It’s been six months since the new partnership between the Canadian Television Fund and Telefilm Canada was forged, but CTF president Valerie Creighton admits there’s still ‘a bit of confusion’ about the unified administration for TV and film funding.

To address some of the confusion, the CTF is, among other things, reaching out to stakeholders with a cross-Canada series of meetings that began in Atlantic Canada on Aug. 21.

‘We’re meeting with as many people as we can across the country to gain their thoughts and opinions on a number of policy issues that are facing the industry at this moment,’ Creighton says on the phone from Moncton, NB.

CTF is now responsible for policy work while Telefilm hands out the actual funding.

Apart from the usual concerns about lack of funding, Creighton says there are also misgivings about entry-level participants, following the move to the Broadcaster Performance Envelope system, whereby projects have to come to the CTF fully financed. ‘It’s getting harder and harder to finance projects, we’re certainly hearing that.’

Meanwhile, the CTF has released the latest numbers for the BPEs for the 2006/07 fiscal year.

Statistics show the total funds available for English-language BPEs (of which drama programming collects the most dollars) stands at $167.2 million, while there’s still $74.8 million to be dished out for French-language programming.

The CTF expects 75% of the money to be committed by the start of fall to English and French drama projects. The deadline for all drama applications was Aug. 31.

‘There’s a dependency in the industry to hold applications right up until the deadline,’ explains Creighton, ‘and part of it has to do with the process of helping to get financing.’

So far, the CBC has collected over $6 million for drama programming, with most of the dollars going to season one (13 x 60) of the crime drama Intelligence by Vancouver producer Chris Haddock, and two episodes of MVP by Toronto’s Screen Door.

Toronto-based Epitome Pictures has received over $6 million from CTF for season three of Instant Star and season six of Degrassi: The Next Generation, both on CTV.

Season two of Robson Arms on The Comedy Network and CTV has $1.8 million at its disposal, while episodes 118-130 of Comedy Now! from Hi Guys Ten Productions received $217,000 in funding.

‘There’s a lot of money remaining to be committed,’ says Dave Forget, head of Telefilm’s television business unit. ‘But it’s relatively consistent, without going genre by genre, to what we saw last year.’

In all, the CTF contributed $251 million to 488 productions for 2004/05, an increase of $17 million from the previous year, according to its annual report released on July 4.

www.canadiantelevisionfund.ca