In response to tremendous growth in the number of broadcast windows and the further globalization of the TV market, documentary producers, distributors and broadcasters are becoming increasingly involved in the series format and high-end programming. Canadian doc makers are also looking more than ever for projects that will attract international coproducers and multiple broadcasters.

According to research conducted by the Documentary Research Network, formed by doc fest Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal, between 1992 and 1999 the production volume of doc series in Canada increased by 352% and decreased by 58% for feature-length documentaries.

‘To make their money, most distributors look for series, because to sell one one-hour show or one 26-episode series takes exactly the same amount of work,’ says Rudy Buttignol, TVOntario creative head, documentaries, drama and network.

While Vancouver docmaker David Paperny, president of Paperny Films, continues to produce one-offs such as The Boys of Buchenwald, intended for the festival circuit, he maintains that series are still the most marketable format for docs.

As such, Paperny Films is thriving in the domestic doc marketplace with Kink (on Showcase), a 13-episode series with a total production budget of $1.5 million. Kink, in production on season two, tracks the sexually fetishistic lifestyles of a variety of subjects. Also in the works at Paperny are Cutting Edge for Discovery Health Canada, a series of four one-hours, budgeted at a total of $900,000, that follows the lives and work of renowned Canadian scientists, and 13 half-hours of the cooking series New Classics for Food Network.

The success of Breakthrough Films’ Little Miracles series, set in Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital, helped the Toronto-based producer/distributor develop a business model adaptable to the changing marketplace.

‘Market fragmentation is the reality, so you can’t bemoan it, you have to embrace it and do something with it,’ says executive producer Ira Levy.

Levy explains that the key for Breakthrough has been developing shows that can work over a multitude of platforms and sell internationally.

‘Little Miracles is a very Canadian idea, but because it’s also so universal, it sells internationally,’ he says.

In its third season, with 65 episodes already produced at $100,000 per half-hour and 10 more hours in production, Little Miracles has been licensed by CBC, specialty Life Network and diginet Discovery Health Canada. International broadcasters for the program include UK Living and WebMD Television in the U.S.

As the number of broadcasting windows grows and licence fees shrink, prodcos are turning increasingly to the international market for cofinancing and coproduction partners. The Canadian industry’s traditional competition with the U.S. market gives it a leg up in terms of garnering foreign interest.

‘We’ve always had an economy of scale problem, and therefore have had to seek international partners. Only recently have the U.S. and the big countries in Europe done the same thing,’ says Buttignol. ‘The flip side is that only some of [Canada’s] players are truly international.’

In the wake of successes such as Discovery/BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs, a big-budget, FX-driven natural history series, programmers around the world are looking for high production values for one-offs. Broadcasters subsequently promote these splashy projects as ‘event programs.’

In that vein, Toronto’s CineNova Productions, which has an international focus for its one-offs and anthologies, recently completed Ocean Ranger for CTV. The one-hour doc uses extensive CG to recreate the oilrig that is its subject.

CineNova chairman and CEO David Lint says he is in the process of establishing coproduction partners in France and England to help his company achieve even higher production values. He adds that it is simply not possible to finance this type of documentary special in Canada.

‘We decided we wanted to enter the feature end of the documentary business, which means budgets have to be half a million dollars or more, and that’s just not possible in Canada,’ Lint says. Canadian audience numbers might play some part in that. According to the DRN study, Canadians are watching more documentary programming, but less Canadian documentaries.

In the newly launched world of the diginets, the challenge is for networks to distinguish their brands by sticking to particular formats and styles.

The Documentary Channel, a diginet coventure of Corus Entertainment, the National Film Board and CBC, for one, is bucking the series trend.

‘A lot of filmmakers are making a living doing series and lower-cost documentaries,’ says Michael Harris, VP and GM. ‘It’s just that those aren’t the ones we’re going to build our reputation on.’ He says the diginet will license one-off auteur documentaries.

However, the diginets have the challenge of putting out quality original product on limited resources. The DRN study, which incorporates 75 interviews with producers, directors and broadcasters, indicates the majority in the Canadian doc industry believes the system is not functioning sufficiently.

‘A lot of people were telling me they feel the CRTC has overwhelmed the market by licensing so many channels, and that the channels were licensed without sufficient funding for production,’ says Kirwin Cox, project director.

The results of this research will be officially released at Hot Docs on May 3.

-www.ridm.qc.ca (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal)

-www.papernyfilms.com

-www.documentarychannel.ca

-www.breakthroughfilms.com