Category Archives: CMF

Corus Acquisition of Teletoon, Historia and Séries+

Leave a reply

The Corus hearing for these transactions, and the licence renewal of the services, was November 5-6, 2013.  There wasn’t a lot of traffic on social media so it looks like few people were paying attention (I did the buik of the tweeting when I wasn’t restarting my computer and downloading plugins – the CRTC doesn’t like Macs and I’d lost the plugins that worked when I updated to Mavericks – argh!), but there were a few issues raised that are worthy of mention.

As a reminder, Corus is buying these services because the Commission told Bell Media that they needed to divest of them in order to prevent dominance in the marketplace.  English creator stakeholders (CMPA, DGC, WGC, On Screen Manitoba) expressed concern that the resulting company will dominate the children’s market because Corus already has YTV and Treehouse.  Conflicting stats were submitted to show Corus dominated the children’s market (CMPA’s stats as also used by DGC and WGC) or did not (Corus’ stats).  Methodology wasn’t clear – was CMPA talking about percentage of programming or audience?  If audience, is it a percentage of all viewing by children or just of viewing on children’s services.  Corus kept saying that they had not included children’s viewing of Netflix.  While Netflix Kids is definitely competition it is exempt from the regulated system so clearly does not apply.  But what is the right measurement?  I hope that the CRTC addresses this in their decision as it can come up again when dealing with market dominance in a genre.

Fear of market dominance also led some stakeholders to recommend safeguards against programming being spread across all Corus stations to the detriment of each service.  The Commission pointed out that there were nature of service definitions that should prevent that as well as existing overlap limits between YTV and Treehouse but stakeholders looked for more.  In its reply phase Corus agreed to a limit of 10% overlap between Teletoon and YTV, the two services with the greatest potential of overlap given their respective natures of service.

An allocation of the benefits package to an Export Initiative was quite controversial.  It got a lot of air time at the hearing because both Corus and the CRTC seemed genuinely puzzled that the creative community in both languages was not interested in the program.  On the surface the objection was that as described (funding things like attendance at markets in order to solicit foreign sales) the program would not directly fund new production.  Stakeholders were repeatedly asked how they would amend the program so that it would be an onscreen benefit but they refused to respond.  They wanted the money allocated to production (or in the case of the WGC – development) instead.  Discussion got a little heated between the Chair and Michael Hennessy of the CMPA on this topic.  Hennessy kept saying that promotion was a broadcaster’s job and benefits should go to production so that there is something to promote.  That’s a fine argument except right now there are a lot of benefits monies in the system so it’s a bit harder to argue need (let’s revisit this in 2017 when benefits have been spent and BDU contributions to the CMF have plummeted due to OTT).  It also fails to take into account that the producer (and often the talent) share responsibility with the broadcaster to promote the show.  This isn’t service work where you just produce it and walk away.  Remember that Blais has said that under his watch the Commission would not be protectionist but ‘promotionist’ so this kind of a program that would promote Canadian programs outside the country and leverage foreign financing for domestic production is the sort of thing that he is looking to do.

Commissioner Raj Shoan asked Corus if they would consider tweaking the Export  fund so that it would finance presales or subsequent season sales to directly link to production (and be more clearly an onscreen benefit) and Corus was fine with that.  We’ll see where this one goes.

Part of the transaction involves Corus buying Shaw’s half of Historia and Séries+ along with Astral’s half.  Corus does not want to pay benefits on the Shaw half because they are related companies and Corus says no control is being transferred.  There was a fair bit of discussion of this as this transaction could be nothing more than a litmus test to see if the argument flies before Shaw purchases Corus and consolidates operations.  It prompted a reference to St. Augustine from JP Blais and I have to say that’s the first time I’ve heard such a reference at the CRTC and definitely the first time that I’ve ever heard Shaw-Corus compared to the Holy Trinity.  It’s a tricky issue indeed though as Shaw and Corus want to be treated as the same company for some purposes but not for others.  I’m looking forward to the decision on this one.

After Corus submitted their application for these transactions, and before the hearing, the CRTC released its proposal for a new benefits policy for comment.  It is open for comment till December 5, 2013.  Part of the proposed new benefits policy is that 80% of benefits would be allocated to third party funds (80% to CMF and 20% to the independent funds).  While the proposed benefits do not comply with this proposal they do not have to as there is no policy yet.  The Commission clearly telegraphed its interest in going down that route though so Corus advised that if the Export Initiative does not comply as an onscreen benefit, rather than wrap it in with self-administered programming benefits, it would transfer them to Telefilm or CMF and it would be up to one of those parties to figure out how to arrange a program that supported export and was still an onscreen benefit.

