Category Archives: Television

Hashtag Rules

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I didn’t think this post was needed but apparently so.

What is a hashtag? It is a word, or group of words with no spaces or punctuation, preceded by #. On Twitter, and now on Facebook and Instagram, soon the entire world (but please not verbally), it allows you to tag your tweet or post with a searchable term. That is basic function no. 1. Say you are watching a TV show and tweeting. You end each post with #MurdochMysteries. Sometimes you need to put the broadcaster in there because there are different Canadian and US broadcasts so #FPCTV vs #FPIon (for Flashpoint). Then other fans can search the hashtag and see all the posts whether they are following you or not. That works great for tweeting television and for attending conferences or following along with CRTC hearings.

Who comes up with a hashtag? Conference organizers set it, broadcasters and producers set it but for the rest they come about by consensus. If the ones that are set don’t work then consensus will find a new one that does work so you might want to think of the rules of hashtags if it is your job to set it.

The Rules:

1. They are short. You are asking people to remove possible characters from their 140 character limit so keep it as short as possible. Stick to what’s necessary. If it is absolutely necessary to have your broadcaster in the hashtag then keep it (eg. #FPCTV) but if it’s not the fans will likely drop it (eg. PlayedCTV). If it is necessary to put the year in do you really need to put 2013 and not 13? But do you really need that year??

2. Search to make sure that your hashtag isn’t already being used by something else. Remember the purpose. You want people to search the hashtag and follow along. That doesn’t work if you want to talk about Canadian TV but the hashtag is already in use for US chat shows, for example.

3. No punctuation. Only the letters before the punctuation will be an active hashtag.

4. It should make sense for what you are trying to identify with the hashtag. If you are a small group, say those following a CRTC hearing, you can be a bit obscure like #91h or #GLR but if you want a wider audience you need to be really clear.

5. Consider an already acceptable hashtag that is in use. Is it necessary to reinvent the wheel or specifically brand your exercise? If you adopt one that is in use you will become part of an existing conversation instead of trying to start your own from scratch. Easier, eh?

What about all those long hashtags or strange ones like #whatdoyoumeanitsFridayalready or #wheelsup. These would be for advanced users ;). They give flavour to a tweet and aren’t intended to be searchable. Sometimes they become searchable re-used hashtags through use (like #loungesoup or #wonkcake) but usually they are one time only hashtags used to add emotion to a tweet, which can often read emotionless. I’m partial to them myself.

If I’ve missed any of the rules or uses of hashtags, let me know.

Update:  For a little hashtag and grammar fun check out this post:  https://medium.com/we-live-in-the-future/1bb14533fbfd (h/t @elizadushku – another fan of hashtags).

CMF 2013 Consultation Process

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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!

A Hodge Podge of CRTC Decisions (Independent Licence Renewals)

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Or is it a mish mash?  I’m not sure of the technical term here but last Friday afternoon when most of the world was either sitting on a patio or packing up the car for the last summer long weekend, the CRTC released a whole pile of renewal decisions.  Several of them are of interest.

As you will remember, when the s.9(1)(h) hearing was posted, the call for comments included a number of non-appearing licence renewal applications for independent (i.e. not part of the large groups like Bell, Shaw, Rogers and Corus) broadcasters.  They were to some extent lost in the hubbub over the mandatory carriage applications but a few stalwart stakeholders weighed in.  I outlined a few issues that interested me in an earlier post.

I won’t go through all of the decisions but I do want to mention a few themes that came to mind as I read them.  The first is that almost all of the broadcasters asked for reduced CanCon expenditure and/or exhibition requirements.  This is partly because they can no longer include the CMF top up as part of their expenditure requirement.  As the top up was part of broadcasters’ calculations when they proposed their CPEs in their licence applications, the Commission has decided that it is fair to allow them to make new proposals at a lower level.  Most of them had reductions approved but not necessarily the full extent that they asked for.  ‘Why’ is interesting.

There seems to be a real attempt by the Commission to rationalize the various Cat A (and a few Cat B) licences so that there is some consistency of conditions of licence.  Services were licensed at different times, with different competitive environments and natures of service so to some extent they should have differing terms but the conditions of licence have morphed into a crazy quilt where the rationale is not always evident.  Where it doesn’t make sense to have different terms, the Commission has gone for consistency.  So, while OUTtv asked for a reduction in their CPE from 49% to 35%, they were granted 40%.  ONE asked for a reduction from 41% to 30% and they were granted 40%.  Blue Ant’s Cat A’s were granted 40% CPEs as well.  Most Cat A’s have a CPE of 40% so there’s the reason for the pattern.

