The 2003/04 Licence Fee Program guidelines introduce an evaluation mechanism called ‘Broadcaster Priorities,’ essentially a list of priority programs given extra weight in the oversubscribed selection process. The bonus points associated with the new criteria replace those previously awarded for a program’s ‘Visibly Canadian’ elements.

The Broadcaster Priority ranking is based on a broadcaster’s past use of the fund.

‘I think everybody, with the best of intentions, sets out every year to see how they can improve on the CTF process and I know that is how we got to priority points,’ says Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting CEO Phyllis Yaffe, who, like many broadcasters, has doubts about the new system.

‘I think there are other ways to show there are priorities,’ she continues. ‘For instance, if you have a priority and you give it a bigger licence fee than you have shown, you actually have a priority. For myself, that would have been another way to get at the issue [of oversubscription].’

Nobody knows how the new system is going to work out.

‘We’re all going to be, again, a live experiment,’ adds Yaffe. ‘There is still a fair amount of weight put on the licence fee in the system, or at least that is what I am being told, and that is certainly what I hope.’

Yaffe suggests the Visibly Canadian component simply became unmanageable, presumably because everybody followed suit and got the extra bonus points. ‘People can come up with rules that just don’t work in the real world,’ she says.

On the topical issue of BDU and cable contributions to the CTF, CTF chair Janet Yale says, ‘We believe we make a significant contribution through the 5% of gross revenues that goes into programming. It’s true some of it [40%] goes into community [cable] programming, but that is clearly a very important source of community content for our customers and something the [CRTC] has just recently re-endorsed as an appropriate use of money in their community channel policy review.’

Yale says the system is not broken.

‘I think it works well, although there is always room for some re-examination.’

Yale says CTF policies are under constant review, and the CTF board ‘is the right place to have that debate.’

Leo Rice-Barker