Since last year’s Prime Time in Ottawa, the CFTPA’s annual powwow, producers have gotten much of what they asked for.

For one, the federal government restored its annual commitment to the Canadian Television Fund to $100 million a year for 2004/05. What the feds plan to do beyond this year remains an anxious question mark, however. Meanwhile, the three major production centers each got boosts in their respective provincial production tax credits, a move that CFTPA president and CEO Guy Mayson saw as essential.

‘It absolutely needed to happen, just to [show] what government can do to keep the incentive system strong and viable and competitive internationally,’ Mayson says.

So, then, what will be on the agenda at Prime Time 2005, as producers, broadcasters, financiers and politicos convene Feb. 2-4 at Ottawa’s Westin hotel? Handholding and bonfire Kumbaya sing-alongs on the Rideau Canal?

Not likely, especially after the Feb. 3 morning launch of Profile 2005, the economic production report compiled by the CFTPA and the APFTQ, Quebec’s producer association. While details of Profile will be unveiled at a presentation by Mayson and Claire Samson, his APFTQ equivalent, Playback has learned that the overall volume of Canadian production from April 2003 to March 2004 was $4.92 billion, down 2% from the previous 12-month period.

Taking into account Profile’s historical data, which is adjusted retroactively to reflect when CAVCO ultimately certified individual projects, Profile 2005’s decrease in production comes on the heels of years of growth or at least flat volumes. The new numbers might bring some sense of optimism to Prime Time, however, if only because the industry might have expected them to be far worse, given that they cover a period marked by CTF cuts, SARS and the rising loonie.

But the numbers can be somewhat misleading.

Production activity in ’03/04 was not equally spread around the country – Toronto service work was temporarily wiped out by SARS – nor do the figures provide a solid foundation to build on. The total is somewhat inflated by the fact that in that time frame, Vancouver played host to more costly Hollywood blockbusters than usual, including I, Robot, Catwoman and the aptly titled Paycheck. And these were still not enough to keep the overall service numbers from dropping in Profile 2005. In the past 10 months, significant guest productions have been even scarcer across the country.

For producers of domestic programming, recent times have been worse than Profile’s bottom line would indicate. Playback’s 2004 Report on Independent Production shows indigenous production down 7% in calendar 2003 compared to 2002. While many may have expected the service bubble to some day burst, this year’s Profile shows the first-ever signs of decline in domestic production, according to Mayson. In fact, the only growth area is in-house broadcaster production, which sits around the $1-billion mark.

These trends are troubling to Mayson, who would like to see an overhaul of the funding structure to help producers in their never-ending quest for corporate viability.

‘The system’s got to be a little more producer-friendly,’ he says. ‘With some of the funding programs, ultimately a huge burden is placed on the producer to make it all work.’

For his part, Ira Levy, executive producer at Toronto’s Breakthrough Films & Television and CFTPA board member, thinks the independent producer should be given a more central role in the Canadian television system. He points to the model of the U.K., where Pact, the nation’s producer association, has established new terms of trade with domestic broadcasters, whereby indie producers are at the core of a revised broadcast act.

Levy suggests that Canada’s own Broadcasting Act, which has not been touched since 1991, be reformed in a like-minded manner.

‘You build up the viability of the various different producers and production companies across the country and you’ll have a viable industry,’ says Levy.

But will broadcasters warm up to such producer talk at Prime Time? Some of them commented that last year’s event was too focused on making demands of government and broadcasters, while not doing enough to celebrate the accomplishments of Canadian production.

‘A lot of the conference topics themselves were negative, and a lot of the general conversation was quite doom and gloom, which was unfortunate,’ says Michelle Marion, director, Canadian independent productions, The Movie Network, who will appear on the Feb. 3 Is TV Getting too Sexy? panel as well as in a Feb. 4 session on HDTV.

‘There were certainly challenges we needed to work through last year that are still around and we still need to work through, but there really was a lot to celebrate,’ Marion continues. She adds that there is even more to fete this year, pointing to the successes of her network’s own Slings & Arrows and ReGenesis, as well as the likes of Trailer Park Boys and This Is Wonderland.

‘Broadcasters across the board are listening to viewers and realizing that we’ve got to start producing television that is more interesting, that is a bit smarter, that does challenge more, and both the producers and the broadcasters have stepped up in the last year,’ she says.

Mayson makes no apologies for producers using Prime Time to make sure their interests are represented.

‘We try not to make that a rant, but we think it’s fair ball to feature key issues and make sure it’s relevant for people to come and hear more about the realities of production,’ he says.

And what of the CRTC incentive to reward Canadian broadcasters by allowing them extra ad time for airing more hours of Canadian drama?

‘Those kinds of issues are best dealt with through expenditure requirements,’ Mayson says. ‘There should be some reasonable minimums established for broadcasters as part of their conditions of licence to be put into Canadian programming. [But] the commission has decided in their wisdom to go with an incentive approach, and we’re willing to give it a chance.’

Broadcasters will get a chance to demonstrate the various ways they are programming domestic shows in a Feb. 3 session entitled Tracking Eyeballs: Building Audiences for Cancon. Panelists will include Slawko Klymkiw, CBC’s executive director, network programming; Bill Mustos, CTV’s senior VP, dramatic programming; Astral president John Riley; and Alliance Atlantis COO Phyllis Yaffe.

All eyes at Prime Time will be on incoming Telefilm Canada executive director Wayne Clarkson, former head of the Canadian Film Centre, when he makes his first industry address at the keynote luncheon on Feb. 3.

‘With Wayne, there’s a lot of experience, a lot of commitment to the industry, a lot of knowledge – particularly on the feature film side,’ Mayson says. ‘We’re looking to Wayne for a bit of a new vision for Telefilm, and basically looking at a new partnership with Telefilm.’

Clarkson assumes his new role just as Telefilm’s mandate to raise the take of Canadian feature films at the domestic box office seems to be gaining momentum. The latest figures show Canuck flicks claiming around 4.6% at the local till in 2004, up from 3.6% the year before.

The current state of Canadian movies will be examined in a Feb. 4 panel called The Next Generation: The Comeback of English Features. That optimistic title might be jumping the gun, however. Although several English-language films broke the $1-million barrier at the box office last year, including Resident Evil: Apocalypse, The Corporation and Going the Distance, domestic English cinema claimed a market share of only 1.7% last year, compared to 20.8% for French-language films in its respective market.

These are issues to be hashed out at the session, to be moderated by Playback editor Peter Vamos, and which will feature: Susan Cavan, president, Accent Entertainment; Sandra Cunningham, president, Strada Films; Michael Kennedy, VP acquisitions, Famous Players; and Jeff Sackman, president and CEO, ThinkFilm.

Complete Prime Time scheduling information is available on the CFTPA website.

-www.cftpa.ca