Well, That's Not Good

After the serious cuts to the CBC and Telefilm, the National Film Board has had to announce it is closing its offices in Toronto and Ontario.

The National Film Board is responsible for funding quite a few short films that have gone to the Oscars. The NFB office on St. Denis and Maisonneuve includes the Ciné-Robothèque, where you can view any of thousands of films the NFB has funded over the years. Many of them are hard to see anywhere else. For example, when I was researching a comedy set among the Inuit, I was able to walk in and see documentaries from the 1950's about the traditional Inuit way of life, showing the dogsleds and the igloos.

Some of these films are available at the Bibliothèque Nationale, but most aren't. In other words, the NFB is the place in Montreal where Canada's audiovisual heritage lives. Er, lived.

I have no idea what they're going to do with all those video stations. I imagine they'll have to sell them off for nothing or junk them. So if a progressive government comes in after four or five years, it will cost a bundle to replace them.

The Conservatives seem to think that Canadian culture is overfunded. In a country that still subsidizes men to go out on the ice and bash seals to death, I'm not convinced that slashing film and television supports should be where the cuts are made. Culture attracts brainpower. Culture attracts tourists.

But let's set aside for a moment all the benefits that places like the NFB and Telefilm have brought Canada (e.g. Canadian movies at the Oscars, Jessica Paré). Strictly as a business proposition, cultural subsidies attract highly mobile entertainment investments which then ricochet around the economy. The seal hunters aren't going to transplant themselves to Brazil if the Canadian Navy doesn't take care of them. But filmmakers and game makers are in a global market. Canada's loss will be someone else's gain.

So this is a damn shame.

New Development Funding Requirements

[Cancon] Elvira Lount has posted a Facebook Note objecting to the new proposed Telefilm requirements for development funding. According to her synopsis:

1. In order for Canadian producers to access Telefilm feature film development funds they will have to have produced a feature film in the past 5 years.
2. Producers will be graded using the new 3 point performance criteria of box office, festivals/awards and private funding as presented at the recent Telefilm public meeting. It seems that your grade will affect the amount of development funding you will be able to access -- in what seems to be a much expanded development performance envelope.
3. Telefilm won't be providing creative input. It will be up to the producers to handle the development.
4. Producers who aren't eligible - haven't produced a feature film in the past 5 years - will have to partner with a producer who is eligible. There is no info on which partner will control the funds, but most likely it will be the eligible producer since they'll be getting the money - I'm assuming. No info on whether they can be just an executive producer or have to be an actual co-producer with part ownership of your project. No info on whether your TV or service production credits will count, or whether if you've produced films without Telefilm involvement they will count or be assessed under the new performance criteria and render you eligible.
5. A producer can apparently apply for an exception exemption- for instance if you have feature film credits but not in the past 5 years -- you may be able to convince Telefilm that your should be eligible. But, that would be very limited - exceptional circumstances only.
6. There is likely to be a 1st & 2nd time producer development stream - but no indication of how much will be allocated, the assessment process etc. Given that most of the funds will go to the much expanded development "performance" envelope this stream is likely to be heavily oversubscribed.

Her main objection is that this will squeeze inexperienced producers out of development. Why would an experienced producer team up with an inexperienced when they have their own projects?

I'm not convinced the new regulations are a bad idea. Doesn't it make a whole lot of sense to evaluate a development money request not only on the strength of the script or story, but the producer's track record? If I bring a TV project to a network, they are certainly going to judge the project not only on its creative merits on paper, but on my ability to execute, and the producer's track record. Same goes if I bring a project to a studio. Why wouldn't the government be equally careful with taxpayer money?

I disagree that eligible producers will ignore ineligible producers. I spent about 8 years as a development exec before I made my living writing, so I have some experience in production companies. Bigger producers team up with little ones all the time. Why? Because it keeps their overhead low. If I'm E1, say, and a smart emerging producer brings in a project she's nurtured, then I've saved myself a lot of headaches. I don't have to sift through 1000 scripts to find one good one. I don't have to do a deal with the writer. I don't have to give the writer notes. And I have someone who will shepherd the project for me. All I have to do is leverage my relationships with distributors and beat up on talent agents, which is something I, E1, can do better than an indie producer.

