Tunnel, no light

The Canadian content hearings couldn’t come at a better time. In the midst of current events, any help making sense of where Canadian production falls out in this Medusa of changes in the private and public sector would be useful.

As tvontario fights for its life, a partnership with a private-sector production company, Atlantis or Discovery, is one of the potential scenarios in the offing. A copy of Peter Herrndorf’s Sept. 18 staff fall launch speech corroborates an alleged partnership scenario, stating that under the terms of the not-for-profit bid, ‘tvo’s ability to deliver high quality programs and services would be strengthened by strategic partnerships with a consortium of colleges and universities; with one or more private broadcasting or production companies.’

Maybe. But tv industry reps are concerned that the slant of questioning at the public input sessions are setting up what they call a false dichotomy between the entertainment and educational component of tvo programming and suggest that the government appears to be gearing up to restrict tvo’s role to educational, curriculum-based programming while privatizing the entertainment and current affairs component of the schedule.

This could be a particularly difficult line to straddle. Whether tvo would keep its identifiable pbs-like identity or morph into a pubcaster with a more private net feel is one of many great unknowns. It would help if the proposals for tvo’s bid for a not-for-profit corporation and the proposals from private broadcasters were on the table for discussion. tvo is a publicly owned corporation after all, meaning public tax dollars are fueling the fire, and this is supposed to be a public consultation process crossing the province, yes? An intelligent debate is somewhat impaired when only select facts are available.

Elsewhere in the spectrum, it’s too soon to gauge the impact of the new Ontario tax credit for ‘foreign’ producers on the Canadian programming agenda.

No problem with incentives to bring production business above the border. Like Dufferin Gate president Patrick Whitley says, ‘To an American producer, he’s getting at least 40 cents on his dollar, he’s getting 11% on tax credit and that’s 50% on their dollar, [and that’s] pretty nice.’

But, as per Fireworks Entertainment’s John Robinson: ‘What gives one even more pause for thought is the situation where it’s done as a Canada/u.s. joint venture which would get an sr [special recognition] number from the crtc, which also qualifies it as Canadian content even if there is a very active American producer partner.’

Whether this situation, which pre-exists under the federal credit, acts indirectly as an added incentive for Canadian broadcasters to slip industrial programming in the Cancon commitments file is a work in progress. In any case, the stage is primed for discussion next February on Cancon, cavco, the crtc regs and the means for their potential collective tweaking.