The most intense and compelling cliffhanger coming out of Canadian TV is neither an MOW nor a one-hour drama. Rather it has played out in a series of closed-door meetings, most recently in a Toronto meeting room Nov. 3 and 4, where the Canadian Television Fund board convened to settle on just how to finance future TV production.

Think that doesn’t sound particularly dramatic? Consider this: The 21 CTF board members are charged with forming the foundation of a $5-billion industry that helps provide livelihoods for an estimated 135,000 people.

Last year the same group came out with a series of guidelines that heralded what will be recorded as the first decline in production in more than a decade in the film and TV industry – one that had till that point grown an estimated 130% between 1995 and 2002.

Enter the villain, in the guise of Finance Minister John Manley, who is neither evil nor maniacal, but who did cut CTF funding by $50 million, throwing the entire system into turmoil.

Now, I know I’m overstating for effect, but that’s the hallmark of a good drama. The CTF could not have anticipated SARS, or the precipitous rise of the Canadian dollar, or that Manley would announce cuts only after applications were already submitted to the CTF. The declines in domestic production were also well underway thanks to the CRTC’s 1999 TV Policy, which allowed broadcasters to substitute regional programming and entertainment magazine shows for dramas. These were the real culprits in the declines.

But the CTF had a role and it needed to get its act together and somehow revamp an overly arcane and mind-numbingly complex application system. Now it looks like it has.

In a matter of weeks, maybe even days, the funder hopes to announce a series of changes that will fundamentally alter the system that finances TV production in this country. Events in this process can turn on a dime and nothing is certain until the official guidelines are released. But signs indicate that the changes will include an arrangement that allots dollars directly to broadcasters to trigger productions, plus a single application formula eliminating the need to apply for the Equity Investment and Licence Fee Programs separately. It will also likely be a regime that rewards ratings in Canadian programs with a greater share of funding.

Once that is in place it will be up to the government to restore its $100-million commitment to the CTF. A lot of bright and powerful people believe the feds will do this once Paul Martin takes over as prime minister. ‘Mr. Martin has said, on the record, and very publicly, that he would reinstate the $100-million contribution… we hope that statement is followed up,’ CAB president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell tells Playback in this issue.

TV producer Laszlo Barna puts it in more dramatic terms: ‘The government has said to us ‘Clean up your act and then we’ll talk’… I can tell you that if we clean up our act, we make the effort and still there’s no money, this upcoming year will go down as one of the worst production years ever in this country. And it will be on somebody’s head.’

How will it end? Stay tuned.