Why do you think studios have producers on the lot? Because producers who have everything riding on the project are better at picking winners than employees are.

And, keep in mind that the 40% allowable producer fees/overhead on the development funds will have to be divided between the 2 producers/production companies (most likely 50/50) with the balance going to the writers and story editors. So, on a development budget of $25,000 that combined producer/overhead fee will be $7000 split 2 ways - $3500 per producer/production company - and with that you are expected to devote months or years of your life to developing the project that you no longer own or control and to run your office. Plus, of course you will need to pay a lawyer to draw up the co-producer contract -- so this is an additional expense that will eat into your $3500 share -- let's say it will cost you at least $1000 to make sure you don't get screwed by the other producer. So, now you're left with $2500 and you've given away half your project, or maybe even the whole project.

First, what eligible producer is going to be willing to take on someone else's project for that paltry sum of $2500 when they can keep the whole allowable 40% fee by developing their own projects?

Here's the thing. The development overhead is not supposed to be how you pay the rent as a producer. It's supposed to tide you over. You are supposed to make your living producing movies. I've heard it said too often that many producers make their living developing scripts. Meaning, that's all they do. The Telefilm development money is not supposed to be there to support people working in the industry. It is supposed to support movie making.

I've often noticed that many producers, particularly in Québec, do not seem very interested in reading my, and other writers', material. What they want to do is develop their own pet projects. An exec friend of mine recently tried to forward an interesting script to a producer I've worked with. He wrote back, "What makes you think I'm interested in reading other people's scripts?"

And frankly, if you're an emerging producer, you ought to be able to negotiate a reasonable deal for yourself with an established producer.

Of course, I worked in LA for 10 years. There was a year where I was exactly an emerging producer with no credits trying to sell my projects to established producers. So all of this seems extremely normal to me, except for the part where the government helps people fund their projects.

I think it makes sense to get Telefilm out of the business of giving notes. I have many friends who are Telefilm analysts, and they're pretty sharp folks. They've often helped me make my scripts better. But doesn't it make sense that the notes should come from the person who lives or dies by the critical and/or commercial success of the movie? No Telefilm analyst was ever fired because their notes made a movie less commercial or less of a festival winner. If Denise Robert wants to make another potential Oscar winner, shouldn't she have the final say on whether the script is perfect the way it is? If Muse wants to make the next big dumb comedy, you know the analyst is not going to say, "we need more fart jokes." But sometimes you just need more fart jokes.

I guess the only quibble I would have with the guidelines is that 5 years might be short. It takes a long time to develop and produce a feature. I think you could be a very good producer and not necessarily have a feature in the past 5 years for entirely legit reasons. I think 7 years might be more reasonable.

Look, I'm as scared of the big bad Conservatives as anybody. And I keep waiting for some terrible drastic change to the creative landscape. But these seem like entirely reasonable and fair new guidelines.

60-30-10

Telefilm has changed its definition of a movie's "success." Instead of gauging it 100% on box office, it's now 60% box office, 30% festivals and awards, and 10% how much it was financed privately rather than purely out of the government's pockets.

Personally, this seems to me like a step in the right direction. If Canadians are supporting a Canadian cinema, winning Cannes ought to count. After all, Canadian movies are cultural ambassadors, as well as cultural touchstones.

DVD sales will count, as well, at least indirectly. That's good. Most of the time English Canadians watch their own movies, they're on DVD. After all, Canadian budgets are low, and most people watch low budget movies on DVD. No Canadian movie can compete head to head against TRANSFORMERS and other spectacles.

So I'm glad Telefilm is setting more holistic benchmarks.

Netflix v. Cancon

As Netflix penetrates the Canadian market, it's going to put a lot of pressure on Canadian broadcasters and cable companies. They want the CRTC to loosen up Cancon restrictions. There have also been calls to require Netflix to license Cancon. Jesse Brown is snide about this in the Globe and Mail.

