Scripted series, children’s programming and feature documentaries could face a $200 million decline in funding over the next five years, according to a report from the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC).

Published Wednesday (Jan. 30), the report examine the impact of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) policies on private broadcaster contributions to Canadian programming expenditures (CPE) and programs of national interest (PNI) in the English-language market. The report was prepared by Nordicity.

The future role of PNI in Canada’s broadcasting system was brought into question after the CRTC launched consultations on programming late last year, where the Commission proposed a framework where PNI is no longer needed. Hearings on the submissions, which closed on Jan. 20, will begin on March 31.

Under current regulation, the report predicts a 23% decline in English-language PNI expenditures to $167 million by 2028 from $216 million in 2023.

The DGC report urges against removing or reducing PNI obligations, arguing for their importance to the creation of Canadian programming. It also encourages expanding PNI obligations to streaming platforms, which, based on Nordicity’s modeling, could bring in an additional $300 million annually for the English-language market, based on an 8.5% requirement.

“On average, every dollar that broadcasters put into production gets multiplied six times over with global licencing, tax credits and other sources of financing,” said Dave Forget, DGC’s national executive director, in a statement. “When domestic financing is reduced by $200 million, that’s more than a billion dollar blow to our cultural industry.”

The report states that, when adjusted for inflation, CPE contributions have dropped 18% to $2.26 million ($3.2 million in current dollars) in 2023 from $2.7 million in 2013. Similarly adjusted for inflation, the CPE of large ownership groups was virtually unchanged in the same time period, to $1.21 million ($1.75 million in current dollars) from $1.22 million.

Adjusted for inflation, the English-language PNI contributions declined 47% from $247 million to $131 million over the decade, thanks to broadcasters’ drop in real revenue of 24% in today’s dollars. Their contributions in current dollars is also lower than 2013 at $190 million. BCE, Rogers and Corus make up 55% of the PNI spending over the past decade.

As well, the total private PNI expenditure of the English and French-language markets, adjusted for inflation, of large ownership groups – BCE, Rogers, Corus Entertainment and Quebecor – has dropped 28% to $240 million in 2023 ($348 million in current dollars). However, French-language markets have overall fared better, with CPE and PNI investments within the market seeing a compound annual growth rate of 6.4% over the same time period.

PNI contributions from large owners declined across all genres. Accounting for inflation, drama decreased by 38%, long-form documentary by 61% and award shows by 91%.

The drama subcategories drama and comedy have declined in expenditure by 42%, film by 36% and animated series and films by 16% since 2016.

At the same time, the average budget for an hour of English-language fiction programming grew to $1.65 million in 2023 from $1.22 million in 2013.

While documentaries have been less affected, the average cost of an hour of documentary television programming still increased by 22% over the past decade to reach $381,000 in 2023. Even though the average hourly budget for English-language documentary decreased 16% in 2013 dollars, the annual investment of large ownership groups in documentary has dropped 61% over the past ten years.

For English-language television drama projects, the reliance on foreign presales grew to 24% from 14% over the decade.

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