celebrates 100

(Douglas Barrett is a corporate and commercial lawyer and a member of KNOWlaw Group at the Toronto law firm of McMillan Binch.)

* * *

This is the 100th Binchmarks for Playback, so I thought I’d take this chance to reflect on our work and how dramatically our industry has changed in the time we’ve been writing.

Our topics have ranged over a lot of territory – from celebrity endorsements to equipment financing, from copyright law developments to location shooting, from colorization to gst, and from privacy to porn.

When Playback executive editor Mark Smyka and I first discussed the possibility of a column at mip-tv in 1987, neither of us had any idea that there were a hundred possible legal subjects out there, let alone any that could be written in non-legalistic language.

Mark explained that legal columns in trade journals generally don’t survive long because lawyers aren’t used to writing in a journalistic style and, worse, feel the need to research everything to death. He showed us how to reorganize and rework several practice columns to make them more informative and readable for a broader audience.

Judging from the feedback we’ve had, we think we’re covering subjects people want to know about. We admit that not all of the feedback has been positive – over the years we’ve attracted a couple of letters to the editor and even one threatened lawsuit!

Rapid changes in the industry have provided us with lots of subjects to deal with, and writing Binchmarks has given us the opportunity to stop and reflect on these developments from time to time.

Changes in the industry

Since the first Binchmarks column appeared seven years ago, the public face of our industry has changed dramatically: we now have a number of well-established public companies, production centers in the regions have become firmly entrenched, and our expertise in producing material for foreign markets is now widely accepted. There is a distinct smell of prosperity across the country in all sectors.

Seven years ago, the role of public sector agencies had not matured and broadcasters doubted the ability of independent producers to produce first-class programming on a regular basis. Today, these issues have largely disappeared.

Then, many of us were frankly quite new at our work and business relationships with others suffered accordingly. Now, those who have managed to stick around have gained and shared with others a great deal of knowledge. As a result, there is a much stronger acceptance of the value each of us brings to this industry.

Of course, not everything is coming up roses. The public sector cuts have made it more difficult to get genuinely Canadian programming made. The public companies’ strong need to focus on production volume is not a good omen for lower budget indigenous production. Service production is on the rise as u.s.-based companies become more sophisticated about using the resources Canada has to offer. Deal-making is becoming much more complex, and real expertise in it attainable by fewer companies.

Two key issues

I believe two issues will be at the center of industry-wide debate over the next couple of years. Neither is new, but recent developments have put them in sharper focus.

The first issue relates to genuinely and distinctively Canadian programming. Do we want to see it produced in volume and what are we prepared to do to achieve that purpose? Are dwindling public sector resources to be used to support such production, or is the shift to a more industrial strategy to be reinforced? Will Canadian content regulations be the handmaiden of indigenous drama or of greater numbers of service productions?

The second issue is how we ensure the continued development of a pool of high-end Canadian creative talent able to compete with the best internationally. Ultimately, the recognized existence of such talent will be what sets us apart from being a mere service industry.

In order to build and reinforce this pool, should the agencies continue to support the growth of producing companies with the expectation that profitable companies will nurture creative talent, or should the agencies directly support such talent in partnership with producers and broadcasters?

This controversial and difficult question must be resolved if we are to build the creative powerhouse necessary for Canadian-produced material to succeed creatively and financially.

You may have noticed that I have not referred to the public funding access crisis du jour of independent producers becoming broadcasters. I believe that this issue will resolve itself fairly soon with new rules being developed to prevent ‘self-dealing’ and some very limited access given to broadcasters who are actually producing for other broadcasters and not for themselves.

The other two issues I refer to have deeper and more long-term structural problems for our industry.

A few thank you’s

The sophistication of the film and television industry over the past seven years has meant that we’ve had to draw on a wide range of lawyers in our firm, with everyone from tax lawyers to immigration lawyers helping out. In all, Binchmarks has been written by 27 different lawyers in our firm, with numerous repeat appearances by the core group of Diana Cafazzo, Simon Chester, David Kent, Mary-Ann Haney, Ron Hay and me. Many of these people continue to practice with the firm and look forward to writing Binchmarks until they’re old and gray.

Others have gone on to bigger and better things. For instance, Cynthia Rathwell is now legal counsel for the Canadian Association of Broadcasters; Carol Chestnut is legal counsel at Alliance Communications; and one of the most frequent contributors, Hatty Reisman, is vice-president and general counsel of Atlantis Communications.

Behind the scenes there’s been a veritable army of law students who have been invaluable in helping us research and write the columns (since they’re not lawyers yet, they can still write so that people can understand what they’re saying). Some have been so inspired by their brush with the entertainment industry that they’ve jumped in whole hog. Ted Kelterborn is now legal counsel at Atlantis and Kerry Quinlan is an entertainment lawyer in Vancouver with the firm of Boughton Peterson Yang Anderson.

In the awards department, the kudos must go to Simon Chester for consistently eye-catching headlines. My favorites are ‘Sex, Laws and Videotape: Don’t Get Caught With Your Pants Down,’ ‘Pix + Products + Promos = Plugola’ and ‘Parodies Lost?’ Consider yourselves forewarned about pun-filled titles in future columns to be written by Simon and Ron Hay.

The future is now

Readers often ask us whether we intend to publish the entire collection of Binchmarks columns. Until recently, the economics of such a project were too discouraging. But with the development of new technologies such as cd-rom, this problem is evaporating and we are investigating the possibility of issuing all 100 Binchmarks in an electronic package. Watch for an announcement in these pages!

While we haven’t run out of ideas yet, we’d love to hear about any suggestions you might have for future Binchmarks topics. So please fill out the accompanying box, If we haven’t already covered the topic, and it would be of interest to Playback readers, we’ll take it on.

Thanks for all your support!

FAX TO PLAYBACK

(416) 408-0870