Netflix looks like it will eat its way into the broadcast and cable markets until there's nothing left -- unless it is a vast Ponzi scheme, which is entirely possible. But if it's for real, and if Netflix isn't required to hit a Cancon target, then that's probably the end of the Canadian TV and film industry.

Of course you can't force individual Canadian viewers to download Cancon. But you can require that Netflix achieve a certain amount of Cancon viewership. Any company that streams video to individual users has, by definition, the ability to tell exactly who's watching what, when. And, having set a target of X unique viewers watching Y numbers of hours of Cancon, if Netflix isn't hitting its target, it can license more Cancon and promote it more. California forces automakers to make a certain percentage of non-polluting vehicles like electric cars; it's the price of selling cars in California. If the price of streaming TV to Canadian consumers is promoting SLINGS AND ARROWS and ONE WEEK, I don't think we're asking too much.

Relevance

My intrepid research assistant Jennifer chased down the details on Cancon requirements for co-productions. This sounds boring, but it is important if you're a Canadian writer, because if you have a co-production, you can do exactly what I was arguing for a little while ago, that is, set your Canadian show in European (or other) history. I asked "how exactly did The Tudors and The Borgias qualify for CMF funding, given that the co-production country is Ireland and neither is set there?" Here's the answer:

1. 3.2.TV.1.1 Official Treaty Co-Productions clause concerning Essential Requirements applies when submitting an application to access funding from the CMF.

2. Every co-production project is examined individually and assessed based on story content and the time period, and it's relevance to a Canadian audience, and that of the co-producing country. For example, the time period of "The Tudors" was deemed relevant to both Irish and Canadian history. For the "The Borgias", it was the cultural and historical significance of Catholicism to a Canadian (and the co-producing country) audience.

3. Telefilm has turned down co-production applications based on more modern stories, with no cultural, historical or other relevance for a Canadian audience.

The interpretation:
The term "Canada" includes the co-producing country based on the Essential Requirements. If the content and time period are relevant to a Canadian audience, based on Telefilm's examination, then it doesn't have to be "set" in Canada.

Nifty.

I think I'll go polish up my historical ninja series now.

The Farther Regions of Canada

I'm trying to track down this notion that co-productions are exempt from the CanCon requirement that the story be set in Canada. My intern's careful reading of the Performance Guidelines reveals:

3.2.TV.1.1 Official Treaty Co-Productions

With respect to the eligibility of official treaty co-productions to access the CMF, these Essential Requirements shall be
interpreted so as to treat the treaty co-production partner as “Canadian.”

Accordingly, the terms “Canadian” and “Canadians” in Essential Requirements 1 and 3, and the term “Canada” in
Essential Requirement 4 will be deemed to include the co-production country. The 10/10 points referenced in Essential
Requirement 2 must be attained by citizens of Canada or the co-producing country.

Now I have to find out how, exactly, Irish co-productions like The Tudors or The Borgias can be set in England or Italy and still count.

Half Caf?

Q. Can a writing team that's half Canadian / half American qualify for all the Canadian goodies?

A. Sorry, no.

Ah, I found the answer via this CPTC PDF: http://www.pch.gc.ca/DAMAssetPub/DAM-flmVid-flmVid/STAGING/texte-text/cptc_guide_1272631234182_eng.pdf

4.06 Screenwriters

To obtain the points for the position of screenwriter, a production must meet one of the following conditions:

a) Each individual involved in the preparation of the screenplay for the production must be Canadian. This means that all the individuals engaged in developing the screenplay, from the outline or treatment through the various drafts and dialogue polishes to the final shooting script, must be Canadian; or

b) The principal screenwriter must be Canadian and the screenplay for the production must be based on a work authored by a Canadian and published in Canada.

