Conventional broadcasters must ‘fess up to how much they’re spending on Canuck shows, says the Directors Guild of Canada, which has told the CRTC it favors the public disclosure of financial numbers for over-the-air broadcasters.

The CRTC last month put out a call for comment on its proposal to reveal broadcaster data to the public. Organizations including the WGC, CFTPA, CEP and ACTRA also support the proposal.

Monique Lafontaine, DGC general counsel and director of regulatory affairs, notes that only cumulative numbers are currently published.

‘They’re just aggregate [broadcaster] numbers nationwide…we can’t see, for example, how much CanWest itself is spending on Canadian drama,’ she tells Playback Daily.

Lafontaine says that prior to the CRTC’s 1999 Television Policy, broadcasters spent more than $70 million a year on Canadian dramas, but that number declined to $20 million, according to 2005/06 CRTC data.

‘It’s a significant drop. So we need to see these numbers to be able to do the analysis of what the broadcasters are doing to meet their regulatory obligations,’ she adds.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters filed counter comments, arguing that the CRTC should not need more detailed information ‘than what securities regulators require public companies to disclose to existing investors.’

Lafontaine says the DGC hopes a decision will be reached in the next couple of months, in time for the fee-for-carriage hearing in April and licence renewal hearings for broadcasters late this year.

‘This information would be very useful for those hearings…they’re critical,’ says Lafontaine.

She notes that the CRTC releases the breakdown of expenditures of various types of programming for specialty services, adding, ‘They haven’t had a competitive disadvantage as a result of those numbers being released.’

The CRTC has set Feb. 29 as the deadline for reply comments.