Superchannel also asked for a reduction in CPE from 32% to 27% and they were granted 30% because Superchannel is a pay service and the more established TMN and Movie Central have 31% CPE and Family Channel (equally established but for some reason lower) has a CPE of 30%.  The Commission made that decision on the basis of consistency and did not accept Superchannel’s arguments that it has been having a hard time getting started and needs the break.  Here’s the interesting part.  Superchannel has had a hard time getting started and did have to complain to the Commission because they couldn’t get carriage or even if they did have an agreement, the BDUs weren’t letting their consumers know that Superchannel existed.  But the Commission based its decision on a) Superchannel made commitments to win their licence in a competitive bid so shouldn’t be allowed to make less of a commitment now that they  have the licence and b) they were in serious and regular non-compliance at the time that they asked for the break.  Superchannel also asked for a break in their regional outreach and script development commitments ($1 million annually for regional and $2 million annually for script development) and the Commission gave it to them but on the condition that they also pay the unspent commitment of $6 million, which averages out to a total of $2.5 million per year instead of the $3 million they were supposed to spend.   [Note – if you’re a screenwriter you might want to go knock on Superchannel’s door as they have to spend $1.5 million in script development annually.]

But that leads me to another theme.  When you are asking the Commission for a break, it helps if you have been following the rules over the last licence term.  Blue Ant asked for a number of concessions including being treated as a modified group under the group-based policy so they can allocate their CPE across the group.  They do not technically qualify because they have no conventional services but the Commission decided to agree because a) it is important to diversity in the system to have strong independent broadcasters and b) Blue Ant had demonstrated its commitment to Canadian programming through its historical CPE.

Now Blue Ant didn’t get everything that they asked for so there is a limit on what you can get just by being a good broadcaster.  I think that it was a little cheeky of them to ask that their inhouse production be treated as independent in order to qualify under independent production requirements, particularly using the argument that the independent production sector is small now due to consolidation.  Blue Ant’s services are lifestyle, reality and documentary services for the most part and there is no shortage of small producers working in those genres.  The Commission correctly denied the request in order to help those small producers continue to find sources for their programming.

Another item of interest across a number of decisions is the refusal to require that the independent broadcasters adhere to Terms of Trade.  The rationale is that Terms of Trade are necessary to balance the uneven bargaining positions between large broadcasters and small producers but with these independent broadcasters there is no such imbalance and the producers do not need help in their negotiations.  I wonder if the really small producers who work with these independent services feel the same way.

There was a lot more there of course so if you’re interested in the individual independent services, then check out the specific decisions.

It’s all about the fans

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As an advocate for Canadian media I have been told time and time again that Canadians don’t watch Canadian television, go to Canadian movies or play on Canadian websites because it just isn’t good enough. We have the stats to prove otherwise but that doesn’t stop the trolls (who are sometimes even mainstream media) from slagging the stuff that we make here. I wish they all had spent the weekend at Fan Expo to see the truth. We have a star system, we have crazy fans, we have a huge audience for our home-grown content. This is a good news story (and a good news blog post). And honestly – if someone tries to tell me today that we don’t make good stuff I think that I might slap them.

I’ve been going to FanExpo for a few years now. The first year (2010) there was one Canadian property at FanExpo – the steampunk web series Riese (that’s the wikipedia reference – I couldn’t find a Canadian source to watch it as it’s geoblocked on Syfy.com) – I saw some fans still cosplaying characters from that webseries this year – which is quite cool. Each year since then the Canadian contingent has grown. This year there were panels and booths and cast signings for “Lost Girl”, “Call Me Fitz”, “The Listener”, “Murdoch Mysteries”, “Orphan Black”, “Bitten” (which hasn’t even aired yet but has a huge following based on Kelly Armstrong’s books – which I first learned about at last year’s FanExpo) and several other series which are American but shot here such as “Warehouse 13” and “Defiance”. The Independent Production Fund hosted a booth for several of the web series that they have funded. Across from them was the booth for “Ruffus The Dog’s Steampunk Adventure” (which apparently Gina Torres loved – #geekheaven). The animated web series “Captain Canuck” had a booth where Kris Holden-Reid, who voices the main character, did signings (I stood there for a while and ogled him – have to admit it). Quite a few indie gamers had booths. The Canadian presence was huge.

And the fans loved it. I spent some time on Saturday in line with fans and I really enjoyed meeting people. In the “Murdoch Mysteries” line people kept talking about being in line to see Jack and that confused me until I realized that was Yannick Bisson’s character name from “Sue Thomas F. B. Eye” (an industrially Canadian series from 2002-2005). My favourite fans were the lady in her 60s and her 90 year old mother in a walker. “Jack” was the mother’s favourite actor on TV. Both mom and daughter were pretty excited when the cast made a fuss over them. [Note – FanExpo is not just for geeky gamer boys and Lolitas. This story shows just how mainstream it has become.]

I took a break from the madness of FanExpo on a Saturday and went early to line up for “The Listener” panel and sit and read my graphic novel. I had passed a surprise “Listener” cast signing and let the women around me know that it was going on and offered to save their places for them. Then I started talking to the identical twins behind me. They now introduce each other as ‘clones’ after becoming big fans of “Orphan Black”. We talked clones (Will there be a new one next season?) and “Bitten” casting (can Supergirl play a werewolf? They think so) and they raved about how terrific everyone they met had been.