Co-Productions Qualify

I can't report to you the fascinating discussions going on at the WGC Forum, 'cause it's a no-tweet zone. But I did run across this handy factoid (which, caveat, I need to confirm):

Any co-production qualifies as CanCon.

This can work against Canadian writers, as when a 20% Canadian show with no Canadian writers, like THE TUDORS, qualifies to the CMF as CanCon.

But it also works for us on majority co-productions, because it removes the "set in Canada" requirement. So if you had a show set in ancient Egypt or Rome or even in the United States, which would not normally qualify for CMF funding, it would qualify if you brought in a minority 20% European partner (and shot it in Canada with Canadian actors etc.).

I think this is good news for Canadian writers, if I can confirm it, because it opens up a raft of stories that Canadian audiences might be interested in that don't take place in Canada.

Or so I'm told. Now who can confirm this for me...?

Geoblock That Kick!

A dear friend posted this Toronto Star column about American broadcasters streaming content into Canada, commercials intact.

The key determinant will obviously be money. Once U.S. rights holders conclude that it is more profitable to retain the Internet rights so that they can stream their programs online to a global audience and capture the advertising or subscription revenues that come with it, Canadian broadcasters may find that they can only license broadcast rights with the U.S. rights holders competing directly with them via the Internet.

As content moves onto the Internet, this could present a huge problem for broadcasters that rely on a protected market. The response that we (content creators) hope they'd have is to produce more homegrown content that they could then stream into other markets. But the immediate temptation, once it really begins to hurt, will be to ask for some kind of government-enforced geoblocking. We'll see.

Histoires sans Histoire

The WGC wants Canadian co-productions (which count under certain Cancon rules) to include more majority co-productions (PDF). They would like more fundamentally Canadian shows, which hire Canadian writers, and fewer minority co-pros like THE TUDORS where there is no real Canadian cultural content, just some money spent in Canada. (A few Canadian actors, say, maybe some post-production services.)

Researching the coproduction landscape in Canada, the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) found proof of what it has long suspected – that there is a severe imbalance between majority and minority co-productions of TV drama. In its submission today to the Government of Canada’s Consultation on the Implementation of Canada’s Policy on Audiovisual Treaty Co-production, the WGC called on the Canadian government to strengthen the domestic film and TV production industry by enforcing the goal of balancebetween productions in which Canada is a majority partner and those in which we play a minority role. The current imbalance has far-reaching negative effects on the job opportunities in film and TV, the Canadian content available to Canadians, and the domestic talent pool.

The WGC noted that for TV drama, in each of the last two years, there have been just one or two majority co-productions to four or five minority co-productions. And current tracking tell us the situation is only worsening. Such high-cost minority co-productions divert scarce financial resources etc. etc. etc.

I agree with the sentiment; minority co-productions shouldn't become a back door for producers to get the taxpayer to pay for service productions.

But I want more than 'more majority co-pros.' I would like to write on these goddamn shows. I would like to write on THE TUDORS. I would love to write on MERLIN or CAMELOT or whatever.

In fact I would like to propose an expansion of the Canadian cultural content rules. There is a rule that shows should be set in Canada and/or feature Canadian characters, but there's an exception for science fiction. You can set a show in the future and call it Canadian, so long as it is set offworld (Caprica, say) and not in some known country that is not Canada (future San Francisco).

Why not make an exception for history? Canada's history is not the same as the history of the North American continent. Canada's history includes British and French history. Our history includes the English Civil War, and Henry VIII, and Magna Carta, and 1066. Our history includes Madame de Pompadour and Joan of Arc. Go further back, and our history includes Caesar and Pericles and the March Up Country. Our legends include King Arthur and the Chanson de Rolond and Exodus.

Why, oh why, don't these count as Canadian cultural content? These are the people we came from, and the stories they told.

And why be Eurocentric? Canadians come from China and Africa and India. Why isn't The Pillow Book "Canadian content"? Or The Tale of Genji? Or the Mahabarata?

