The Canadian Television Fund is, once again, trying to encourage broadcasters to put more money into Canadian drama.

Recently announced changes to the CTF’s English-language drama guidelines, for its ’05/06 funding cycle, put more focus on audience performance and could prompt broadcaster licence-fee increases of up to $15,000 per hour for bigger-budget dramas. In addition, the fund will now look to primetime audiences to determine audience potential.

In the second year of the CTF’s three-stream system, the fund has amended its guidelines in an attempt to fine-tune the one-application, one-answer policy implemented in November 2003.

While applicants no longer have to apply to both the Equity Investment Program and the Licence Fee Program, English-language drama is still administered through Telefilm Canada. Many of the most recent guideline changes apply to how the fund evaluates English-language drama.

English drama applicants are evaluated on a points system with four categories: broadcaster interest, audience potential, content, and marketing. There are 30 points up for grabs in each category, except for marketing, which is worth a maximum 10 points.

The number of points an application receives in the broadcaster interest category is determined by the extent to which licence fees exceed minimum requirements. Minimum fees currently sit at 25% of the production budget for projects with budgets under $800,000 per hour, and $240,000 per hour for more expensive dramatic programming.

This year the fund is introducing a higher maximum threshold, the amount broadcasters must contribute to get all 30 available points in the broadcaster interest category. For series with budgets over $800,000 per hour, maximum licences have been increased to $315,000 per hour from $300,000.

In addition, the fund has created separate threshold requirements for MOWs and miniseries. To gain the maximum broadcaster interest points for an MOW or miniseries, licence fees must be $325,000 per hour or 17.5% of the budget, whichever is higher. The change is needed because MOWs and minis have been drawing disproportionately more funds from the CTF than other big-budget dramas.

Karen Franklin, Telefilm’s director of English operations, says the change aims to encourage a higher level of broadcaster contribution and, it is hoped, shows with higher production values and a greater potential to reach wider audiences.

In addition, higher maximum licence fees may also help to make broadcaster interest a more meaningful tool for evaluating projects.

‘What we found last year was that we couldn’t use the broadcaster interest section of the evaluation grid to differentiate among the projects,’ says Franklin, explaining that in the first year of the three-stream system, all the dramatic projects selected for CTF funding met the maximum licence-fee threshold.

Changes have also been made to how the fund evaluates audience potential. Audience performance for individual programs replaces volume of hours aired as the largest determinant of the broadcaster’s track record.

‘The CTF board determined that the goal of the audience section within the Telefilm evaluation grid for English drama production should be to prioritize those applications with the greatest potential to maximize total viewing hours for original CTF drama in primetime,’ says Franklin.

For returning programs, the fund will look at actual ratings numbers for previous seasons. And for new shows, the fund will look at a broadcaster’s track record in similar programming.

This year, audience data used to evaluate projects will be limited to primetime, whereas last year the fund looked at overall audiences throughout the schedule.

In addition, the fund will now only look at audience data from original programming produced with broadcaster contribution. Last year, acquisitions were included.

Audience data will also now be limited to CTF-funded programs or programs that would meet CTF requirements, rather than all English drama.

‘Certainly new entrants and small broadcasters will have difficulty competing within this section of the evaluation grid,’ says Franklin. ‘Scoring well in other criteria of the grid may help, but particularly important will be the development of their own track record.’

The broadcaster track record will also take into consideration the sub-format of dramatic programming, which means, for example, that specialty channels could benefit significantly from having a good track record in 30-minute dramas, even if their track record in other sub-formats is limited.

In addition to changes in the English drama stream, the broadcaster performance stream now faces new deadlines.

Broadcasters have to submit applications to the broadcaster performance envelope by Dec. 15. And broadcasters with performance envelopes over $2 million must now submit at least 75% of their applications by Oct. 15. When it introduced the new system more than a year ago, the CTF removed deadlines, allowing broadcasters to apply throughout the year. However, most applications came in at the last possible moment in the fiscal year, leaving the fund with a glut of applications to process all at once.

For a full account of guideline changes visit the CTF website.

-www.canadiantelevisionfund.ca