The CRTC has announced targets around its broadcaster incentive program, challenging private English-language casters to invest more in indigenous production. The regulator is already offering bonus advertising time as a reward for doing so, but some industry reps say targets and bonuses are not enough.

In an effort to up broadcaster production spending, the CRTC is challenging CTV, Global and CHUM to increase their expenditures to 6% of total annual revenues, from the current industry average of 3.3%. The CRTC is suggesting that, to achieve this goal, casters increase their annual spend by roughly a half-percentage point per year.

The networks receive additional advertising time – from 30 seconds to eight minutes – for each original hour they broadcast.

‘In our view, these are challenging but achievable numbers,’ says Nick Ketchum, CRTC director of English-language TV and radio policy. ‘We’re not pretending that they’re easy, nor do we consider that they should be easy, because this is giving [broadcasters] an extra bonus for really superlative performance.’

The CRTC expects the suggested spend increase will help broadcasters reach the regulator’s goal of Canadian programs representing 16.5% of overall viewership by the 2008/09 television year. If achieved, that would be an 80% boost over the industry average of 9.2% in 2003/04.

But these objectives will not be enforced. The CRTC says if the networks do not meet the targets, there will be no immediate consequences other than losing out on the opportunity to access the extra ad time their rival nets may receive.

Many production stakeholders find the soft targets unacceptable.

Maureen Parker, executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada, says that although the WGC is encouraged by the CRTC’s attention to the ‘dire circumstances’ in Canadian drama, it believes a firm percentage of revenue must be dedicated to indigenous production, with consequences for terms that are not met.

‘We cannot wait for a mere target to be perhaps achieved or perhaps not,’ says Parker. ‘So while we appreciate that the CRTC is focusing on the state of indigenous drama, setting these incentives is not enough.’

ACTRA similarly praises the CRTC for being proactive, but Steven Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director, said in a statement, ‘It’s time the CRTC got serious about being a regulator and imposed some requirements that actually have some teeth.’

Ketchum says the CRTC has been fielding these kinds of arguments from the guilds and unions since the incentive program was proposed in late 2004, but the commission is sticking with its plan, saying the program’s successes and failures will be addressed and debated in the year or so of hearings leading up to the next round of broadcaster licence renewals, beginning Aug. 31, 2008.

‘It’s absolutely clear that if there is a time to bang our fist on the table, it will be at the licence renewals, because by then we will have the information we need about whether or not this incentive program has been effective,’ says Ketchum, adding that only then will the regulator decide if stricter conditions of licence need be imposed.

Perhaps surprising some, Ian Morrison, spokesperson for lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, says the incentive program is sound. The FCB has been critical of the CRTC in the past.

‘It is very important – not just for its specific content – but also the CRTC’s having changed its point of view in a fundamental way to become more active in supervising the system, to make sure the Broadcasting Act goals are attained,’ says Morrison.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters is taking a wait-and-see stance on the issue. CAB president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell says the organization will comment only after it has had ‘the chance to assess the CRTC’s incentive program. Time will tell.’

Charles Dalfen, CRTC chair, will have more to say to the production community on Feb. 16 when his speech kicks off the CFTPA’s Prime Time event in Ottawa.