The alternative is what we have. You can't make a medieval movie in Canada, not and call it Canadian, because Canada had no Middle Ages. (Otherwise we'd be shooting my medieval zombie pic here.) You couldn't make a movie out of my novel about Morgan le Fay, THE CIRCLE CAST, because King Arthur never came to Montreal. You can't make a sword-and-sandals Canadian TV show because Canada was never part of the Roman Empire.

Which, due to the nature of Canadian film and TV funding, means we can't get a sword-and-sandals show made at all.

Which means I don't get to write one.

If Britain had similar rules, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL would have qualified for full Britcon, but MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN would have been insufficiently British.

As a history fan, this drives me up a tree. (Yggdrasil, in fact.) Cancon rules cede all historical features to other countries.

And yet historical movies travel well. You can air ROME or A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM or BEN HUR in Italy, France, Romania, Morocco and South Africa and the audience will know something about Rome, and want to see more. All these countries have Rome in their history.

Some Cancon rules are necessary. Without cultural Cancon rules, the Canadian taxpayer would be funding nothing but faux-American cop shows set in Generica. But the rules also limit Canadian film and TV to the present and the future. They cut us off from our past.

I think there should be a historical exemption. Go back further than a certain historical time -- let's say 1497 -- and you're off the hook. You still have to shoot here with Canadian crew and actors, but you don't have to set your story within the geographic borders of Canada.

Discuss.

Isn't it Ironic? Cultural Support Works.

Unlike Canadian TV, where Canadian networks have been able to finesse the Cancon regulations, the Canadian music industry has strong requirements for airing Canadian music. And look at the results:
According to The Atlantic magazine, Montreal has the third highest concentration of music business establishments in North America, after Nashville and LA. Canada has four cities in the North American top ten: Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Quebec City.

It's no surprise that Québec has two cities in the top ten: Québec's support for its own culture is phenomenal. (That's one reason why yours truly lives here.) And it's no wonder that acts like Alanis Morissette and Arcade Fire come out of here.

I'm looking at you, CRTC!

When I Hear the Word "Culture" I Reach For My Wallet

Britain is cutting arts funding.

I think this is a terrible idea in general. People visit Britain for its culture. (I still remember the banner across the British Museum the last time I was there: THE BEST DINOSAUR EXHIBITION IN 65 MILLION YEARS. And it was.) They certainly don't go for the climate.

Culture is not a luxury good the government should provide only in good economic times. It's a service industry like other service industries. It employs people. It promotes tourism. It sucks in dollars from overseas. Someone who spends a government-funded day at the Tate also buys a hotel room, a bunch of meals, some clothes on Kings Road, taxi rides, and perhaps an air ticket.

Conservatives complain about the annual budget of Telefilm Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts and the various music organizations and so forth. But those organizations have created the Jim Carreys and Celine Dions of the world, who get paid in American dollars and then pay Canadian taxes on them. I think we get our money back.

Of course, culture also provides people with a feeling that they belong to a society, without which the whole place falls apart. Where would Quebec be without its movies and festivals and music? Maybe Canada doesn't have enough arts funding for its somewhat fragile sense of itself? But that's an argument for another day...

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

[Canadian politics]

Friend of the Blog Vince draws my attention to his letter to the editor of the Montreal Gazette objecting to the bean counters running the Canadian TV and film industry.

I don't think bean counters are the problem. The problem is the Conservative government. They are not incompetent. They are actively hostile to the idea that government should support and pay for the arts. Basically, the arts are either popular or not popular. If they're popular, they should be able to support themselves. If they're not popular (opera, ballet), let people who like them donate to them. Why should the taxpayer have to support them.?

Which is a perfectly legitimate, Republican point of view.

I disagree with it. I don't want Canada to become a cultural backwater. Every civilized country supports its own arts, with the exception of the US, which has a 300 million member audience and is the location of the international film industry (which is what the US film industry really is). I think culture is a public good akin to roads, defense, police, environmental regulation, safety inspectors and fire departments: it gives more value to society than individuals are willing to pay for. We tax everyone to create roads that some people drive on and other people don't, so what's wrong with the government taxing everyone to support a vibrant arts culture?