When the ladies came back from their cast signing one had brought me a poster and another invited me to join her in her VIP front row, as thank yous for their incredible experience meeting the cast. Awwwww! Listenerds are the best!

It’s not just about meeting the stars though. At each panel I attended (or heard about), fans got a chance to ask questions about story and in a few cases pitched story ideas for future seasons. [Christina Jennings was quite taken by a few of the “Listener” fan ideas.] They loved meeting the creators when they had a chance – I heard about how great it was to meet co-creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson of “Orphan Black”.

And then there were the “Bitten” ears. Everyone who went to their panel got a pair of wolf ears. You could tell after the panel was out and the rest of FanExpo (including the Nathan Fillion line which I was in instead of the panel – sorry guys) was infiltrated with wolf ears. Brilliant.

As we all know Nathan Fillion is Canadian. I’m not sure everyone knew how proud of that fact he remains. He made that clear and the crowd roared in appreciation (I have to admit it – I almost teared up). And yes, an appreciation for our Canadian talent who have gone south and done well for themselves is an integral part of our Canadian media world. Which is not the same as only promoting our ex-pat stars.

So what did I learn from this? Canadian fans are very aware that they are Canadian and different from Americans (you should have heard the crowd loudly correct George Takei when he said both Canada and the US entered World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbour). We are proud that we are polite and generous whether we are celebrities or fans. We love our Canadian television not because it’s Canadian but because it’s great stuff. It competes with and is just as good as the American shows. We have a star system that seems to have grown organically just on the basis of that great television.

It’s not that the broadcasters do NOTHING – no, they do promote their Canadian programs and talent but just not enough. So the producers and talent take on promotion when they have the time and money to do so. Some of it is as simple as jumping in on social media (I think more than a few fans will be joining Twitter to twatch the “Listener” finale next Wednesday after the cast talked about regularly twatching) and the lack of ego that leads to free cast signings when the big US stars are charging mega bucks and limiting the number of autographs.

Some people are catching on – loved the sneak peeks from Shaftesbury and seriously if someone could send me some wolf ears I swear I’d wear them. Somewhere. Space does a great job at working FanExpo. We can do more. We can grow the audience with more fan support. And if the audience grows then maybe, when benefits money runs out and BDU contributions to the CMF drop, then just maybe broadcasters will see that it’s in their best financial interest to continue to give the audience the great Canadian TV that they have come to expect, with the stars and stories that they love.

Every year I tell people what a great experience it is to go to FanExpo if you work in Canadian television (and digital media but this year I focused on the tv side – maybe next year). Our task now is to support the fans throughout the year. Seriously guys, I don’t think a hashtag is going to do it.

CRTC S.9(1)(h) Hearing (Mandatory Carriage) Decision

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For background, last March I wrote a post that explained what mandatory carriage means and talked about the applications that I was most interested in.  The hearing took place the week of April 23, 2013 and the decision was released today.  13 of the 22 applications for mandatory carriage were denied as the CRTC reiterated that mandatory carriage was reserved for services that ‘make exceptional contributions to meeting the objectives of the (Broadcasting) Act’.  See Fagstein’s blog for a good chart form summary.

Most of the mainstream media and social media focus has been on the Sun TV application for mandatory carriage (which was denied) – see Simon Houpt and Steve Ladurantaye of the Globe and Mail for excellent coverage of the topic) but I have always been much more interested in the other applications which had the potential to impact the Canadian content part of the broadcasting sector – APTN, VisionTV, Starlight.  There were also several licence renewal applications of interest, particularly Superchannel and Blue Ant, but those have not been released.  There was however, one aspect of the Sun TV decision that I think is worth noting (in addition to the upcoming policy hearing on Canadian news services which will address the bigger picture of whether all Canadian news services need regulatory assistance).  The Commission noted that not only did Sun TV not demonstrate how its service would make an ‘exceptional’ contribution to the objectives of the Act – it never referenced the Act in its application.  #duh (sorry – couldn’t resist).  Further, the service didn’t make ‘exceptional’ expenditure and exhibition commitments to Canadian programming beyond what other Canadian news services, which do not have mandatory carriage, make.

But enough about Sun TV.  APTN received a renewal of their mandatory distribution order on the basis that its service was consistent with the objectives of the Act, it was important that the service be widely available across the country and that APTN is ‘exceptional in its contribution to Canadian expression and reflects attitudes, opinions, ideas, values and artistic creativity that would not otherwise be seen on television’.  As well, should the BDUs only carry the service where concentrations of aboriginal populations warranted it, then many who were spread out around the country would not have access.  This is a good description of the bar required for a service to be entitled to mandatory distribution – exceptional contribution to the objectives of the Act, and anticipation that the market would not provide the service consistently across the country.

However, APTN also asked for an increase in their subscriber rate from $0.25 per sub to $0.40.  It requested the increase to keep up with inflation, improve programming and make more programming available on multiple platforms.  The Commission accepted that an increase was warranted but given that an increase in the subscriber rate will mean an increase in the cost of the basic package, decided that a $0.06 increase would be a good balance between APTN’s need and the consumer’s reluctance to pay more for basic cable.

