Ten years ago, the Montreal Canadiens were competing for the Stanley Cup, Brian Mulroney was prime minister and the 500-channel universe was still a dream. A lot has changed since then including the coming of age of Canadian series television productions. Shows like Traders, Dudley the Dragon, LEXX, Deux Freres, Radio enfer, Big Comfy Couch and The Associates have been broadcast since that time, attracting millions of viewers here and internationally. Helping to make that growth possible has been the Independent Production Fund and its executive director, Andra Sheffer.

‘Ten years ago,’ recalls Sheffer, ‘there was very little private money in the industry. Producers had to rely on government subsidization for their programs to be made. And there always seemed to be a critical 10% of the budget that was never available in Canada.’

That 10% amounted to critical work in post-production that would turn a good show into a superlative one or pay the producers properly for their efforts.

Right at that time, Ron Osborne, then CEO of Maclean Hunter, became involved in the purchase of Selkirk Communications. Osborne recalls that MH ‘suggested to the CRTC that we offer $9 million as a public benefit for the transaction.’

MH’s proposal was to create a fund that would offer money to producers of dramatic television series as a ‘top-up’ to their budgets. Intended as an investment, the fund expected to recoup monies should a series prove profitable.

Even a decade later, Osborne still sounds miffed at what happened next. As part of the approval for buying Selkirk, the CRTC upped MH’s amount by $20 million to $29 million. Although that decision was no doubt controversial at the time, Osborne – who is no longer involved with broadcast television – says ‘I’ve been delighted that it worked as a fund. It was Maclean Hunter’s suggestion to set it up in the first place. It’s water under the bridge now as to what the amount was.’

The increase in the fund, dictated by the CRTC, did have a major impact. At $9 million, the Maclean Hunter Fund would have been able to disburse less than $1 million a year. With $29 million to play with, the fund has been able to invest approximately $3 million a year into 122 series over the past decade.

While investing $30 million in more than 1,000 hours of television viewing, the IPF’s board has wisely reinvested the principal into a portfolio that has seen the initial $29 million grow into a fund that now has $35 million.

In addition to funding shows as diverse as The Black Stallion and Tribu.com, the IPF has assisted in more than 175 training and professional development programs administered by the likes of the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Banff Television Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival. Producers, directors, show-runners and actors have benefited from these sessions, which occur, like clockwork, at every major film and television festival in the land.

Nor is the IPF merely a funder. Following the principles set down by Osborne, the fund has always sought recoupment from its investments. It has seen successes as the decade has progressed and the industry has grown more astute in the search for foreign investors and broadcasters.

LEXX, the Salter Street-produced science-fiction series, paid the IPF back 100% of its investment and the series is now financed without the largesse of independent funding sources. Other shows that have been able to pay back the IPF considerable amounts of dollars include Kurt Vonnegut’s Monkey House, Groundling Marsh, ReBoot, Caillou and Eric’s World.

None of these financially prudent investments would have occurred had the fund not been created properly. Comments Sheffer, ‘Ron Osborne set up a board of directors which was completely independent of Maclean Hunter from day one. It’s what makes this fund unique in this country.’

Osborne made sure the board was comprised of professionals who understood the needs of the broadcast industry but were not themselves involved in independent series production. Recruits for the first board included Michael McCabe, now head of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, Peter Mortimer and Denise Robert.

Robert, the acclaimed feature film producer of, most recently, The Widow of St. Pierre, is still on the board. ‘Fifteen years ago, the most popular television shows in Quebec were things like Dallas, American series that were dubbed into French,’ comments Robert. ‘Now the top 25 shows are mostly homegrown productions. I’m happy to say that the IPF has made a difference in whether [some Quebec] series are made or not – and whether the shows can be made comfortably, with high quality.’

Robert notes, with satisfaction, the IPF’s involvement in such adult series as Alys Robi, Tribu.com and Deux Freres as well as such children’s fare as Radio enfer and Pin Pon. ‘The quality of the productions has increased because there’s been more money, either to do period or contemporary pieces. You can see the production value on the screen.’