There were other issues but these are my favourite.  There is one other point to mention though.  In his opening speech, Blais reminded everyone of the Commission’s Talk TV public consultation and specifically encouraged content creators to participate.  Many of us think of public consultations as something that our non-industry friends and neighbours participate in but Blais is specifically asking us industry types to get involved too so that the CRTC has “access to the broadest diversity of views possible”.  [which can be read as ‘we don’t want to hear from just the trolls’ – reading the online forum can be painful!] So go to the online forum, join a Flash! Conference, send in your views.  Start by checking out my previous blog post.  If you are member of an organization, ask if they will be running a Flash! Conference.  [The Academy of Canadian CInema and Television is running one November 21, 2013].  This is your chance.

Update:  The CRTC’s twitter account has informed me that the stream for their next hearing will be Mac-friendly.  Yay!!!

Advertisement

CMF 2013 Consultation Process

Leave a reply

Yesterday the Canada Media Fund kicked off its industry consultation process leading up to the release of new guidelines for the next two-year period starting April 2014.  The consultation process informs CMF staff and board of industry issues, reacts to proposals from the CMF for changes to the guidelines and offers a forum to air grievances.  I went on a twitter rant earlier this week about the structure of the consultation process, which I will summarize here before getting into how the first Focus Group went.

I ranted because the CMF has been doing this consultation process for a few years now but there seems to be confusion about how it works.  Of all of the funding bodies, in my opinion the CMF has the most structured, open and comprehensive consultation process.  But there are a few levels with different purposes and it seems that people are getting confused.

Starting with Toronto yesterday, the CMF are going across Canada conducting Focus Groups.  The schedule is here.  Focus Groups are an opportunity for stakeholders to raise issues from their personal experience with the past guidelines and talk about local or regional issues.  CMF staff are there to listen rather than solve problems.  CMF staff also present statistics on recent performance and raise topics that they would like feedback on.  I found in yesterday’s meeting, the CMF were much more focused on what questions they would like feedback on from stakeholders than in past years.

If you can’t make it to a Focus Group then you can address the questions or raise your own issues in the online forum after reading the deck from the Focus Group presentation.  [At this point there does not seem to be an online forum – I couldn’t find it.  I’m waiting to hear back from CMF on its location and will update this when I hear]

The issues raised and the questions answered inform the Working Groups which meet in October and November.  While the Focus Groups are open to anyone, the Working Groups are invitation only.  Representatives of the producer organizations, other funders, guilds and unions and broadcasters meet with CMF staff and usually one or two CMF board members on themed meetings (e.g. Regional Incentives, Documentaries, Broadcaster Performance Envelope calculations, Funding Mechanisms).  At these meetings CMF present proposals for change, modeling on the impact of proposed changes, stats on the impact of previous guidelines and they solicit feedback.   These are roll up the sleeves and try to solve problems meetings.  Feeding into that process are Advisory Committees with subject matter experts who advise CMF staff on technical issues.  Currently there is an Advisory Committee that meets to provide expertise on digital media metrics.

Once the Working Groups have all met then there is a National Focus Group.  This is also invitation only and is comprised of many of the same people as the Working Groups but summarizes the whole process for those who may have missed a meeting or two and presents conclusions and recommendations that will go to the CMF Board.  The Board works with staff to make decisions and we then see the results in the spring before the new guidelines go into effect April 1, 2014.

It is a complicated and time-consuming process but it gets work done.

If you want to know the issues being addressed during the process then I suggest you read the deck.  There are a lot of them.  Many are being presented to see IF people care and are not serious proposed changes.  Some are presented because the CMF wants to know if they are on the right track or not.  And you can always raise new ideas.  I Storify’d tweets from the Toronto session yesterday so if you weren’t following along on Twitter you can get a recap there.  I hope that in future sessions people use the #cmfconsults hashtag so the rest of us can follow along and see if there are regional differences in opinion (I assume so).

