Winnipeg: As the Feb. 15 Licence Fee Program application deadline looms, producers are poring over the latest rendition of the Canadian Television Fund guidelines to figure out how the tweaking in the 2000/01 rules will affect their projects.

The most significant changes in the lfp guidelines are the project ranking criteria. Last fiscal’s ranking included whether a project had used an exception to the Essential Requirements; dollars at risk (private-sector investment); whether the Equity Investment Program had made an investment; and the level of the licence fee above threshold.

This round, the dollars at risk component is gone – to much applause from small to mid-sized producers who found it difficult to leverage the high levels of equity or large distribution advance required to pick up higher points.

Also eliminated is the linking between the eip and lfp, another far-from-popular element whereby a project was rewarded by the lfp for having picked up eip money.

Instead, a ‘visibly Canadian elements’ component has been added to the ranking, which gives bonuses to projects that profile actual Canadian people, events or issues; are based on works published by a Canadian; and which take place in obvious Canadian settings.

Each genre of programming has specific elements required to achieve the ranking points.

While most producers agree that only truly Canadian projects should move to the front of the line, and that the weeding-out process is a necessary evil due to oversubscription, some producers, with what they thought were very Canadian projects, fear they will be at the lower end of the ranking scale because of a technicality.

As Mary Young Leckie at Toronto’s Tapestry Films points out, it all depends on how tightly the lfp interprets the visibly Canadian elements.

Andy Thomson of Edmonton’s Great North Productions expresses some concern over the loophole for point-of-view documentaries, which can be shot anywhere in the world as long as a Canadian’s pov is explored. ‘If a documentary is shot in another country, there are other means of financing those projects,’ says Thomson. ‘There is no shortage of documentary subjects that are happening in Canada.’

Susan Cavan of Accent Entertainment in Toronto says she would like to have seen the pov exception available in the drama genre, since many scripts involve Canadian characters in other countries. There is some uncertainty as to where this scenario fits into the ranking system.

Broadcaster fees

The heaviest weight in the new ranking scale is placed on the level of the licence fee above minimum threshold, worth up to 45 of a maximum 70 points. The visibly Canadian elements provide 15 points, and the remaining 10 points are spread between nine- and 10-out-of-10 cavco projects (allotted five points), regional productions (awarded an additional 2.5 points) and, new this year, if the project hails from a small to mid-sized production company it receives an additional 2.5 points.

While Breakthrough Film and Television’s Ira Levy says having broadcasters declare their priorities with extra cash is a healthy situation, there are no caps on the broadcasters’ fees, and this is causing some uncertainty for producers.

In previous years, producers knew where their project stood in line by how close the licence fee was to the cap. Now they aren’t so sure how high broadcasters will go for priority programming.

‘What’s also scary,’ says Great North’s Thomson, ‘is that if a broadcaster offers $50,000, a producer could artificially deflate the budget to rank higher.’

In Regina, Minds Eye Pictures’ Kevin DeWalt says it’s unlikely broadcast licences will increase. However, he agrees that without a cap it is difficult for producers to put together a clear model of where a project stands before going to the fund.

Levy notes another oddity. While the children’s genre has a 15% licence fee threshold and maximum points can be achieved with 25% of the budget, the doc category has a licence fee threshold of 15%, but maximum points are achieved with a licence fee of 55% of the budget. He questions whether broadcasters will have to license fewer projects at the higher licence fee level to ensure their ranking.

Along with the additional ranking points, small and medium-sized production companies and those in the regions have been given a financial incentive.

While the level of the lfp base contribution was previously 15%, it has been reduced to 13% for all companies except those which fall in the small to mid-sized range, where the base remains at 15%.

Regional productions also pick up an additional 5% of the production budget.

There is also a new 5% bonus for French-language projects produced outside Montreal for established French-language producers. The 5% bonus for French-language productions remains in place from previous years.

