Montreal: ‘Generally speaking, one of the great untapped resources in Canadian movie marketing has been the broadcasters. And so the whole idea is how do you get them engaged in the production and marketing of Canadian theatrical movies?’ asks Paul Gratton, VP/GM at Space: The Imagination Station and Drive-In Classics and station manager at Bravo!. A member of the feature film advisory committee, the popular broadcaster says CHUM Television has all the attributes to be a player in the production of Canadian theatrical films, but new guidelines for the Canada Feature Film Fund effectively deny it access to the fund.

CHUM actually believed it had majority advisory committee support for access to production financing from the $100-million CFFF in 2002/03, only to subsequently discover broadcast companies without an established performance envelope, including CTV and CanWest Global, are not eligible.

Nonetheless, Alliance Atlantis Communications and Nelvana, a Corus Entertainment company, had reserved production envelopes last year, and presumably will be grandfathered for ’02/03. TVA International, a Quebecor Media company, and AAC have distribution envelopes.

Telefilm Canada has not published the CFFF performance component list for ’02/03.

In a recent letter to Telefilm executive director Richard Stursberg criticizing the decision to exclude CHUM, CTV and Global from CFFF funding, Peter Miller, VP business and regulatory affairs with CHUM Television, writes, ‘Telefilm, under your new guidance, should start responding to the evolving marketplace and either have the courage to banish all publicly traded companies with broadcasting assets from access to tax payer’s money or allow all Canadian companies to apply for the funding of culturally relevant programming.’

Miller’s letter goes on to say choosing some public companies over others ‘is definitely no longer in the public interest, and not the way to attain these [box office] goals.’

The new CFFF guidelines, released Feb. 7, state ‘broadcaster-affiliated production companies which qualify for a performance envelope will be eligible to apply for production financing but not eligible to apply for financing to the selective component.’ The catch is the phrase, ‘which qualify,’ a reference to those production companies with a track record and already existing performance envelope.

Meeting with Telefilm

The issue was raised again at a March 6 meeting in Toronto attended by Stursberg, Miller and Gratton.

Both Miller and Gratton emerged from the meeting convinced their concerns will be addressed promptly (‘a matter of weeks’) and seriously. ‘All of this predates [Stursberg’s] arrival at Telefilm and I am confident he’ll be able to clarify some of this,’ says Gratton.

Stephen Ellis, chairman of the CFTPA, says Telefilm has devised a series of CFFF measures in support of small and medium-sized producers and distributors, partly as a countermeasure for the access of bigger companies, including broadcast affiliates.

‘You can get bogged down in the minutiae, but at the end of the day what it’s all about is trying to fund the high volume of quality domestic production that Canadians will watch [on TV] or pay for and go to see at the movie theatre,’ says Ellis, president of Toronto’s Ellis Entertainment.

Ellis says funding arbitrators like the CRTC, the Canadian Television Fund and Telefilm have to deal prudently with the evolving distinctions between stakeholders, broadcasters and producers. ‘Clearly, Telefilm has opened the door to this [CFFF] fund but only a crack and CHUM is saying, ‘That’s not open wide enough.’ And that is the debate we’re going to have.’

Leveraging TV assets

Gratton says the CFFF was established with a very specific goal – to elevate national box office for Canada films to a 5% market share.

He says successful releases like Paramount’s Save the Last Dance benefit from powerful branding support from Viacom broadcast units like MTV and Nickelodeon, and that MuchMusic is also a tremendous promotional asset and selling platform for CDs and all sorts of youth merchandise.

At least in CHUM’s case, Gratton says there’s no danger of self-dealing because producers require a theatrical distribution agreement to gain access to CFFF production financing.

If CHUM becomes eligible for CFFF support, Gratton says ChumCity Productions would like to develop and produce a $4-million pop music road movie.

Gratton says CHUM’s movie producing initiative will not be done at the expense of its licensing of Canadian movies. CHUM has currently prebought about 15 English-language features for the year ahead, ‘a kind of separate but parallel ambition.’