There was a good crowd out for the Toronto Focus Group though I had the feeling that there were more videogame producers there than tv producers, or even other digital producers.  That may be because those other producers were also being represented there by the CMPA and Interactive Ontario but it is important for CMF to hear from individual producers who have had direct experience with the CMF.  I was pleased to see a contingent from the new kid on the block, the Independent Web Series Creators of Canada (IWCC) who have not previously had specific support from the CMF though it sounds like that may change in the future.  The usual guilds and unions were out in force as well as most of the broadcasters.

There were long discussions about how the Experimental Fund doesn’t work for videogame producers who just want start up money for their commercial titles.  I have to admit to only half listening because I’ve heard this one every year and it ignores the fact that the mandate of the fund is innovation first.  But CMF seemed willing to discuss ways to tweak the Experimental Fund, including a pilot program to work with incubators and VCs, provided that they do not lose sight of their mandate.

A line of discussion that I was much more interested in was the declining BDU revenues and the growth of new digital platforms.  There’s a real push-pull there.  Producers want to be able to trigger CMF funding through digital broadcasters (particularly but not limited to independent web content creators) because increasingly Canadians are choosing to enjoy their content through these new channels and they have become viable business models.  But if those digital broadcasters are not also contributing to the system then they will be benefitting from an ever-shrinking pool of BDU money while leaving less for the traditional broadcasters.  To make it worse, those digital broadcasters are in part the cause of the shrinking pool of BDU money.  The CRTC has previously said that it will not regulate OTT (ie digital broadcasters) as the business models were still evolving and they saw OTT as complimentary to traditional media.  A review of the Digital Media Exemption Order isn’t even in the current CRTC 3 Year Plan though the Order suggested that it would be up for review in 2014 when it was renewed in 2009.   The CMF has started to see a decline in BDU revenues so it seems pretty clear that OTT is having a negative impact on mainstream broadcasters and the CMF’s ability to fund its programs.  It was good to hear CMF say that something needs to be done and CMF alone cannot make the necessary changes.  CRTC we’re going to be looking to you.

A Toronto-specific concern raised was about how regional incentives might be negatively impacting Toronto.  There was an interest in keeping analysis to the quality of the project and away from postal code but the CMF has a mandate to promote the regions and the Convergent Fund is not a subjective fund.  Film Ontario questioned whether CMF stats were able to identify if Toronto-developed television is being regionally produced in order to take advantage of the regional incentives.  Pre-development was introduced for regional producers only last year so it does skew the charts and make that analysis difficult.  And someone at the back of the room raised the question few are willing to say out loud – ‘does every jurisdiction in Canada need to be a production centre?’  That wasn’t up to the room to decide as support for the regions is within the CMF Contribution Agreement with Heritage and the CRTC has come down hard on broadcasters to support regional production.  Regional incentives aren’t going away.

There was much more discussed in the over 3 hour meeting – check out the Storify.  I’m also hoping that Sasha Boersma does a blog post about the consultations from the perspective of a wonky digital producer as she has promised (poke!).  If you are not in Toronto then I encourage you to participate in an upcoming Focus Group near you.  Even if you are not a client or potential client, the meetings are a great way to hear what’s going on in the tv and digital media industries – pretty good schmoozing too!

CBC Licence Renewal – More Than Just Ads on Radio

Leave a reply

The CRTC issued its CBC licence renewal decision today and I of course have a few thoughts about it.  But first – my context.  While at the WGC I spent a lot of time over two years (due to hearing postponements) working on a submission and presentation to the CRTC on CBC’s licence renewal.  My thoughts here are informed by that thought and analysis but not limited by it.  I’m also in no way representing the WGC.  Remember – it’s just my own somewhat informed personal opinion.

Renewal was never at issue but just the terms of that renewal.  The decision to allow limited ads on Espace Musique and Radio 2 for three years has received most of the attention and will be the headline in the news but there’s an awful lot more in the 124 page decision.   As an English TV content person I have very specific interests – nothing about French tv or radio and little about radio.  With that in mind, here are a few comments.

The whole CBC Licence Renewal process was very belaboured and it was what I think of now as the ‘old’ style of broadcaster application.  As broadcasters have done for years, the CBC submitted an application that asked for a great deal of deregulation and included lots of  ‘trust us’ language.  Stakeholders objected and provided evidence that trust was a questionable strategy.  The CBC countered at the hearing and during the reply stage with compromises – often as a result of clear messages from the CRTC during the hearing.  This is the  ‘public hearing by negotiation’ that the Chair, Jean-Pierre Blais, has objected to on more than one occasion.  [This may be the last time that we see this strategy as in the Bell-Astral2 hearing Bell certainly heard the warning and came to the CRTC with its bottom line rather than an opening bid.]

