Commission crunch: Producers facing greenlight ‘dead zone’

Part one of Playback's Spring 2024 cover story examines the current state of commissioning in Canada and its particular impact on the kids sector.

Playback‘s Spring 2024 cover story looks at how Canadian producers are raising financing in a tough local commissioning market. Part one below examines the current state of the Canadian market, while part two explores how producers are getting creative with global partners.

Canadian content creators have always understood the importance of engaging with the international market.

Decades of cross-border coproductions and distribution deals support Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) president and CEO Reynolds Mastin’s assertion that working with the global sector is “baked into the DNA of our production community.”

In part, this export-oriented mindset is down to the sector’s innate entrepreneurship. But Kate Sanagan, Sinking Ship Entertainment’s head of sales and distribution, is speaking for much of the industry when she says that it is also about “economic necessity.”

Mastin (pictured right) says the latter point is more important now than ever, with domestic commissioning in the doldrums. “The last 12 to 18 months have been particularly challenging for our members,” Mastin tells Playback, “with the broadcasters greenlighting much less new content. Right now, it’s like a commissioning dead zone.”

Mastin says the CMPA’s own estimates suggest that there has been a 25% drop in broadcaster commissioning year-over-year, with the kids sector getting hit “even worse.” This fits a longer-term picture, with data from the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) pointing to a worrying trend dating back before COVID-19. Between 2017 and 2022, according to WGC figures, the number of one-hour drama episodes decreased by 12%.

Even more alarming, episodes of half-hour children’s live-action series decreased by 44% and half-hour animation episodes fell by 85%.

Blue Ant Studios co-president Mark Bishop stresses that the domestic system needs to be firing on all cylinders if Canadian companies are to keep up their export success story. In particular, he notes the emerging crisis in kids and family content.

“The immediate problem is that leading domestic broadcasters have got out of the kids business – which means it has become difficult to access the money allocated by the Canada Media Fund (CMF) to kids and family content,” he says. “Without a broadcast licence as a trigger, there’s a pool of CMF revenue that can’t be accessed by producers.”

One of Bishop’s concerns is that broadcasters are starting to siphon off CMF money from kids content into other genres – a move he fears will be irreversible. “There are a lot of funds in Canada that are evolving, including the progressive Shaw Rocket Fund, which has done a great job of embracing the international market. But the CMF hasn’t caught up with innovation in the way people are working – and that needs to be addressed.”

The 2024-25 CMF guidelines include a new measure to help with the funding crunch, allowing distributors to contribute financing to unlock funding, but broadcasters are still required as a trigger. Bishop says he is keen for such initiatives to be ramped up: “Canadians are great co-producers, but we need to be able to trigger money to attract partners.”

In terms of what can be done, Bishop says “we need to accept there is a problem and identify alternative triggers that are not linked exclusively to a Canadian broadcaster.” In the case of kids and family, he says “we need to ringfence investment for the genre. And if we can’t find a mechanism that works, we have to look at other ways to administer the money.”

Mastin shares Bishop’s concerns, and worries that the current situation at home makes it tougher for Canadian companies to become IP-owning studios. “I know that a number of companies are shifting more towards service work,” he says. “That helps keep the lights on in the short term, but it is not a viable long term strategy for our members.”

Sinking Ship’s Sanagan (pictured right) says the kids and family studio has enjoyed ongoing success with international partners such as Apple TV+ (Jane), Amazon (Beyond Black Beauty) and PBS in the U.S. It has also pulled off complex co-commissions such as Hulu and CBC series Endlings.

“We would love to go to Canadian partners first,” says Sanagan. “But the reality is, we typically go to the U.S. first. Right now, we are developing Spaceships with Bill Nye and The Planetary Society. That’s a live-action scripted series that started with the U.S.”

Sinking Ship is one of several Canadian firms that has also found innovative ways to secure access to buyers outside the U.S. and streamers. An example, says Sanagan, is the U.K. adaptation of hit kids series Odd Squad, coproduced with BBC Studios Kids & Family and distributed by Fred Rogers Productions in the U.S. “That came out of a two-year conversation where we gradually developed a model that worked,” says Sanagan.

According to Sanagan, live-action series Beyond Black Beauty, coproduced with Toronto’s Leif Films and Belgium’s Saga Film, is another project that emerged from the drive for new forms of collaboration. “This show originated in Belgium and became a coproduction with Canada. It was commissioned by Amazon’s Freevee platform then licensed to WildBrain for broadcast in English-speaking Canada.

This story originally appeared in Playback’s Spring 2024 issue