilm's practices have improved over time, and further improvements should be encouraged, particularly in the areas of consultation and transparency.

[2] This scenario is similar in some respects to a tax-credit approach, where the size of the public investment is not defined or limited in advance.

[3] Standards are needed to ensure that documentaries be defined to exclude programs of other genres masquerading as documentary applications.