The Commission used the same balance language when it agreed to an increase for CPAC.  The $0.01 increase ‘represents a good balance between the impact on the price of the basic service for Canadian consumers and the ability of CPAC to improve its programming’.  This is the consumer filter that we have been told will be applied to all decisions clearly at work.

There were two proposed youth-focused services that applied for mandatory distribution – Fusion and Dolobox.  It was interesting that both had significant user-generated content and online components and both were denied at least in part on the basis that there were enough existing alternatives in the online world that the Commission did not see a need to issue mandatory distribution and broadcasting licences.  I heard both presentations and I could not understand why they were at the CRTC as it seemed like a backwards looking business model for forward-looking services.

Speaking of which, then there’s Starlight.  While I strongly support the idea of finding a way to make it easier for Canadians to find and watch Canadian feature films, I was part of the camp who thought that Starlight for all of its good intentions, was not the solution because of its reliance on mandatory carriage in its business model (See also Denis McGrath’s Facebook post on the subject –- sometimes a former blogger has a relapse).  As you can see from those services that received or maintained mandatory carriage, the Commission looked very closely at whether a service was exceptional enough to warrant increasing the cost of basic.

The Commission did not feel that the proposed service was exceptional enough because Canadian VOD and pay services are required to licence all Canadian services that are available so Canadian films are not unavailable.  [Now, as Mario Mota pointed out in a tweet, pay is about $20/month on top of basic, which is not very accessible to Canadians so there is a flaw in that argument.]  Starlight would to some extent duplicate the offering on pay and VOD so would not provide additional diversity to the system.  I would agree except to the extent that Starlight was planning to reach into the back catalogue to films not currently or rarely available (some rightly so of course).

Part of Starlight’s strategy was to show general support for the service and it conducted a survey to demonstrate a high level of interest.  Unfortunately that strategy seems to have backfired as the Commission felt that the high level of interest demonstrated that Starlight could be successful as a discretionary service.   However, Starlight applied for mandatory distribution because it not only wanted to be sure that it was available in every home but also it needed the revenue to fund its original feature film financing plan.  This plan could not be financed without a mandatory distribution order.  The Commission felt that Starlight had not demonstrated that the existing funding for feature films was insufficient.  I think that another way of putting that is ‘don’t force consumers to solve the problem of insufficient feature film financing’.

Over the years Vision has applied for mandatory carriage several times on the basis that its multifaith programming and its focus on its 55+ audience offers needed diversity in the broadcasting system.  Vision expressed concern that as an independent service it runs the risk of vertically integrated companies moving it from a basic package to a discretionary package in order to make room for their own services.  A move like that would draw fewer subscribers and therefore reduce Vision’s revenue.  The Commission accepted the arguments of BDUs that the BDUs would not want to risk the wrath of Vision’s audience if they moved Vision out of basic (and warned the BDUs that the Commission would need to see good reasons if they ever did so).  Vision also has recourse to the Commission should the BDUs treat Vision unfairly.  The Commission also pointed out that Vision is no longer the only other faith programming service so there is no extraordinary need for Vision’s particular service.  Or in other words – it’s all good so there’s no need to regulate.

One of the few new mandatory orders granted is worth mentioning.  It went to The Legislative Assemblies of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories for a geographically limited broadcast of recorded and live coverage of proceedings in their Assemblies in aboriginal languages, English and French.  The service clearly supports the objectives of the Act, there was a demonstrated demand and a demonstrated market failure.  Bell ExpressVu stated no plans to carry the service and Shaw agreed to but without any time commitment.  And possibly most importantly, the service did not ask for a subscriber fee.

The general feeling about this hearing was that the Commission would not grant many or possibly any new mandatory orders but would maintain the existing ones in order to keep a lid on the cost of basic cable and this is pretty much what they have done.  The decisions were clear so if any service seeks to apply for a mandatory order in the future they will definitely know what issues to address in their application.  There will be an increase to the basic cable rate but it should not be significant (Fagstein came up with wholesale increases of $0.31 per subscriber per month in English and $0.63 in French, which Mario suggests may be used by the BDUs to justify $1 increases in your bill).

In many ways those of us who watched the hearing felt that it was a throw back to an earlier era when broadcast television was the only way that you could reach an audience.  That is so not the case any more.  Now the question is whether the rejected applicants, and those contemplating new services in the future, turn to digital platforms to reach audiences and whether the CRTC needs to be there to ensure that the objectives of the Broadcasting Act aren’t being undercut by these new platforms.  Yeah, I went there.

Bell-AstralFinal

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Mirko Bibic must be heaving a huge sigh of relief that the transaction has finally been approved.  Bell won’t be happy with all of the details but it’s at least done and from my perspective, the additional conditions are things that they can live with.   They might have to hire a new body to manage the new reporting requirements but that won’t cost much.

As always, my perspective on this transaction (which is my own alone) is focused on the English television side of the deal (Steve Faguy does a great job on the radio market with an emphasis on Montreal, which was so hotly contested).  There are some parts of the decision though that are noteworthy in that they signal the Commission’s thinking in the upcoming rationalization of the benefits policy (part of the Three Year Plan).