In the meantime though, when assessing the decision you really need to look at both the original proposal and the final proposal when looking at the decision.  In several instances the Commission seems to have felt that the CBC made enough of a concession in their final proposal that it didn’t need to push it further.   You may not agree.

The crux of the matter though was how to balance ensuring that the CBC met its regulated mandate with the clear reductions in its parliamentary appropriation.  While the government has said that the CBC has a record high appropriation, the CRTC crunched the numbers and started the decision by saying that the 2011-12 appropriation was comparable in adjusted dollars to the 2002 appropriation though $180 million higher in actual dollars.  By the end of the next term in 2019, the appropriation will actually be $160 million less than 2002 in adjusted dollars.  So how does the CBC manage to meet its mandate with fewer resources?  The CBC argued that it needed flexibility to figure out on its own how to meets its mandate with fewer resources but the Commission definitely didn’t buy the blanket ‘trust us’ argument.  The CRTC decided that there had to be a few ground rules but they are going to allow more trust than most of the content creators are going to be happy with.  Here are a few highlights from the English TV perspective.

In a number of places the CBC had expectations and they are now conditions of licence.  There is no negative consequence to not meeting an expectation.  It’s a suggestion that may or may not be met.  As part of the licence renewal application for the next term, CBC will have to report on whether it met its expectations but not before.  A condition of licence however is enforceable and the CRTC can bring  the CBC back before it in a ‘show cause’ hearing or with a mandatory order (See the OWN hearing for a recent example of a show cause hearing and the resulting decision as an example of a mandatory order).

CBC had asked for a condition of licence (“COL”) of 7 hours of PNI per week when they historically had been commissioning 10 hours.   By the end of the hearing they moved to 9 hours of PNI and the CRTC has accepted that.  That doesn’t sound like a big difference and the CRTC made the point that quota should be less than historical commitments because going forward the funding would be less than historically received (despite CBC’s very positive revenue projections in the application).   But the decision also accepted the proposal that only 75% of PNI (or 5.25 hours) would be independent and that a minimum of 2 hours would be drama and 2 hours would be documentary.  Content creators and especially DOC fear that CBC would only do the minimum of 2 hours of documentary (down from current levels of 3 hours per week) and increase the amount of in-house production that they are currently doing.  The CRTC’s argument is that these are minimums, they ‘expect’ the CBC to exceed those minimums and they believe that the CMF guidelines and the CBC’s need to build audience and generate revenues will be enough incentive that additional regulation is not necessary.

Respectfully to the CRTC, I see some holes in that argument.  CMF broadcaster envelopes are based in large part on audience success (way complicated).  The CBC is not and cannot be all about chasing large audiences to increase their CMF envelope or their ad revenues because then it stops being a public broadcaster.   Its mandate includes offering a variety of programming so that all Canadians can find programming on CBC, not the same program to each and every Canadian.  This is why even at 3 hours a week, the CBC offers more documentary programming than the private broadcasters.  Any push for larger audiences in order to increase CMF or ad revenue is likely to mean fewer documentaries as they just do not have the same level of audience as prime time dramas such as “Republic of Doyle” or “The Rick Mercer Report”.   Regulation was needed to ensure that the CBC did not ignore its mandate in search of revenue.

Then there is the issue of the CBC’s excessive use of minority co-productions (“Tudors”, “Pillars of the Earth” etc.) to meet its Canadian content obligations.   The WGC proposed excluding them from calculation of PNI as they use few Canadian resources.   The goal was to find a solution to an imbalance in broadcasting co-productions that meant fewer opportunities for Canadian talent on Canada’s broadcaster.  Well, the Chair of the CRTC is well-versed in co-production policy from his previous employment at Heritage and the decision refers to the biggest policy hurdle to addressing the imbalance – the policy of ‘national treatment’ means that were the CRTC to agree to that exclusion, there could possibly be international trade repercussions.  However, at the hearing the Chair had countered that a possible solution was requiring an overall balance of co-productions within PNI so it was disappointing not to see that in the decision.

