Source : Globe & Mail

GATINEAU, QUE. -- This is the setting: a windowless, airless room in a bland building in Gatineau, a few minutes drive from Parliament Hill. This is the situation: The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is holding public hearings on the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) task-force report. These are the issues: Is the money from government and cable and satellite levies being spent wisely on the creation of Canadian TV programs; should the money be spent on hit TV shows or on culturally significant TV; and, who gets to say where the money goes and, anyway, who knows a hit show from a failure?

These are the players - TV executives, civil servants, administrators, lawyers, and the unions and guilds that represent the creators of Canadian TV storytelling. This is where what you refer to as the cable company is called a "broadcasting distribution undertaking" (or simply a " BDU") and where everybody uses such phrases as "a benchmark for moving forward."

I hope you get the picture. This is where the vigour and charm of television storytelling disappears. This is where the glamour of making television drama or comedy evaporates.

The standard description of a CRTC hearing is that "it's a bit dry." That's the understatement of all time. This place is where the culture comes to die.

Yesterday morning, this profoundly important hearing opened with a little controversy. It had been announced that CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein would not oversee the hearings.

This led Jim Shaw of Shaw Communications, the attack dog on the issue of the CTF's doings and accountability and the instigator of this entire process, to refuse to attend personally and to accuse the CRTC of not taking the CTF matter seriously. "I'm not going to waste my time with their B-team," he said.

He's said other things too on the matter of Canadian TV shows being helped into existence by the CTF. In particular, he's been outraged by Trailer Park Boys. Famously, he commented, "Am I just getting shows like Trailer Park Boys with all those guys running around half-naked, swearing and smoking weed?"

Well, what all the players got on Monday morning - what Shaw called "the B team" - was Rita Cugini, the CRTC's regional commissioner for Ontario in charge of events, accompanied by CRTC vice-chairman of broadcasting Michel Arpin and national commissioner Michel Morin. When the hearing opened, with the chap in charge of the CTF making a little joke about these people not being "the B team," there was mild laughter from the audience. It was downhill from there. The CRTC commissioners sat stone-faced, all pursed lips and skepticism.

The CTF itself made its case - every dollar allotted by the CTF in funding Canadian TV results in more than $3 being spent in the TV industry in Canada. There was much talk about financial statements and board meetings and envelopes. The "envelopes" are the designated spending areas for the CTF on various genres of TV.

Finally, the CTF people said, "We'd like to show you a short two-minute video of what Canadian shows Canadians are watching. ..." Thank heavens. Some TV! Images on a screen. Fun. Frolics, maybe. Up on the two TV screens came images from English and French-language TV - comic Rick Mercer, the boys from the Trailer Park. There was applause.

Then came questions from the commissioners. One long-winded one amounted to this: "Who gets to pick the shows that get funded?" This was a tricky one because it has essentially been explained already, over and over. Arpin went on and on about annual meetings and the date of annual financial reports, and made jokes about banks.

Along came the Canadian Film and Television Production Association. The CFTPA has a major beef with that task-force report. It doesn't want the two streams of funding - two bundles of money, one allotted for stuff that's sure-fire commercial TV, and one for stuff that's, well, good for you. It sees this as mad, on the reasonable basis that nobody can truly determine what is definitely "commercial" and what is "cultural." Sometimes culture is commerce. Fair enough. Still, the CRTC commissioners look and act skeptical.

This went on all morning. People who make TV shows saying that making TV is a tricky business. You never can tell what's going to be successful. Sometimes the people who make a flop can then make a hit. Happens all the time in the United States and other countries. But they keep saying that Canadians want to see and enjoy Canadian-made stories on TV. Sometimes they even quote yours truly on this subject. Honestly, they were that headstrong and agitated.

At lunchtime, the guilds representing actors, writers and directors and producers held a press conference. They had pooled their resources and commissioned a public survey - it turns out that 71 per cent of Canadians "believe it is important to have access to Canadian television programming distinct from American programs."

So there. That sounds like a solid basis for - what is it again? Oh yeah, "a benchmark for moving forward." But nothing is really moving forward here. I can smell it in the airless, windowless room. The smell of people who work for the CRTC wanting to move backward, to retreat from as much Canadian TV storytelling as possible to submit to the whining of cable-company executives. This is where the culture is killed off.

© Globe and Mail

Related Documents:

July 27, 2007 - Submission to the CRTC on the CTF Task Force Report
FRIENDS comments on proposals from a CRTC Task Force on the governance and operation of the Canadian Television Fund.