But the Conservatives disagree. And complaining to them is not going to be very fruitful, because their political philosophy is that government should not protect or support the arts.

The way you protect Canadian culture is you get a government of the left. In my province, Québec, for example, elections are run between the left-wing Liberals and the even-more-left-wing PQ. Culture (even English culture) is very well supported in Québec.

The way you get a government of the left is you convince the egomaniacs in charge of the parties of the left to form an electoral coalition. An electoral coalition is an agreement that if, say, the New Liberal Party candidate is ahead in one riding, the Democratical candidate will bow out and throw his support to his brother; and if the Democratical candidate is ahead, the New Liberal candidate will drop out and support him. An electoral coalition increases the representation of both parties after the election. You don't even have to agree to form a coalition afterwards; you just increase the number of MPs that both parties have.

The only reason the NDP and Liberals won't do it is because their leaders, want to destroy each other more than they want to govern Canada.

The egos of a dozen people are preventing the 67% of Canadians who vote left from having a majority left government.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

TPB

The movie TRAILER PARK BOYS: COUNTDOWN TO LIQUOR DAY just won Telefilm's Golden Box Office Award for most English box office of any Canadian film last year, coming in at $2.9 million.

Since Denis has gone off the air (and effed off to browner pastures down South), it falls upon me to point out that TRAILER PARK BOYS is the show that Jim Shaw doesn't think should be funded by the CMF, because it's dumb, ignorant, and obscene. (Although once he buys Global, he'll probably want that money, anyway.)

I say it's culture, and God bless'em.

ROI

[Canadian Politics] Canadian Business has an article about Ontario's new tax credit for intellectual property development. Another "handout" to the arts? Here's the nugget at the end of the story:

As to the worthiness of film and TV in Ontario, Thorne-Stone has no doubt. She estimates Ontario sees an ROI of $10 to $12 for every $1 in tax-credit redemption.

For some reason, arts subsidies are tagged as handouts. But aside from whatever cultural value they have, they promote business. There is hardly a major industry in Canada that the government doesn't support, from logging to steel to cars. Why not promote the arts? You get your money back!

Which raises the question: why won't the Conservatives support the business of show business? Don't they want people to get rich?

Got a Feeling 2010 is Gonna Be A Good Year

It's the week of Christmas parties, so it's perfect that there's a foot of snow scheduled for today. This is the time of year that we trade experiences and realize that, wow, everyone else had a terrible year, too. Which is reassuring. If you're not making your nut in a good year, either you're no good, or no one likes you, or no one knows you exist. If you talk to some of your extremely accomplished friends, all in various corners of the biz, and they made a quarter as much this year as last year, then you're in good company, and it will probably get better next year.

There's been a lot of talk about whether the Canadian networks would manage to sink the last few Cancon requirements and gut Canadian-made TV entirely. (Because why does Canada protect them from US competition, if not so that they can buy as many US series as possible?) It was reassuring to hear that Konrad von Finckenstein, Chairman of the CRTC, thinks the 1999 decision to dilute Cancon requirements (which turned 12 homemade dramas a year into 2) was a "mistake." So I'm feeling reasonably sanguine that there will still be jobs in my local industry next year, and I won't have to move back to LA.

I'm also feeling reasonably sanguine because Lisa and I wrote a pilot for an American cable channel this year, and we have a bunch of projects being pitched to studios right now, one with a Big Name Showrunner attached. Come to think of it, pretty much every TV project I have out there currently has a US component. That's the direction things seem to be going. Which is mostly a good thing, I think.

Next year I'm also hoping to branch out a bit. I'm directing another short, and if all goes well a romantic comedy feature. I'm also hoping to do some more work on videogames. That's fun work, and it lets me use all my sf and fantasy and mythological thoughts that are way out of budget range for any of the TV or feature producers I work with. Of course if one of my series goes, then that's what I'll be doing. It's all about irons in the fire, and keeping the fire stoked.