The big clear message from the top was that this transaction was still carefully reviewed for the public interest and was only approved as being in the public interest with the addition of a few new safeguards.  The revised application wasn’t a slam dunk.  “The Commission finds that but for these safeguards, it would not have been persuaded that the present transaction is in the public interest, and would not have approved it.” (para 28).

Aspects of the Vertical Integration code will now be enforceable conditions of licence, there are conditions around negotiation of non-linear programming rights, access to advertising availabilities by competitors and affiliation agreements have to be filed shortly after they are signed.  These all relate to a number of allegations that were made during both Bell-Astral1 and Bell-Astral2 that Bell was already treating smaller BDUs and independent programming services unfairly due to its size and would only get worse if it got bigger.  Rather than make any determination on the validity of these allegations (many of which were not supported at the hearing by evidence of the unfair activity) the Commission has taken the position that the new bigger Bell will have more opportunities to be anti-competitive so there’s a greater potential (whether or not they are anti-competitive now) and that potential has to be protected against.  The final piece to this is the warning that the Commission will not hesitate to act if they are presented with evidence that Bell is acting anti-competitively.

A lot of the decision was dedicated to a revised valuation.  This section will be of value to valuators of future transactions.  One of the parts that I liked was the valuation of leases related to the out-of-home business (billboards).  As those leases relate to an unregulated side of Astral, the Commission had asked for an auditor’s report of how they came to the valuation.  This is one of the ways that broadcasters artificially reduce benefits payable by increasing the value of unregulated assets that can be deducted from the calculation.  Instead of an auditor’s report, Bell filed an accountant’s report explaining how the valuation was made.  As they didn’t get an independent verification as requested, the Commission did not deduct the value of the leases related to the out-of-home business from the valuation.  Lesson – provide the Commission exactly what they ask for or it will cost you (Note – the same thing happened to Shaw when it acquired Global so they had warning).

So the value of the transaction was increased from $4.017 billion to $4.154 billion.  The Commission then changed the allocations between TV, radio and unregulated assets.  It is also worth noting that Bell tried to argue that SVOD  (i.e. TMN on Demand) services were unregulated but the Commission added them back in as extensions of regulated assets. They did not do the same for the value of digital assets such as websites related to broadcasters, which is something that I had argued for in Bell-Astral1.  The bottom line for benefits then is $175.4 for television and $71.5 for radio.  Note that radio was increased from the usual 6% to 7% of the value of the assets because of the size of the transaction.  An increase for size for radio has been done recently (Corus) but that argument hasn’t worked for the television side for years.  It is likely that the television transactions are just so large that the transactions could not support an increase in the benefits formula.

Unlike previous transactions, the Commission has not decided for Bell how they will allocate the increased benefits but instead require them to file a proposal on how they will be spent by July 29th.  I hope that the result and the final approved benefits are public.  In the past when the Commission has left the final package to later determination there have been letters that you had to know to ask for to be able to find out what exactly was agreed to.  Not good for the process.

Most of the television benefits were approved as proposed but there were some exceptions.  The proposal to allocate $3million to CAFDE for a fund for the promotion of feature film was not approved.  Bell is to come back with a new proposal for the promotion of feature film.  What is odd is that there really isn’t any direction as to what needs to be fixed.  What is clear is that the Commission didn’t buy the argument of feature film producers such as the Producers Roundtable of Ontario that the funds should go to feature film production before promotion.

OLMC’s (Official Language Minority Communities) have been a major concern of the Commission this past year at this hearing and at CBC.  After many years of making presentations about the need for specific allocations they earned an allocation as part of the CBC licence renewal and an allocation of 10% of each of the English and French envelopes of the benefits package.

An important wonky determination is that 100% of PNI not only has to be independently produced but also original.  If a program airs on TMN and then on CTV (or airs on Citytv and then TMN) it only is original for the first broadcaster unless both broadcasters participated in the financing of the production.  This is similar to the Canada Media Fund’s definition of original.

Bell proposed an allocation of $2.73 million to Consumer Education as part of the social benefits.  The Commission has found this to be too vague and is requiring more detail with a direction that it would be appropriate to fund The Broadcasting Accessibility Fund, MediaSmarts and the Centre d’études sur les medias.  Lesson – if you don’t provide detail then the Commission just might decide for you.

Social benefits will have to be reallocated on a language basis as well.  They were majority English but have to be consistent with onscreen benefits, which were allocated along the lines of the value of the services in each language – 69% French and 31% English.

Bell had proposed that a significant portion of the television benefits in English would be spent over three years starting in 2017 because of the large amount of benefits for English television currently in the system.  A number of the creator groups objected to this.  The Commission did not agree to this proposal because some of the communities (OLMCs) and some genres of programming (documentaries) are not participating in the current benefits bulge and need the funds now.  Benefits will be paid in equal installments over the next seven years.

