The Canadian Television Fund has dished out $130.8 million through its Broadcaster Performance Envelopes for 2005/06, paving the way for children’s shows, docs and variety programming in English in French Canada.

Over $59 million was divvied among 45 English-language broadcasters. while 20 French-language outlets will share an envelope of $71.3 million.

The French broadcasters have a drama genre in their envelopes. English drama is funded separately (see story, p. 1).

Radio-Canada collected the largest amount with $23 million, $13.8 million of it for drama and just over $2.2 million each for children’s shows and documentaries. The French pubcaster also got $1.3 million for variety and performing arts shows and a little over $3.4 million as ‘flex’ funding, to be spent at its discretion.

Groupe TVA has the second highest total with over $18.3 million for the year, with $13.3 million for drama. TQS got $3.1 million, of which $1.4 million is for drama.

The TVA envelope is $3 million smaller than last year’s. Other casters have also undergone slight adjustments, in keeping with their ability to draw a crowd, says CTF spokesperson Ryan Reyes. ‘Changes in envelopes for ’05/06 reflect impacts of audience viewing. Impacts were seen as some envelopes dropped off for some broadcasters because of a lack of viewing,’ he says.

Some smaller broadcasters, he adds, make up for audience numbers by paying high licence fees or by licensing large, regional projects.

In English Canada, CBC was allotted $10.3 million, with over $3.9 million of its total envelope being slotted for children’s programming. The Ceeb will have over $3.5 million for documentary, $1.3 million for variety and performing arts, and over $1.5 million for its flex. CBC Newsworld got $791,233 for documentary and flex spending.

CTV will have over $3.4 million to spend in 2005/06 – using $1.5 million for children’s, $975,878 for documentary, $411,570 for variety and $503,191 in flex. Its sister channel Discovery, as well as Astral Media’s Family, each have over $3.4 million.

Global, meanwhile, got just over $1 million, almost all of it going to fund documentaries.

Children’s stations led the way for private broadcasters. Teletoon had the thickest envelope with over $8.2 million, followed closely by YTV, which netted over $7.2 million. Both those allotments will go almost entirely to kids shows.

At CHUM, Bravo! took $1.7 million and will put almost all of it into documentaries, while Space netted $119,463, $22,943 for docs and $78,600 for kids.

APTN will use $527,146 of its total for children’s, $325,072 for documentaries, $151,951 for flex, and the remaining $8,835 for variety.

At Alliance Atlantis, Showcase and HGTV took $857,277 and $142,527, respectively, most of it for docs, while History took $4.4 million and Life Network got $3.3 million.

Both English and French sports networks received significantly less money than other broadcasters. TSN and Quebec’s RDS took $58,603 and $20,080, in that order.

Broadcasters have the option to transfer all or a portion of their flex totals to another broadcaster within the same corporate group. Transfers cannot be made across languages.

-www.canadiantelevisionfund.ca