‘Playing second fiddle to Torontosaurus Rex’

As a television producer based in Ottawa, it was with some disappointment that I read the Production in Ontario special report in the June 20 issue of Playback. Four solid pages about production in Toronto. Maybe that’s what the report’s title should have been. There is a lot of film and television production going on outside of Toronto this summer and fall.

Here in Ottawa, companies such as Knight Enterprises, Sound Venture Productions, Productions Charbonneau, Mountain Road Productions and GAPC are shooting some $20 million worth of film and television. That’s right, $20 million. Now add in the animation work being done by companies like Amberwood and Funbag and that number more than doubles.

I’m told there is quite a bit of film work going on in Hamilton, ON, as well.

We’re kind of used to playing second fiddle to Torontosaurus Rex. But Playback is supposed to be Canada’s national trade paper. I would expect a provincial report to be just that, one that informs our industry about the goings-on everywhere in Ontario.

If you would like to send someone down the 401, it would be my great pleasure to arrange a meeting that includes key Ottawa production executives. In fact, I’d even be willing to pay for your reporter’s plane ticket and dinner.

Chris Knight,
President,
Knight Enterprises,
Ottawa.

Our numbers are your numbers

In your June 20 article, ‘Union report calls for dramatic change’ Glenn O’Farrell, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, dismisses the projected advertising revenue figures in a recent study commissioned by the Coalition of Canadian Audio-visual Unions as ‘totally flawed.’ He goes on to say that his organization looks at the public record for their figures, and questions where the CCAU gets theirs.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to Mr. O’Farrell to learn that the CCAU gets their figures from exactly the same place as CAB – from the CRTC and from television industry experts such as Nordicity Group.

In commissioning the report, entitled The Need for a Regulatory Safety Net – Broadcasting Policy and Canadian Television Drama in English Canada in the Next Five Years, the CCAU set out to address some of CAB’s concerns about the effect of the Internet and the fragmented market on future advertising revenues. During the creation of the report, however, we also discovered that spending on dramatic programming has hit a seven-year low.

Instead of using the results of this report as a launching pad to discuss how we can work together to reverse this disturbing trend, Mr. O’Farrell dismisses the study outright by saying it is void of the most elementary understanding of where the industry and marketplace is.

Given that broadcasting licence renewals are on the horizon, and Canadian conventional broadcasters enjoy a privileged position thanks to a regulated environment with lucrative simulcast opportunities, you would think that CAB would at least go through the motions of having a discussion with us.

It’s obvious we can’t rely on their goodwill, so it’s no wonder we have to resort to asking the CRTC to put a minimum spending requirement in place to ensure Canadian drama survives on our public airwaves.

Maureen Parker,
Executive director,
Writers Guild of Canada.