As part of the application, Bell made a number of ‘intangible’ benefits proposals that in some ways the Commission is treating as tangible.  In particular they are asking for more detail on the new position of ‘Canadian Programming Champion’ to ensure that it’s not just BS and Bell will have to file annual reports to demonstrate what the champion did, what their budget was, who they met with and what projects were funded.  This report will be public.  As well, the commitment to regional offices has been expanded from Vancouver and Halifax to include Winnipeg and detail as to their mandate has to be filed and then reported on annually.  The regional communities have experience with regional offices that have no authority and exist only to fulfill benefits requirements (*cough* CHUM-Craig *cough*) and the Commission wants to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

I was surprised to see the Commission re-evaluate Astral’s group CPE and PNI because that issue hadn’t been aired much but it does make sense.  Bell will have to sell off a number of the Astral specialty services and several of them are low CPE and PNI services which reduced the overall historical average CPE and PNI for the group.  The Commission is asking Bell to make a proposal but their preliminary view is that CPE should increase from 30% to 32% and PNI from 16% to 18%.  Remember that Astral’s group CPE and PNI will still be calculated separately from Bell so this is important to ensure that services like TMN and Family Channel maintain their level of investment in Canadian programming.

There are quite a few details still to be worked out and proposals to be made by Bell by July 29th, so the dollars at play in each envelope are not yet certain.  Again I hope that that part of the process will also be public and we will have a clear, public decision on the final makeup of the benefits package that we don’t have to go hunt for.  Please.

Funding Application Tips – Partnerships

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I probably should have done this post on Partnerships before last week’s post on how not to screw up your funding application but there you go.  I’m doing it now.

One of the biggest ways that a project can fail (in general, not just with funding applications) is in picking the right partners to work on the project.  This is co-producers or digital media and television producers or creative partners.  The same rules/guidelines apply.

Audio-visual media is a collective work.  None of us can create (high quality commercial) film, television and digital media on our own.  We need to work with other people to bring complimentary skills together to get the end product completed.  I think that we all understand that a screenwriter, producers, director, actors and crew are needed to produce but this also applies to the producer.  Sometimes it is skills that are needed, for example when a smaller production company or series creators partner with a more experienced production company to take on a bigger challenge.  Sometimes it is financing as when a Canadian production company partners with a treaty co-production partner.  And then there are the partnerships between formats when a tv producer partners with a digital media producer to create affiliated digital media content for a television program.

Early on in my career I learned a few key rules on partnerships from a tv producer who became a broadcaster and then a winemaker and is back to being a broadcaster.  I like to sum them up as ‘can you get drunk with your intended partner?’  It may seem frivolous but bear with me.   You get drunk with people you like (most of us do anyway).  Production is hard and you should only do such hard work with people you like and trust, can talk to and feel that you can rely on.  This means spending time with people and getting to know them before signing an agreement.  Put the relationship ahead of the deal.

How do you do that?  Meet lots of people and companies before decided which one you want to work with.  Attend markets and conferences where you can meet a lot of people (and socialize with them!).  Talk to your friends and colleagues about their experiences with those companies.  Yesterday I told a story about the reactions of two different companies to an event that I was trying to set up and the person I told it to heard the story as more evidence that one company was a better potential partner for her than the other company.  It wasn’t the point of my story but it definitely informed her opinion about which one she would rather work with.

It is more than likeability and ethics though.  What you look for in a partner depends on what you need but you need to be certain that your partner has it and isn’t just BS’ing you or entertaining magical thinking about their abilities.  That’s the due diligence part that you have to do.   Can they bring that financing to the table – check out their past projects.  Can they produce the digital media component – check out their past projects.  Do they have the distribution skills or marketing skills that you lack – check out their team.  Right now possibly the biggest problem in convergent media production is tv producers partnering with digital media companies who do not have the skills and experience to produce what the tv producers are looking for.   For example, if a convergent project is going to be about developing and supporting the television audience with content then a digital media shop that has only created websites that sell products will not have the necessary skills.   The result, if it can be funded, just may be garbage.

If you don’t know the sector that you’re exploring for a partner then consider hiring a consultant who works in that area to help you find potential partners.  Yes, it does sound like hiring a matchmaker but it can work.  Some organizations are partnering with other organizations to facilitate matchmaking, for example WIFT’s Digiscape in partnership with CMPA, CWC and Interactive Ontario.   Go to funders’ websites and check out what they’ve funded and who produced it.

OK, so you’ve found your dream date, now what?  An effective partnership comes out of both parties clearly understanding the strengths that each bring to the partnership, the roles they will each perform and being completely on the same page about what is being produced.  You can do this in a co-production or services agreement but you also need one or more meetings where you can talk about the big picture and all the little details that it will take to get there.  I cannot tell you how often I have been able to see in a funding application that partners appear to have completely different ideas about what they are producing.   An effective partnership involves constant communication – which of course isn’t difficult because you do like each other, right?  [see above re getting drunk together]   You do not carve up the responsibilities and go off and do your thing, assuming that your partner is off in their corner doing their thing and somehow magically it will all get put together and end up being fantastic!

