Montreal: In a two-hour May 9 presentation to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, the CFTPA said bottom-line interests must be tempered by public policy goals and that the independent production sector represents the system’s best resource for quality programming and creative and cultural diversity.

The producers told the parliamentarians the powers accorded the CRTC are ‘adequate and appropriate’ and the language of the 1991 Broadcasting Act is ‘technologically neutral and adaptable to the future,’ and as such, the legislation does not need to be changed.

In an interview with Playback, CFTPA president and CEO Elizabeth McDonald said ‘a vibrant Canadian broadcasting system’ requires the full participation of both private and public broadcasters, pay and specialty TV. ‘In other words, we don’t think private broadcasting should opt out.

‘What we’re asking the committee to do is to not fall prey to the commercial interests [read corporate] of some of the parties. And we have them, too. But there has to be a balance,’ says McDonald.

The CFTPA also raised the issue of foreign ownership.

‘We are dominated to a large extent by foreign programming and so we have recommended that foreign ownership be maintained at present limits [20%] for broadcast programming undertakings. I think we’re pretty close to the Quebec position,’ says McDonald.

Diversity of voices

McDonald says the recent U.K. legislative initiative, which opens the system to foreign ownership, is basically a regulatory byproduct of European Union membership. A similar model applied to Canada, she says, ‘would risk turning the Canadian broadcasting system and companies into a branch plant.’

Julia Keatley, CFTPA chair and executive producer of Keatley Films, Vancouver, told the committee, ‘Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, told us at our annual conference in Ottawa this past February that no government can ‘order citizens to watch what they do not want to watch.’ That is true. But what Mr. Valenti neglected to acknowledge is you can only decide what to watch from the choices you are offered. If you take away the Canadian content regulations of the Broadcasting Act, you will not have many Canadian choices.’

The CFTPA told the committee the increasing consolidation and convergence in the industry has not necessarily led to more Canadian programming, but rather more layoffs and questions about the future of indigenous dramas. The CFTPA believes this financial pressure is enticing large media companies to increasingly go after public funds historically reserved for independent producers.

Ira Levy, executive producer, Breakthrough Entertainment, Toronto, and CFTPA board member, told the committee, ‘The large privately owned broadcasters who dominate the Canadian television landscape are understandably beholden to their shareholders and their attention is focused on the bottom line. This reality will always push them to assume increased control over production and distribution rights without fair compensation. And now these large media companies are pushing for increased access to the production funding mechanisms that are the lifeblood of the independent production sector.’

Broadcasters are

stakeholders, too

‘We do not believe purely bottom-line pressures can be the goal of the Broadcasting Act. For a country the size of Canada, on this continent, we have to make sure we have as many voices and as much investment in programming as possible,’ adds McDonald. ‘Broadcasters, public or private, have a lot of control in the system. Without them most of the support [funding] programs cannot be accessed [by producers].’

McDonald points out Canadian broadcasters face reduced demands in terms of licence fees compared to their counterparts in the U.S. and the U.K. For English-track drama that received federal funding assistance (through Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund), the average licence fees paid by broadcasters in 1999/00 represented 24.2% of the production budget, almost identical to the cost-sharing split for English children’s production. Without CTF support, broadcaster licences drop off sharply – 5.2% of the budget in the case of drama, 6.3% in the case of children’s.

‘We also raised the issue of copyright,’ says McDonald. ‘There are people who believe a workable copyright regime is anti-innovation – we hold that is not correct. In fact, we’re not going to have any traffic on the Canadian [information] highway if we don’t protect our copyrights.’

Asked about regulation in new media systems, McDonald replies, ‘We believe the CRTC has to start dealing with rights issues. They can’t walk away from it. We agree with the other parties in the creative area on that issue.’

The CFTPA, which represents some 400 content producers, also raised the issue of tax credits and the related cost of production financing. Because of delays in paying out credits to producers, a growing share of production budgets (as much as 20%) is being used to pay for interim financing, benefiting banks and other industry lenders but pushing producers towards ever greater financial risk.

-www.cftpa.ca