In Ivan Fecan’s recent one-on-one with Playback, he addressed a wide-ranging number of topics, including the future of digital distribution, the CBC, and the matter of Cancon. Below are some excerpts.

On U.S. networks digitally distributing their content directly to international audiences:

‘At the moment what they’re all saying to us is it’s probably too big, too unruly and too complicated for them to set up that kind of organization in each country in the world. It might happen, but I don’t think it’s tomorrow. And it may never happen. But we have to think about it.’

On the challenges of running the CBC, and his time there as head of programming:

‘It’s not an easy job. The hardest thing is deciding how you measure success or failure in a public broadcaster. Until you really have buy-in on that from the people that fund you, the people of Canada, the government, the CRTC – and most importantly, the employees at CBC and the independent producers that service the CBC – you could be serving so many different masters…

‘The arguments [against you] are easy to make. If you’re too PBS, you’re marginalized. If you’re too ‘popularist,’ you’re duplicating what others do.

‘But at some point, you’ve got to choose. And you’ve got to go for that, because you’re confusing the heck out of everybody until you do.

‘In my time, the choice I made was to be popularist, whether it was right or wrong. Some of it worked and some of it didn’t. But at least I made a choice.’

On the public funding agencies:

‘They give out public money and they’ve got to make sure they’re purer than pure. They’ve got a lot of boxes they’ve got to check off. But in the process of all that well-meaning stuff, you can also kill the creative. And then what’s the point? Work gets done, people get paycheques, stuff gets produced. Potentially, you get something where you’re not doing yourself or Canadian television any real favors.’

On arguments for increasing the amount of Canadian TV production:

‘What I don’t believe in is quantity over quality. Some people feel you have to do quantity to get quality. In a perfect world that’s true. I would rather do less, but get better if resources are finite. I worry about the idea that by doing a lot of stuff and not funding it properly, you’re going to get something.’