Women held more than 40% of key creative roles in TV projects backed by the CMF last year, according to the funder’s 2017/18 annual report.

New gender requirements introduced last year mandated that broadcasters allocate a minimum of 15% and a target of 25% of their performance envelopes to projects where 40% of key roles were filled by women. According to the CMF report, published Monday (Aug. 28), 83.3% of broadcasters with performance envelope allocations met the 15% requirement and 80.6% met or exceeded the 25% target.

The CMF introduced the measures in order to address the fact that women are underrepresented in leadership categories in the screen-based industries. Before the introduction of the measures in 2017/18, CMF said women represented 17% of directors, 34% writers and 39% of producers.

Broken down by genre in the English-language market, women represented 46.8% of the personnel in key positions on children’s and youth programming in 2017/18, while that figure stood at 42.1% for documentary, 42.4% for drama and 28.7% for variety and performing arts. On the French-language side, women represented 46.8% of the key personnel in children’s and youth programming, while doc was 38.7%, drama was 37.3% and variety and performing arts was 22.6%. No breakdowns by job title were provided.

When combining both English- and French-language production, CMF-backed projects averaged 42% with women in key creative positions.

“Last fiscal year set the course for positive change by which we will build a more representative industry that truly reflects Canada,” said president and CEO Valerie Creighton in a statement.

Elsewhere in the report, CMF said it invested a total of $342.3 million in Canadian TV and digital media projects in fiscal 2017/18, down from $361.6 million in 2016/7 and $371.7 million the year before that. With overall investment down 5.4% year-over-year, the report indicated that the production activity that was triggered slid by 1.8% but remained around $1.4 billion. CMF’s convergent stream provided $284.6 million in funding across 497 projects and 2,700 hours of new content, while the experimental stream contributed $40 million to 103 projects

The report also said that every $1 of CMF funding generated $4.14 in production activity (up from $3.99 a year ago), which is the highest leverage ratio in the CMF’s history. As well, with the Liberal government pledging to invest $172 million to the CMF over the next five years starting in 2018/19, data from this fiscal year represents the final year before the funding boost kicks in.

The report also indicated that viewership of CMF-backed content continued to decline year-over-year. In terms of overall viewing based on the 2016/17 broadcast year (the most recent year available), viewing was down approximately 8% from the previous year, which the CMF attributed to the overall decline in linear TV consumption as additional digital platforms take hold in the Canadian market. Murdoch Mysteries was the most-watched domestic series of the 2016/17 broadcast season, with an average audience of 1.36 million. Other notable English-language series included Cardinal (1.09 million), Mary Kills People (935,000) and Private Eyes (894,000).

On the French-language side, there were also viewership declines. Overall total hours tuned to French television declined by almost 5% in 2016/2017 from the previous year, according to the report. “The French viewing market is now beginning to see declines in viewing similar to what was experienced in the English market several years ago with the advent of new non-linear viewing platforms,” read the report. La Voix junior (2.33 million) and La Voix (2.3 million) were among the most-viewed French-language projects of the 2016/17 broadcast year.

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