Canadian producers are looking to reopen an old CRTC file: how much, or more precisely how little, domestic broadcasters invest in homegrown indie film.

The Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA), representing indie producers, is unhappy with how few local films domestic broadcasters put on their TV schedules, as they opt instead to air mostly Hollywood or other foreign titles.

“The CMPA has sounded the alarm bell on the issues facing Canadian feature films in various proceedings over the past several years,” CMPA president and CEO Norm Bolen said in a statement, as the producers’ lobby group released two studies to back its case for a public proceeding by the CRTC to consider the issue.

The CMPA’s call to action is the latest from a film industry that has long looked to broadcasters for richer licence fees for Canadian feature films, not least to expand their audience via the small screen.

A 2009 study for Telefilm Canada by Peter Grant and Michel Houle recommended that a government/industry  “working committee” be established to consider how to get Canadian broadcasters to better support the financing and exhibition of local feature films.

Using Telefilm Canada data, the producers on Tuesday painted a picture of a Canadian film industry in contrast to Europe, where major broadcasters like the BBC, Channel Four and Canal Plus pay handsome licence fees to get local movies made and sold worldwide, either voluntarily or as a condition of licence.

“[The data] clearly underscores the degree to which direct financing from television broadcasters, and particularly from pay TV services, has decreased over the last eight years,” one of the CMPA reports stated.

The producers report that total financing from Canadian broadcasters for indie filmmaking fell by 79% from $16.3 million in 2003-04 to just $3.3 million in 2010-11. (View the report here.)

A big chunk of broadcast investment in homegrown film production was eliminated when the CRTC allowed Rogers Communications, which acquired Citytv in 2007, a change in its condition of licence so that it no longer was required to program at least 100 hours of Canadian movies in primetime each year on its network.

Because Citytv until 2007 had a programming requirement to basically air one Canadian movie in primetime each week, but not a minimum spending requirement on Canadian film, the change in the condition of license enabled new owner Rogers Media to shift dollars to other programming genres.

Ted East, president of the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, representing indie film distributors, says Citytv exiting Canadian film left no conventional or specialty channels consistently supporting Canadian film.

“Broadcasters understandably want the most flexibility they can get from the regulator in terms of their programming requirements. However, feature films can’t survive in that atmosphere of uncertainty,” he argues.

And while pay TV operators continue to acquire Canadian films, East insists the license fees they pay have remained “stagnant” over the last decade.

That said, the CMPA reports do not include early stage film development financing from the Harold Greenberg Fund, meaning that around $2.3 million in early-stage financing from the offshoot of Astral Media’s The Movie Network was not included in the 2010-11 data cited by the CMPA.

Marc Seguin, SVP of policy at the CMPA, argues his research on English-language Canadian films produced with support from Telefilm Canada reveals direct financial support from Canadian broadcasters since 2002-03 has fallen sharply, whether from license fees or equity investments.

Seguin says the CMPA is hoping a hearing will help lay the groundwork for new ideas into how feature films can be better supported in Canadian television.

“Such a proceeding would allow stakeholders to share relevant data,” he adds, “as well as expertise and ideas, to improve the success of Canadian feature films in our television system, particularly in English Canada where the competition for audiences is so fierce.”

In 2003-04, a high watermark for Canadian broadcast investment in domestic films, Telefilm Canada contributed $29.1 million in investment, just behind $29.6 million from foreign sources.

In 2010-11, by contrast, $41.6 million came from Telefilm Canada, $33.7 million from “other government sources,” and just over $14 million from foreign sources.

A second study from Strategic Inc. commissioned by the CMPA and the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, representing indie distributors, estimated that over 13,000 theatrical films aired on Canadian TV sets during a six-year period from 2004 to 2010. (View the report here.)

“Of these, just over 1,500 were Canadian-content theatrical films. Therefore, Canadian films represented slightly above 11% of all reported theatrical films,” the CMPA/CAFDE report states.