I hope you survived the year in good shape, and are enjoying your own Christmas parties. (Some of you I'll see you at the WGC party in Toronto tomorrow.) Next year's going to be a good one, God willing.

Trade War, Much?

Jim Henshaw points out that the Stimulus Package passed by the US Congress prevents US companies that get stimulus money from buying Canadian, and proposes that Canada retaliate.

I'm down with that.

CMF Consultation

I'm pretty much a jeans guy, but yesterday I got duded up in a blazer and overcoat to go to the Canada Media Fund consultation session, along with about forty other writers, producers and documentary hyphenates. Valerie Creighton has been winging her way across Canada to ask industry stakeholders what the CMF should do and be.

The CMF is an arranged marriage between the Canadian Television Fund and the equivalent new media fund. The idea is to fund Canadian audio-visual content. But how? Everyone wants more pie.

WGC members Anne-Marie Perrotta, Gerry Lewis, Doug Taylor, Dan Williams and Lienne Sawatsky, Laurie Finstad, Rodney Gibbons and I were there to bring up creators' concerns. We want Canadian taxpayer money to go to Canadians telling Canadian stories. We want any "return on investment" formula to consider "creating culture" as the major return on investment: when Canadians see Canadian stories, it binds us together as a nation, and when foreigners see Canadian stories, they get a sense of us as a people. The point of the CMF isn't to get money back, it's to create popular culture.

I didn't say, but I should have, that the "return on investment" from documentaries is that people learn stuff, and the ROI from children's programming is kids learn stuff. Jesse saw a picture of the Eiffel Tower the other day and busted out "The Eiffel Tower is in France!" She must have picked that up from children's programming. She also seems to know what a glockenspiel is. I had to look it up.

The CMF is going to be split into "convergent" and "experimental" streams. "Convergent" means that when you bring in a TV show, they want you to tell them how there's going to be synergy with other audiovisual media, e.g. a videogame or a web application. That sounds clever and forward thinking, but as I said at the panel, would FLASHPOINT really be more popular or better if it had an Alternate Reality Game? Would it really make sense to have a FLASHPOINT videogame, where you try not to shoot people?

The experimental stream is sort of "everything except TV," and naturally video game producers are trying to up the percentage of the Experimental stream to 25% of the CMF; current spending would put it about 15%. Of course we were there to say that if the CMF is funding a digital or internet production, it should satisfy the same Cancon creator requirements as a TV production.

As Martin Brouard points out, "experimental" might not be the right word, since videogames are not exactly "experimental." I propose re-dubbing the stream "Emerging." Then you could have "Converging" and "Emerging" streams.

There was some arguing back and forth whether "Lifestyle/Reality" should be a supported genre. My take on that is that Lifestyle/Reality seems to do just fine without help, whereas documentaries and drama are not going to get made without CMF funding.

I do differ with the official WGC position on "setting" being part of the essential requirements for Cancon. If a Canadian director and writer want to shoot a movie with Canadian actors that happens to be set in, say, Ouagadougou, I think it should be eligible. What's important is that it's a story being told by Canadians. I can see the arguments on the other side, though, so feel free to opine in the comments.

I have to say I appreciate the outreach involved in this session, and the 17 other sessions taking place across the country. In the States, the government does no such thing. If you want to talk to the policy makers, you have to hire lobbyists, or contribute major bucks to their campaigns. We got a free lunch and an open ear.

Local TV Matters

As you read on DMc's blog, Rob Wells (Ricky of TRAILER PARK BOYS) has a well-thought out (and distinctly un-Ricky-like) op ed in the Gazette about the current battle between broadcasters and cable companies.

To sum up:

Our TV regulator, the CRTC, recently ordered cable companies to pay 1.5 per cent of their gross revenues to help support the broadcasters in producing local programming. This is good. Unfortunately cable companies have chosen to pass that buck on to you. That is bad. Now they are threatening to do the same thing again. They're fighting the broadcasters' calls for fee-for-carriage. And promising that if they're forced to pay, you will pay. That is really bad.