Ideally you want to have such a fantastic working relationship with your partner that you can work with them again and avoid all of this hard finding your partner work.

Project Funding Application Tips

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I have been evaluating project funding applications for various funds for many years. You may find this an odd thing for a policy wonk to do but I’ve also been a producer of websites, was active in children’s television and was the business manager for a fund so have a wide-ranging set of skills that allow me to assess creative, business and marketing potential for projects. I’ve seen a lot of applications in my day and have a few tips that I’d like to share to make my life and yours easier. They apply to applications for television and digital funding applications.

  1. Read the guidelines. Read them again. Prepare your application and then double check the guidelines again. If you’re not sure about something, call the funder. They almost always are happy to talk to you though perhaps not on the deadline date.
  2. Every application requires a synopsis. This is a brief, one paragraph description. Forget the blah blah and focus on writing a tight, accurate description of the project that will set the stage for the rest of the material in the application. A properly written synopsis will set the tone for the rest of the application and strongly influence an evaluator’s attitude as they set out to read the rest of the application. Often the synopsis is the only creative that a jury or board member will read before they make a decision based on the evaluator’s recommendation.
  3. Do a search for exclamation marks and delete same. This didn’t used to be an issue but is increasing. I blame Twitter and texting. My daughter tells me that all adults overuse exclamation marks in texts and tweets. It may be becoming a bad habit. Don’t use them in funding applications but put your emphasis in your words! Otherwise it feels like you’re shouting at us! See what I did there?
  4. Spell check. Seriously. You have no idea how often the phrase ‘and I was irritated by all the typos’ comes up in an evaluation.
  5. If you are referring to past work as being ‘landmark’ or ‘groundbreaking’ or using other such ‘never been done before’ adjectives then it better be. Describing previous work as hugely innovative when it isn’t will just undermine your current application.
  6. Make sure that your budget reflects the work proposed. If the budget preparer is fully informed of the creative then this should not be a problem but sadly often is.
  7. If you haven’t figured out your story or your project then you are not ready to apply yet. Do not rush the application and try the ‘trust us, we’ll figure it out’ argument. If the words aren’t there on paper then the funder has no idea what it is being asked to fund and won’t.
  8. You need a business model, marketing plan, distribution plan. The funder needs to know that there is audience demand and a way to make money, even if the funder doesn’t take an equity position. If there is no international market or revenue potential but there are other goals then explain that. The goal of a funding agency is to build the industry and not just fund good ideas.
  9. Try very hard to avoid buzzwords. First, a buzzword has a limited lifespan and if you are new in the sector you could easily be using a buzzword that is no longer in use (e.g. mobisode) or has negative connotations often because of overuse (e.g. transmedia). If you must use a buzzword, use it properly and only when necessary.
  10. Make sure that the bios of your team show that you can do what you propose. If your main team is new or new at what you propose, hire a consultant with relevant experience. If you partner with a company to provide more experience make sure that your partner really can do what they say they can do. Include examples of relevant past work in your bios. Do not make the evaluators use google.
  11. Describe exactly what you plan to do with social media. Mentioning Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are not enough. You actually need a strategy and each strategy is different depending on the program and the audience.
  12. Use pictures, sketches, illustrations and mockups. You know, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. The evaluator knows that they are just sketches, illustrations etc. to help communicate the idea but pictures do help communicate that visual idea. That means character sketches for animation, mockups and wireframes for websites but also stock images for live action characters and photos of possible locations or sets.

Hmm. I could go on but I think 12 are a good number for you to digest and think about. Most of these points are not going to make the difference between funding or no funding but they each in their own way can influence the evaluator’s assessment.

Women in TV – The Stats Please

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We have had two research reports released recently that try to shed some light on aspects of gender representation, and as well diversity, behind and in front of the camera in our television industry.  There was the Ryerson study of Canadian Screenwriters and the Women in View on TV Report.  Both reports left me wanting more – more detail, more explanation, more context.   The Ryerson report was a survey of 266 of the over 2100 Writers Guild of Canada members.  That’s just over 12% of the membership who chose to answer the survey.   It isn’t a large sample.  That being said it highlighted facts which are known to those who work in the industry – it takes time to become a successful screenwriter, they are highly educated, about a third are women and few make a full time living out of screenwriting.  It attempts to draw the connection between few women making a lot of money by screenwriting and systemic discrimination.  That may be true but I couldn’t follow the logic from the available data.

As for the Women in View on TV Report, it was more statistically significant as it researched staffing in key creative positions on 21 live action drama series with CMF funding.  It is a snapshot of a particular time and will not be able to identify trends until this study has been done year after year – which I understand is their hope.  We can see that women are not well represented behind the cameras but we cannot tell if this is a long standing problem, one that is getting better or perhaps even worse.  Also, by focusing on the statistics it again makes it difficult to extrapolate causes and therefore solutions.   It is a very good start but I would like to see the study grow in the future.