The CBC’s previous expectation that it broadcast Canadian programming for 75% of its day and 80% of its prime time period has now been entrenched as an enforceable condition of licence.  While some parties, such as ACTRA, wanted the CBC to move to 100% Canadian programming in prime time, the CRTC agreed to what I think of as the ‘Coronation Street exception’.  There would be riots in the streets if the CBC had to get rid of it, riots in the streets.

Now for kids – a subject near and dear to my heart ever since my earlier time with Owl Television.  CBC has stated that they want to move away from school age and youth programming and concentrate on preschool programming.  They stated this made sense because these age groups were leaving broadcast television and going online, where their needs will be met by CBC.ca.  No evidence was presented to support the departure of kids and youth from tv and Youth Media Alliance presented stats to the contrary.  However, the CBC had also not presented any evidence about what it is doing and how much it is spending on CBC.ca.  Many stakeholders, and particularly the Youth Media Alliance, presented arguments and evidence to demonstrate a need and a want for quality school age and youth programming for Canadians on CBC.  The CBC revised its proposal to a condition of licence of 15 hours of programming for children up to 12 years of age and an expectation of 5 hours for youth 12 to 17.  The CRTC ‘expects’ a reasonable allocation between preschool and school age programming.  There is a new requirement of 1 hour of original programming per week.

The good news in this is that the children’s obligations have moved from expectation to COL but the bad news is that youth programming hasn’t and there is no protection of school age programming within the allocation of 0 – 12.  Given that in the last licence term there was an expectation of 5 hours of youth programming that was completely ignored I don’t understand why the CRTC thinks that an expectation is good enough for the coming licence term.  The CRTC’s logic is that 1 hour of original programming is more of a commitment to original programming than zero but that still will not prevent the CBC from meeting its commitment as it does now through airing a lot of very old repeats.  At the hearing there were many passionate arguments about the obligation of Canada’s public broadcasters to meet the needs of its youngest citizens and I am afraid that we will be hearing these arguments again in 5 years.

There was one little part that I did enjoy in the kids part of the decision.  This Commission isn’t buying the argument that the last Commission agreed with – that families should just pay for YTV, Treehouse and Family Channel if they want kids programming.   The Commission stated clearly that as private conventional broadcasters have moved out of kids programming, it is even more important that the CBC as Canada’s public broadcaster support the kids and youth audience.  We just don’t agree on how that will happen.

During the hearing the CBC committed to broadcast one Canadian feature film per month but would not commit to when they would air them.  They wanted the flexibility to air them on Saturday afternoon or late in the evening.  Really late.  As most audiences are still watching tv during prime time, there were calls for a commitment to air Canadian feature films in prime time and not let the CBC dump them in off hours.  As I recall the DGC was pretty insistent on this point.  The CRTC has instead ‘encouraged’ the CBC to air Canadian feature films in prime time and in a regular slot in the summer (ie when there is no hockey).  I think an encouragement is even less than an expectation.

A really wonky request was for more detailed reporting to be able to assess whether CBC is meeting its expectations and COLs and encouragements (is that a word?) while the CBC was arguing for less reporting.  One in particular that interests me is the call for reporting on the CBC’s digital expenditures and revenues.  On the one hand the CBC is saying that it can get out of kids and youth programming because it is doing a lot for that age group online while on the other hand they are not reporting any of that activity because there is no requirement.  The CRTC reiterated that as a Digital Media Broadcasting Undertaking (DMBU – successor to the much loved NMBU) is exempt from licensing, there is no requirement to report other than the vague reporting that is currently reported to the public in an industry aggregated way.  Any greater reporting could somehow harm developing business models.  I hope then that the CBC will not be allowed to make the claim again at the next licence renewal hearing that these unreported activities can take the place of regulated activities.

The final piece of interest to me is on terms of trade.  The Commission declined to wade into the competing stories about why no agreement had been concluded (this had taken up a lot of hearing time) but was very firm and clear about its jurisdiction to impose a terms of trade agreement if it wants to, regardless of the CBC’s legal opinion to the contrary.  While it won’t at this time impose Terms of Trade, the CRTC gave the parties one year to conclude an agreement or risk a show cause hearing or a mandatory order (see above).  Will that be enough to break the log jam?  We can only wait and see and hope that it happens.     Terms of Trade are important to provide stability and certainty in negotiations and create a level playing field between parties so we do all need the CBC and CMPA to conclude Terms of Trade.

