Montreal: The apftq has filed a position with the crtc opposing current consortium takeover plans for Television Quatre Saisons. The consortium, lead by Quebecor Communications with Vancouver-based WIC Western International Communications as the minority partner, will make its case on the financially-troubled 11-year-old French-track network at commission hearings beginning July 7 in Montreal.

‘We’re opposed to the takeover application in the same way we opposed the Videotron application, unless there are modifications,’ says Jean Bouchard, the apftq’s communications director. ‘We will refuse to support the applications unless tqs adheres to certain conditions.’

The apftq will ask the crtc to oppose any increase in in-house production at tqs, and production carried on by companies controlled by the consortium. The producers will also ask that the takeover consortium be obliged to commit financing on a specific program category basis. In the past, tqs has made an overall annual investment of approximately $10 million in licensing and acquiring independently-produced programs.

In an interview with Playback, consortium president and ceo Franklin Delaney said tqs’s past investment in original drama series was one of the main reasons for the network’s indebtedness and that ‘la fiction lourde’ would be dropped by a reorganized tqs.

With only two French-track broadcasters in the business of commissioning drama programs, Jean Salvy at Radio-Canada and Andre Provencher at Tele-Metropole, Bouchard says producers cannot accept the consortium’s plans to dump drama, limited to two or three four-hour miniseries each year.

The apftq will also ask the crtc to oblige tqs to make specific funding commitments to Quebec and Canadian feature film production.

‘If you place the accent on cinema (movies) like they (tqs) say they will, because the programming will be movies, sports and local news, then there has to be some place, a commitment, to Canadian and Quebec cinema,’ says Bouchard.

The apftq will make the same demand concerning features on other Quebec-based broadcasters when their licences come up for renewal, he says.

Picard elected chair

In other apftq business, sda president and general manager Andre Picard has been elected chairman of the Association des producteurs de films et de television du Quebec, the Quebec producers association. He takes over from Pixcom president Jacquelin Bouchard who held the post for two years.

Due to rapid expansion in the animation production sector, the association has announced the sector will now have representation on its board.

The apftq’s 1997/98 board of directors is composed of Picard, Claudio Luca and Suzanne Girard (features), Jacquelin Bouchard and Jacques Blain (tv), Jacques Langlois (commercials), Nathalie Barton (documentary), Pierre Bernatchez (animation) and Louise Baillargeon, the association’s president and director-general.

Baillargeon has renewed her contract with the apftq for a two-year period.

Picard has held executive positions with Telefilm Canada, Television Quatre Saisons and Imax Corp.