Yesterday I attended a panel discussion that Women in View had arranged as part of TIFF’s Higher Learning program to present their research and put it in context and I found what I had been looking for –  Dr. Stacy Smith of the USC Annenburg School of Communications.  Now, this is not to slight the other panelists (John Doyle, Globe and Mail columnist, Ferne Downey, ACTRA  National President, Laura Michalchyshyn Head of Sundance Productions) who had some great things to say (more on that in a minute) but just to say that Dr. Smith’s research on gender representation in the Hollywood film industry had the detail and the context that I was looking for.  She has conducted two studies that she presented to us.  One was a study of women onscreen and behind the camera in big blockbuster Hollywood films between 2007 and 2012  and the other was of Sundance Festival applicants and accepted films over the last ten years.  In addition to the statistics, they also interviewed key creators to ask them the ‘why’ questions.  The results were fascinating.   You can find more information in the links but the key for me was the reasons given for the low representation of women.  It is all about what Hollywood thinks that they need to do to make money.   It is ‘common wisdom’ that women will watch a male driven movie but men won’t watch a female driven movie.  According to Dr. Smith the statistics that she has gathered from a film distribution study proves that is not true.  Men tend to resist writing female-centric stories while vice versa is not true.  Female writers tend to write more female characters but Dr. Smith admits that she does not yet know if that is because they are advocates for women or if there is a ‘pink ghetto’.

The Sundance data showed a much higher representation of women in indie film than in the Hollywood blockbusters.  For example, 20% of the drama screenwriters are women while only 13.5% of the blockbusters were written by women.  There was a definite skew in the doc format as 32% of the docs were written by women.  The same trend is visible in the producer category where 29% of the indie dramas were produced by women, 45% of the docs were produced by women but only 20% of the blockbusters were produced by women.  Here though the reasons given were different as indie film isn’t as influenced by myths of the distribution world.  Reasons included lack of financial resources for women, male dominated networks, stereotyping on set, work/life balance and exclusionary hiring decisions.  More research needs to be done to try and identify why there are more women in documentaries (self-selected or funnelled?) and to determine if the size of the budget and risk is the only reason why there are more women in indie film than blockbusters.

I really love that Dr. Smith has done many studies and will continue to do more.  As our world in Canadian media is different than Hollywood we need to have our own studies like these.  If we can truly identify the causes for lack of representation, then we can try to come up with effective solutions.  Yes – evidence-based policies.

The rest of the panel discussion was interesting as it tried to give context and causation to the Women in View research.  Laura Michalchyshyn thinks that women have been socialized to be quieter and that does not get us the jobs – we need to grow a pair.  We need to encourage women to enter these careers in school and then mentor them along the way.  Ferne Downey offered that it isn’t enough to look at numbers but also to look at portrayal – too many female characters are stereotypes.  More women writing, producing and directing will mean more realistic portrayals of women.  “Orphan Black” was identified as a television show that is proving that men will watch a female-driven show, disproving that myth.  More successes like that (i.e. “Continuum”, “Lost Girl”, “Motive”) will breed more opportunities.  Finally, John Doyle was as provocative as he can be.  He thinks that part of the problem in Canada is that our big broadcasters are all owned by cable companies and as a result their senior executives have less creative vision than traditional broadcast executives.  They are less comfortable with risk and stick to formats that work (ahem – cop shows!).  I took down the following statement as close to verbatim as I could:

“There is a cabal of guys who look after each other, who won’t admit to blocking women from jobs.  They are mostly hacks though some are talented.  They get jobs because they are the loudest voices in the room.  They network, sit on juries, write blogs, promote themselves and their friends.  They hold grudges, organize campaigns against shows they don’t like.  You can’t ask women to say they have to also be the loud voices, that’s not fair.  Though it is incumbent on women in power to promote the work of other women.”

Personally, I don’t think that there’s a cabal with secret handshakes etc.  That sounds way too organized.  But what Mr. Doyle is talking about here is the existing network and it is hard for newcomers to break into it or to move up within it.  We each have to find our own way – whether it’s growing a pair and getting loud or just figuring out how to network better.  I have enjoyed the mentoring and support from some terrific women and I think I’ve turned around and done the same for those who have followed after me.  But I’ve been in this business for 25 years and while there has been progress (oh, the stories I sometimes tell to the younger ones), we clearly need to do something more concrete to speed up the pace of change.  Until we can say that those who create our stories are representative of our society, we need to keep shining a light on the problem and talking about solutions.

Don’t even get me started on diversity!  [actually – I will tackle that but it’ll be the subject of a later post].

The last word today goes to the brilliant (yes – I’m a fan) Joss Whedon, interviewed about his “Much Ado About Nothing”:

Why do you think there’s a lack of female superheroes in film?

Toymakers will tell you they won’t sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, ‘You see? It can’t be done’. It’s stupid, and I’m hoping The Hunger Games will lead to a paradigm shift. It’s frustrating to me that I don’t see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched The Avengers and was like, “My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,” and I thought, Yeah, of course they were. I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”

 

CBC Licence Renewal – More Than Just Ads on Radio

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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!