Producers in the west and east hope this will help ensure last year’s dismal lfp numbers in some regions are offset. However, licence fee levels remain the heaviest weighted component of the ranking, so some regional producers remain skeptical.

Small Toronto producers such as Shaftesbury Film’s Christina Jennings and Tapestry’s Leckie say being a small producer in Toronto is becoming increasingly difficult. There are no regional bonuses to access, no development or equity funding available, and the province has one of the lowest tax credits. Furthermore, with all the American shoots, crews are expensive.

CBC uncertainty

Perhaps the biggest uncertainty in the upcoming round of the ctf is where the cbc will stand after the funding fallout.

This is the first ctf cycle in which the cbc does not have its own envelope and producers are concerned about the cash-strapped pubcaster’s ability to compete against the private broadcasters.

cftpa chair Linda Schuyler, president of Toronto’s Epitome Pictures, points out that rather than putting public and private broadcasters on an equal footing, this decision places the underfunded cbc in a far inferior position.

‘At the time when the ctf was first developed, the cbc’s funding had just been cut by $400 million,’ explains Schuyler. ‘So they cut the cbc’s budget, but said of the new $200 million fund, $100 million would be reserved for the cbc to encourage the building of liaisons with the independent production community.

‘Taking this money away from the cbc is a real blow,’ Schuyler continues. ‘The envelope provided the cbc with some stability. Once the cbc made its choices it could tally how much it could spend and order a correct number of shows, and the producers were pretty sure of going through the fund. I think the industry as a whole was better off for cbc having the envelope.’

The questions which remain to be answered are whether the number of projects commissioned by the cbc and funded by the lfp decreases or remains the same; and, at what licence fee threshold cbc is able to offer its priority projects and whether this is a high enough amount to compete with the projects at the door from the privates.

cbc’s Phyllis Platt said she could not comment on the ctf at the present time because the pubcaster is currently embroiled in meetings on the subject.

Other changes

Several other changes to the lfp guidelines are being introduced this fiscal.

Previously, the lfp was the last financier in and producers had to show all financing commitments were in place to apply. Looking to add some flexibility to the program, a producer can now come forward with a locked budget, a broadcaster, and a financing plan that includes other sources not yet confirmed, such as private funds like the Shaw Children’s Fund or provincial agencies. The lfp will make an offer based on this preliminary information and money set aside for the project. If the producer completes the financing with the expected funds (or through other means), then the lfp money is released.

This change is meant to relieve the pressure on private funds and provincial agencies, which were forced into making all their decisions before the February lfp deadlines.

As well, the separate envelope for international treaty coproductions has been eliminated, so all copros compete with domestic projects for funding. Additionally, on international copros, the lfp’s base top-up will be calculated on the lesser of the Canadian portion of the production’s budget and the Canadian portion of the final costs.

The decision-making order has also been reversed, with the lfp now announcing its decisions before the eip.

Feature films had a Jan. 17 eip deadline, a Feb. 15 deadline for French-language features applying for the lfp, and a March 15 deadline for English-language features.

After consultation with producers, the ctf found that French-language films in Quebec are shot early in the summer, so they were given a February deadline, whereas English Canada shoots its features in the fall or spring because summer is traditionally the busy tv production period, thus the March deadline.

Documentaries also have a pushed-back March 15 deadline whereas the deadline for all other genres is Feb. 15.

The first set of decisions will be complete by mid-March and the doc funding awarded by mid-April.

Children’s programming and documentaries now have two windows of opportunity and can apply in the spring as well as in the fall, particularly valuable for event-driven and time-sensitive documentaries. Of the doc funds, 65% is available in the spring, and for kids, 70% is in the first trench.

Children’s producers are concerned about the small size of the kids envelope – one of the most oversubscribed of all the genres.

Breakthrough’s Levy says it is time for the size of all the envelopes to be re-evaluated based on current market demand, in particular the flood of documentaries and kids programming being commissioned by the specialty channels.