BANFF — CHUM alum Paul Gratton has been passed the torch to head up the board of directors of the Canadian Television Fund.

The changing of the guard was announced at the Banff World Television Festival Tuesday, following the CTF’s AGM. Gratton, who represented the Canadian Association of Broadcasters on the CTF’s board of directors from 1999 to 2006, takes over from outgoing chair Doug Barrett, and will be working alongside fund president Valerie Creighton.

Gratton made no effort to sidestep the fact that he’s got his work cut out for him. ‘People have asked me ‘Are you crazy?” he told the audience at a CTF stakeholders’ meeting at the festival. ‘I can only tell you I’m not doing this innocently or naively…I know what I’m getting into. I am accepting this position because I believe deeply in this fund.’

‘The CTF has been the flashpoint for almost every sectoral conflict you can imagine,’ he said. Early last year, cablers Shaw and Quebecor temporarily withheld their contributions to the fund as a protest regarding its operation and governance. The CRTC then set up a task force on the fund, which was followed in February of this year by public hearings. Its report and recommendations were presented to the Department of Canadian Heritage on June 5. There is no indication of when the government will respond.

‘I want to thank Doug Barrett for his incredible stewardship of this fund through some of its most difficult years,’ Gratton said, adding, tongue-in-cheek, ‘He assures me that there are no more crises in the offing and I’ll just be dotting I’s and crossing T’s.’

The first order of business, Gratton said, will be to do some number-crunching to determine what are the ‘financial implications’ of the CRTC’s 11 recommendations, the most controversial of which is the division of the fund into public and private streams that would require the management of two chairs and two boards of directors. The process would be ‘at worst a summer project’ he said, but the hope is that the modeling would be done in the next month.

Asked if the CTF has a position with regard to the CRTC’s recommendations, Gratton said, ‘It’s not possible to say we have a firm position pro or con; we’re going to wait until we see the modeling. And if you know me, you know I’m a person who has opinions.’

The CTF also released a stakeholders’ report on its activities during the year. For the fiscal year ended March 31, the CTF was comprised of $252 million from BDU fees and Canadian Heritage.

Currently, the allocation of the fund is determined by past performance, called Broadcaster Performance Envelopes. The broadcasters receiving the largest sums last year were CBC/Radio-Canada, which received close to $90 million; CTV, which received $22 million; TVA, which took $16 million; and Teletoon — English, which received $12 million. The fund was undersubscribed last year.

The CTF also announced a re-shuffle of its board of directors, with eight members of its 21-member board moving on.

Two new board members were appointed, Marie-Andrée Poliquin and Chris Frank. Incumbents are Claire Samson, Michèle Fortin, Anne-Marie Jean, Eileen Sarkar, Alison Clayton, Robin Mirsky, Scott Garvie, Paul Pope, Serge Bellerose, Judith Brosseau, Corrie Coe, Andrew Eddy, Marie-Andree Poliquin, Chris Frank and Gratton.

Six board positions have yet to be filled, a state of affairs that outgoing chair Barrett explained is a matter of logistics as the fund waits for the posts to be filled by their overseeing bodies.

In addition, the board amended its bylaws to centralize its representation from the BDU industry. The DTH-appointed member of the board and those nominated by the now-defunct Canadian Cable Television Association will now be appointed by a newly formed group, the Canadian Coalition for Cultural Expression. The CCCE is permitted to nominate three cable and two DTH reps to the board of the CTF.