The Oct. 23 edition of Playback contained an article entitled ‘Crew seeks more money’ in the commercial production section of your paper.

It is interesting that throughout the entire article, only individuals in management positions were interviewed. At no time was the point of view of the individual working crew member touched upon. I would hope that the publication of this response would begin to rectify that situation.

The crew members have worked in this industry since August 1991 without the benefit of a collective agreement. The rates of $30 for keys, $28 for seconds, and $26 for thirds have not changed since that time. The production companies make no allowance for the retirement benefits or health benefits of these employees and at times take upwards of 60 days to pay invoices.

These same companies willingly pay between us$35 and us$45 when they film in such cities as New York, Dallas, Miami and Los Angeles. However, back home, it would appear that company collusion is preventing the people on the floor from receiving a long overdue wage increase.

The management of the various commercial production houses are demonstrating to their employees the value of a union better than we ever could. Perhaps if their rigid attitudes continue, we will be seeing them across the bargaining table once again.

james wood,

business agent, iatse local 873, toronto.

Heed the warning

Kudos to Robert Armstrong for an excellent summation of the history of Canadian pay-television (Playback, Oct. 23, p. 9 – ‘Whatever happened to pay-tv?’).

When it comes to pay-tv, we seldom read articles that manage not only to take into account all the forces at work over more than a decade, but also manage to put them into proper perspective, and do so succinctly.

It is a piece worth reading for any individual concerned about the future of Canadian broadcasting.

Armstrong is right to be concerned. While the figures he uses to compare 1993 spending levels on Canadian programming between conventional tv (29.9%) and pay-tv (18.8%) are a comparison of apples and oranges, the arguments he makes are still very sound.

In fact, just to put the record straight, the figure of 18.8% of revenues expended by pay television on Canadian programming was virtually all dedicated to dramatic programming, compared to a total of 3.8% expended on drama by conventional broadcasters.

Armstrong’s figure of 29.9% was for all conventional tv program spending and that percentage includes, in addition to the drama category, a number of other categories: news (13.8%); sports (3%); music (1.8%); game shows (0.6%); human interest (2.8%); script and concept (0.3%) and other informational programs (3.9%).

Also, it’s important to note that TMN-The Movie Network’s expenditures on Canadian drama do not contain any internal overhead costs whatsoever, or salaries for any programming staff. Conventional broadcasters, however, do factor in related salaries when they make their expenditure calculations.

So why does tmn put so much into Canadian dramatic programming – which is unarguably the riskiest, most expensive, and certainly most underrepresented category of programming – in comparison to commercial broadcasters?

The key difference is that our audience is interested in one thing, and they will willingly subscribe every month for uncut, commercial-free movies on all four channels of tmn as well as on moviepix. It has made tmn, in effect, the country’s biggest ‘movie theater’ presenting Canadian movies to paying audiences. We just happen to be an in-home movie theater.

We are extremely proud of the support we provide to Canadian producers and distributors.

That’s why Armstrong’s second point is such a good one. Canada does need to be careful in its broadcasting choices. This country is small in numbers, but geographically enormous, and sits right beside the most prolific of foreign cultures.

Armstrong’s ‘early warning’ call, based on the pay-tv experience here and in the u.s., should be heeded when it comes to the number of dth programming service applicants in the running for licences. He is dead right about the inevitable consequences of ending up with too many in direct competition with one another. It would be a case of history repeating itself, I’m afraid.

But, more importantly, Armstrong is right because it is the prospect of huge American interests, based in a country 10 times the size of ours, in competition with small Canadian-controlled dth services, that will make such ‘competition’ nothing but an academic exercise, in very short order.

If that kind of ‘competition’ were allowed to happen, in the year 2010, I hope Armstrong will write a look-back at the dth history of this country. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely he will have any Canadian contribution left to measure.

lisa de wilde,

president, tmn network, toronto