Oh, that’s a lot of stuff.  I congratulate you if you made it to the end.  Just imagine if I was interested in French TV and radio!

The Benefits Bulge*

2 Replies

It might have been lost in the dropped jaws reaction to Kirstine Stewart’s sudden move from CBC to Twitter Canada, but yesterday Mario Mota released his 2013 Canadian Television Benefits Monitor. The Report, which is available in detail to subscribers and summarized in his press release, tracks each year English-language broadcasters’ reporting on their CRTC-mandated tangible benefits packages. Those are the benefits required to be spent on the Canadian broadcasting system as a condition of approval of an acquisition of Canadian broadcasting assets. The 2013 Report tracks spending for the year ending August 31, 2012. It takes this long for the broadcasters to report to the CRTC, for the CRTC to publicize the reports and for Mario to then review and analyze the reports.

We are currently enjoying substantial benefits spending on Canadian television and we now have the data to demonstrate that. Due to benefits packages primarily from Bell, Shaw and Rogers that were determined in 2011 but finally started to be spent in 2012, benefits spending jumped from $52 million in 2010-11 to $177 million in 2011-12. Not all of that was for onscreen benefits (i.e. television programming) and the Commission did allow for unprecedentedly low allocations for onscreen benefits for Bell-CTV and Shaw-Global. Even so, onscreen benefits spending increased from $44 million in 2010-2011 to $113.5 million in 2011-12. That is an increase of 158%.

Benefits are to be spent roughly equally in each year but broadcasters will not be sustaining this level of spending in each year going forward. This may in fact be a high water mark, perhaps with next year. Some packages expire in 2014, others in 2015 and the final ones in 2019. There will be smaller packages approved for Bell-Astral 2 (most of which will go to French television or radio but some for TMN), and Teletoon and Family Channel transactions are still to be determined. Currently, according to the Report the total to be spent by 2019 on onscreen programming is $355.4 million.

To give some context to these numbers, the 2011-12 budget for CMF English Performance Envelopes was $189 million. So last year’s onscreen benefits spending of $113.5 million was 60% of the full amount that was available from CMF from the performance envelopes. Additionally, benefits are to be incremental to what a broadcaster already has to spend on Canadian programming through their CPE and/or PNI CPE (see Acronym Decoder). That’s the other part of the story that we do not know yet – how much did the broadcasters spend due to the Group Licence Policy before they started spending benefits money. We need to know that before we can really get a sense of how much money is in the system for Canadian programming.

But it’s a lot! We know that much. What happens when it has all been spent? I have said this before and I am not alone – we have an opportunity here to leverage increased spending on Canadian programming to try and create permanent positive change. Last year in an article in Carrt (subscription needed) Mario Mota suggested that we leverage the increased funding in Canadian programming by implementing Non-Simultaneous Substitution (“NSS”). NSS would break English Canadian broadcasters dependence on the US schedule, give Canadian programs stable timeslots thereby increasing audiences and therefore increasing revenues. If NSS was in place, the benefits-funded “Bomb Girls” would not have been pulled off the air for a simulcast of “Survivor” and might have had a chance at a better time slot when it did return. [See Kate Taylor at the Globe and Mail].

There are technical hurdles to NSS and I am not qualified to discuss them. NSS is just one of the ways though that we can try and take advantage of the current ‘bulge’ in Canadian programming. We have audiences watching Canadian drama in higher numbers than they have in years. How do we sustain that appetite for Canadian programming and the willingness of Canadian broadcasters to keep spending money on Canadian programming when they no longer have to. I agree, getting rid of simultaneous substitution so that Canadian broadcasters have to rely on their Canadian programming is another solution. I am just not sure that the Canadian broadcasters could survive a cold turkey withdrawal of their crack cocaine. Then again, who says it would have to be cold turkey?

What else can we do? Perhaps future benefits should be put in endowments like they used to be so that they could have long term sustained investment in Canadian production as the Independent Production Fund, Cogeco Fund and others have been able to do. That is something for the Commission and broadcaster applicants to consider. Perhaps some of the benefits money yet to be approved could go to building audience demand (i.e. promotion, social engagement, sustaining a star system) so that broadcasters risk alienating their audience if they stop funding Canadian programming. [Note – in no way am I advocating a return to entertainment magazine programming, a notorious broadcaster boondoggle that was intended to build a star system but instead allowed Canadian broadcasters to spend money on promoting a lot of US programming with Canadian stars in it instead of spending it on actual Canadian programming.]

