There’s more money in the coffers at the Canadian Television Fund, which has renewed two of its programs with significant increases to each of their budgets.

The CTF recently announced that its Production Incentive and Digital Media initiative — which both launched as pilot programs last year — have been extended for 2009/10. The Production Incentive program, meant to balance out production levels across Canada by focusing on regions where there’s been significant decline, has been raised from $5 million to $10 million, while the Digital Media program grew from $2 million to $10 million.

A CTF spokesperson says the organization decided to keep both programs based on evaluations that indicated a great need for support in these sectors, especially in digital media, which was completely oversubscribed. The additional money comes from higher revenues at the BDUs which contribute to CTF.

CTF president Valerie Creighton says the funding for digital media is ‘critical’ for producers to be able to extend their shows through webisodes, mobisodes, games and other digital platforms.

‘The tremendous demand demonstrates that there is a strong need for this type of funding and that the industry is transitioning quickly to leverage digital extensions of traditional television programming,’ she added in a release.

Meanwhile, the Production Incentive program will focus on areas such as Atlantic Canada, which will receive $1.9 million, while English-language productions in B.C., the Yukon and Northwest Territories will have $8.1 million in total at their disposal.

Funds for both programs are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The CTF and the Canada New Media Fund are to set to merge into the $310 million Canada Media Fund by April 2010.