OTTAWA-GATINEAU — Canada’s creative community again came looking for regulation that would require Internet and wireless service providers to help fund new media productions on Tuesday, though their proposals did not get a ringing endorsement from the CRTC chairman.

Creators lined up on the opening day of the commission’s new media hearings, arguing that ISPs and WSPs should put a percentage of their revenues towards production.

The Canadian Conference of the Arts, the Directors Guild of Canada and several other organizations are calling for a 3% of revenues formula. BDUs pay roughly 6% of their revenues into the Canadian Television Fund and other funds.

ACTRA national executive director Stephen Waddell said his organization doesn’t want any ‘heavy-duty regulation,’ but is instead looking for the same incentives to be applied to the new media world as in traditional broadcasting.

‘What is light about that?’ retorted CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein. ‘You are just taking [traditional TV regulation] and transferring it to the Internet.’ He stressed that the CRTC is looking for ‘implementable and practical’ solutions.

Von Finckenstein also took issue with contentions that there is limited shelf space on the Internet. He chastised the CCA — following a reference to traffic throttling — for suggesting that there is not an abundance of space in new media. ‘The space is there; it’s just how much you have to pay for it,’ noted the chair.

The chair was equally critical of claims by ACTRA that there is not enough online space for Cancon. ‘I am stunned by your overall approach,’ said von Finckenstein.

Waddell responded there is a need for Canadian content online. The CRTC chair stood firm, stating ACTRA was talking about incentives and funding, and not shelf space.

The creative community’s tune hasn’t changed since the CRTC first exempted new media from regulation back in 1999 — claiming that IPSs and WSPs act like broadcast distributors and should have to help fund Canadian productions.

‘It’s time to apply regulations to new media to meet the social and cultural objectives of the Broadcasting Act,’ said CCA national director Alain Pineau.

Though small providers that do not reach a financial threshold would be exempt from the payments, since they could not ‘contribute like Shaw or Rogers,’ Pineau suggested. ‘There will be no blood on the streets if a person’s Internet bill increases by $3. I just got my Rogers cable bill and it was a dollar more, I don’t know why, and I didn’t complain.’

Ironically, though they warned that there is not enough funding for new media projects, most examples of successful online projects put forward at the hearings by the creatives were made without pubic cash — including the highly popular Têtes à claques series, the web elements of the film Beowulf and Grendel and Sanctuary, the sci-fi series developed specifically for the Internet that was commissioned into a TV series after gaining an online following.

DGC president and Beowulf director Sturla Gunnarsson said these projects were self-financed, but noted that such projects ‘while functioning in embryonic stages at the present time, could benefit from some sort of new media funding.’

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This story has been corrected. The DGC is not seeking a 6% revenue formula, as originally reported. The original also confused the web elements of Beowulf & Grendel with the corresponding feature film.