I am sure that there are other things that we could do to leverage this ‘golden opportunity’ if we put our minds to it. We need to learn from the last golden age – the mid-90s. We had so many great programs that Canadians loved to watch: “Street Legal”, “Due South”, “Da Vinci’s Inquest”, “Road to Avonlea” to name just a few. Those shows trained screenwriters, directors, actors and producers and developed a talent pool. When the money dried up with the 1999 TV Policy, which got rid of an expenditure requirement for broadcasters, a lot of the talent went south and did not return. That is what we are risking if we do not have a plan in place for post-2019. We are right now growing our talent pool but will they have careers here in a few years.

*And for the record, I was thinking more of a cow in the middle of a snake kind of bulge, nothing Jon Hamm-ish.

CMF Performance Envelopes – What Do the Numbers Mean?

1 Reply

Today the CMF released its performance envelopes for each broadcaster for 2013-14.  That means that we all now know how much each broadcaster’s production and development envelopes are at the CMF.  As envelopes are based on a nightmarishly complex set of calculations based on ‘factor weights’ (more on that in a second), they can fluctuate, sometimes wildly, from year to year.  If you are a creator or producer it is important to know the size, and possible change, of a broadcaster’s envelope before you start pitching them or trying to get a greenlight.  And if their envelope went down this year, a look at their factor weight performance might help you find a way to pitch your show as a way to improve performance next year.  More on that in a second too.

First let’s talk about the overall pool.  As I mentioned earlier, BDU revenue growth is slowing and it has an impact on the CMF.  They are projecting a decline in BDU contributions next year and have cut operating costs by 6% and the total Performance Envelope by 4.6%.  So almost all of the broadcasters have been cut by at least a little bit.  Some years there have been very significant swings due to a particularly successful audience year, regional production or above-threshold investment or the opposite but there aren’t any such major swings this year.

Envelopes are calculated using Factor Weights, which reward the broadcaster for meeting certain goals and given them a greater share of the money.  It is a very complicated process as the calculations are also broken down by genre:  drama, children’s, documentary and variety and performing arts.  The factors are 1) Audience Success (Total Hours Tuned), 2) Audience Success (Original First Run), 3) Historic Performance, 4) Regional and 5) Digital Media Investment.  The factor weights have differing impacts on each broadcaster depending on their programming priorities, history, language and makeup of their corporate group.

The results for production are here.  CBC has a slightly smaller envelope at $58 million (-$4mill).  Bell Media is slightly larger at $32.5 million (+$759K).  Their huge uptick in production due to benefits spending (and the larger audience from all that original production) will likely have a greater impact next year.  Shaw is down a little at $27 million (-$2mill).  Corus is also down a little at $21.9 million (-$1.8mill).  Rogers has the single largest increase to $9.7 million (+$3.8mill).  While their level of production has stayed the same (replacing Murdoch Mysteries with Seed and Package Deal) the increase comes partly from the two new shows being regional. APTN loses the most at $4.05million (-$4.778), in large part due to a drop in regional production and digital investment.

It’s also worth noting that there are a few new entrants:  Afroglobal Network, Ethnic Channels Group, New Tang Dynasty and The Weather Network.  Changes last year to the guidelines means that they (along with a few other smaller specialty services) have minimum envelopes which are actually large enough to allow them to commission shows or partner with a larger broadcaster to commission shows (and grow their envelope).

So what do you do with this knowledge if you are a creator or producer?  The first priority is always matching the project to the broadcaster who is looking for that kind of material. But you can add elements to your pitch if you think that your project could help your target broadcaster with their Factor Weights, particularly regional or digital media investment.  If the broadcaster you’re pitching says that they have less money this year then check the list and confirm it.  Almost everyone will be tightening their belt a little bit this year – except those with benefits to spend (i.e. Bell, Shaw and Rogers).  If you are pitching a smaller broadcaster then think of ways that they might be able to partner with another broadcaster so that your project can help them grow their envelope.  Showing an understanding of their challenges might help you get through their door.

[Thank you to Suzanne Keppler, Manager, Program Reporting at the CMF and fellow wonk, for assistance with some of this data.  She is the Performance Envelope Queen.]