But there's a crucial issue missing:

The broadcasters want you to think the only thing at stake is local programming - namely news. That's because they don't want to talk about the crisis in Canadian drama and comedy and the fact that Canadians can't see our own scripted series on our conventional TV networks.

Why is that? Canadian English-language drama and comedy has been a rarity on prime time since 1999 - the year that the CRTC relaxed the rules for private broadcasters. Since then, private broadcasters have been filling Canada's prime-time schedules with U.S. shows. Last year they spent $740 million on U.S. and foreign programming and just $54 million on Canadian English-language dramas and comedies.

With those numbers, it's very hard to get a Canadian show on the air unless you have a US buyer for it. So Canadian shows, particularly dramas, are driven by what the US market wants -- beefy procedurals like FLASHPOINT and COPPER and THE LISTENER, SF like STARGATE and SANCTUARY, soaps like BEING ERICA. CORNER GAS got on WGN, and my old show, NAKED JOSH, aired on Oxygen.

That's not entirely bad. There's nobody better at making TV than Hollywood, overall, and having to satisfy CBS or even SyFy brings up the standard of Canadian-made shows. And anglo Canada is a small media market; of course a lot of shows have to be co-productions.

But should Canadians only have the choice between watching American shows and Canadian shows that Americans want to watch? What about TRAILER PARK BOYS, which is enormously successful here and probably incomprehensible south of the border? What about the superb SLINGS AND ARROWS, which barely got a US sale on the tiny Sundance Channel long after it was made?

Canadian broadcasters and cable channels are given a protected market by the Canadian taxpayer. NBC is not allowed to air its shows directly into Canada. It has to sell its shows to CTV or Global. When you see an NBC show in Canada, it's CTV or Global airing the commercials, no matter what network bugs show up on the screen.

In return for the Canadian government protecting Canadian broadcasters from being wiped off the face of the planet by direct American competition, the Canadian taxpayer is supposed to get two things.

One, support for an industry that supports 600,000 Canadians.

Two, shows by Canadians that tell Canadian stories.

How are Canadian stories different on a purely Canadian funded show? I could talk about the nuances of Canadian life, or the two solitudes. I could talk about how on NAKED JOSH, we weren't allowed to use the word "Montreal," which was where the show was set.

But let's just look at THE BORDER, which DMc worked on. On THE BORDER, the Americans, especially Special Agent Bianca LeGarda, are assholes. Arrogant, reckless, rich and often wrong. Sure, they sometimes get the job done while the Canadians are dithering. But as the show makes plain, dithering is our right, and we don't want Americans ordering us to go charging off without thinking.

I would venture to say that quite a few Canadians consider the Americans to have a tendency to go off half-cocked. And they get mad when Canada won't go off half-cocked too. And I would venture to say that THE BORDER will never have a significant US network sale, at least until Michael Moore gets his own network.

Canadian broadcasters like to forget that they have a deal with the Canadian people. They consider having to air Canadian content to be a great burden on them, and they are constantly trying to shrug off that burden. They're forgetting that they only exist because the Canadian government protects them. Without protection, they would disappear within a year.

Yeah, local TV matters. Canadian TV matters. Canadian broadcasters shouldn't catch a break from the CRTC until they quit skimping on Canadian content.

CRTC Shows Spine

In Playback:

The CRTC has turned down a bid by Slice to reduce its annual Cancon requirements to 60% from the current 82.5%. The regulator also rejected the specialty channel's request to spend just 45% of the previous year's gross revenues on Canadian content, down from 71%.

Owner Canwest Communications argued that Slice's programming expenditures and its Canadian content requirements were the highest of all specialty channels, and that the channel had lost $5.5 million in operating income from 2005. The broadcaster's seven-year projections also showed an operating profit of between -8.3% and 2.2% beginning in 2010.

However, the CRTC ruled that Canwest was well aware of these commitments when it acquired the channel in 2007, and the requirements are a result of a competitive licensing process.

Awesome.