From its beginnings as the Maclean Hunter Fund and now as the IPF, there has been a commitment to funding Quebec productions with anywhere from 30% to 40% of the monies available in a year. While Sheffer administers the IPF, the Cogeco Program Development Fund (which supports writers, MOWs and series pilots) and the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund from Toronto, her associate director Claire Dion handles applications from Quebec for all three funds from their Montreal office.

‘The IPF has different evaluation criteria, obviously, when we look at English-language and French-language productions,’ notes Sheffer. ‘There is a huge demand for drama series in English Canada, so we can fund only one out of three applications. In Quebec, there isn’t a huge demand. We fund three out of four applications there. Making the decisions in English Canada is obviously much harder because there’s more choice.’

Another evaluation factor is recoupment, but the French-language barrier makes international sales very difficult for Quebecois productions. While English-language TV series are expected to have foreign distribution, ‘half the time we don’t even ask companies to distribute the French products because we know there’s very little chance of a sale outside of Quebec, says Sheffer, But, she adds, ‘when we measure audience size, we’re thrilled if we get 800,000 viewers to watch a show in English Canada. In Quebec, they would laugh at that. The series we fund there draw over two million viewers per show.’

Choosing which projects to fund each year is in the hands of the board. The permanent staff, led by Sheffer and Dion, analyze the projects, read the scripts and make recommendations at IPF meetings. Having spent time with the producers who are applying to the fund, Sheffer usually pitches the shows to the board.

Paul Gratton, manager of Bravo! and Space: The Imagination Station and a board member, observes that ‘despite the fact that we have final decision power over the actual investments, there’s rarely any controversy. We have an excellent staff working at the IPF, so 95% of the time, when they put forward a recommendation, the board asks a few questions, acknowledges the wisdom of the suggestion that’s being made and ratifies it.’

Exceptions – that 5% – are made when a board member brings specialized knowledge to the meeting. ‘We have lawyers sitting around the table; we have francophones who know the Quebec scene; we have veteran producers,’ comments Gratton. ‘We bring a bit of market reality to the discussion.’

Conditions in the marketplace have changed the flavor of the IPF’s quarterly board meetings. For many years, the fund would approve a similar number of applications every three months. That changed when the Canadian Television Fund instituted what Sheffer has dubbed their ‘infamous Feb. 15 deadline, because everyone who wants to produce a dramatic series has to apply to the CTF then, they have to apply to us at the same time.’ As a result, the February meeting has become the one with the most financial consequences, although the board does continue to meet three other times, including at the Banff festival each summer.

In Sheffer’s estimation, the CTF deadline has ‘made the system way worse. For producers, it’s an artificial deadline that they have to focus on every year. Many projects need a few extra months for development and now they aren’t given the time.’

Gratton is slightly more diplomatic in his evaluation of the new TV funding scenario. ‘It makes sense in terms of the production cycle and getting things ready for a fall TV launch season. On the other hand, there is a certain frustration because things do trickle in during the year and you want to be able to address those as well.’

So, even while getting ready to celebrate on May 7 the 10th anniversary of the IPF, Sheffer is feeling a bit despondent these days. ‘This is the worst time of the year because I just had to say ‘no’ to 80% of the applicants. I feel for all those producers because I don’t know where they will turn for funding when they’re desperate. I don’t want to see them deferring their fees and starving over the next few years. In the end, I think the decisions the board made were good ones. If we had more money, we would fund more projects.’

After 10 years at the IPF and nearly a quarter of a century in the industry – at the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, the Toronto International Film Festival and in a department of the Secretary of State that was the precursor of the festivals branch of Telefilm Canada – Sheffer is a superb ambassador. One thing board members and independent producers agree on – that there is no one who can match the eloquence, passion, practicality and sheer good sense of the woman at the helm of the IPF, Andra Sheffer. *

-www.ipf.ca