Canadian Television Fund goes before CRTC as Canuck shows enjoy success

Lee-Anne Goodman, THE CANADIAN PRESS
TORONTO - The Canadian Television Fund, the non-profit corporation that finances Canadian television productions, goes before the CRTC next week at a seemingly fortuitous time. CTV has just sold one of its CTF-funded dramas, "Flashpoint," to a major American network, and Canadian TV fans are watching homegrown shows in increasing numbers.

"We're really making some serious inroads," Valerie Creighton, president of the CTF, said in an interview Thursday.

"Many of our programs are now hitting a million-plus (viewers) . . . so Canadians are watching Canadian-made shows and shows that are funded by the CTF more than ever before."

Creighton and other fund officials will be in Ottawa on Monday for the start of public CRTC hearings into the future of the 12-year-old fund, which is financed by the federal government, cable companies and direct-to-home satellite providers.

A handful of Canadian TV actors, including Wendy Crewson, Peter Outerbridge and Yannick Bisson, will be on hand in Ottawa to defend the fund at a noontime news conference.

The situation was grim for the CTF last year as it dealt with the fallout of two major cable companies suspending payments, even though they're obligated under CRTC regulations to commit five per cent of their revenues to the $288-million fund every year.

Jim Shaw, CEO of Shaw Communications, informed the fund in December 2006 that he would hold back about $56 million per year. Quebecor's Videotron soon followed suit and said it would also withhold contributions.

That prompted a flurry of discussions at the federal level that resulted in both companies resuming payments until a CRTC task force into the fund could complete its work. The public hearings beginning Monday are the final leg of that process.

"According to the CRTC, Canadians now have 662 television services (channels) available to them, and given that vast array of choice, CTF-funded shows are just doing fantastically," Creighton said. "We're going to focus at the hearings on the tremendous success achieved by CTF-funded shows and the growth and the progress we've made over the years."

Quebecor and Shaw have said they pulled the plug to express their unhappiness over how the fund's money was being spent. The companies also wanted the CTF to recognize new media platforms, like video-on-demand and Internet programming.

Calls to Shaw Communications were not immediately returned on Thursday, but Jim Shaw recently said he intended to give the CRTC an earful on Monday.

"We'll be at that hearing, have no doubt," he said after his company's annual general meeting in Calgary on Jan. 11.

Many have decried the stance taken by Shaw Communications and Quebecor, pointing out that the CRTC allowed cable companies to hike subscription rates in the 1990s if they agreed to contribute to the CTF.

"They reached an agreement with the CRTC that allowed them to keep 50 per cent of the money that would otherwise have been refunded to their customers in exchange for giving the other 50 per cent to the CTF," Richard Stursberg, CBC-TV's president of network programming, said in an impassioned defence of the fund last year.

"In other words, the CTF cost the cable companies nothing. In fact, they received money they would never otherwise have had if they contributed to the fund."

Creighton says the fund simply finances the production of shows that the country's broadcasters are most interested in getting on their schedules.

"We are already a market-driven fund, in that the decisions are made on what projects get chosen for CTF support by broadcasters," she said.

"The money doesn't go directly to broadcasters, it still goes to independent production, but the broadcasters are actually the proxies for the audience and are certainly closest to the audience in terms of their own mandate and role and the market research that they do."

Current ratings successes that are funded in part by the CTF include the CBC shows "Little Mosque on the Prairie," "JPod" and "The Border" and Global's "The Guard," which drew more that 800,000 viewers for its recent debut.

Arguably helped along by the continuing Hollywood screenwriters strike that has resulted in a dearth of fresh programming on American networks, a slate of new Canadian shows has been attracting more and more viewers in the past few weeks.

The CBC reality show "The Week the Women Went" (not funded by the CTF because it's a reality show) continues to increase its numbers, attracting 858,000 viewers this week, while "The Border" is now getting more than 700,000 viewers a week and "Sophie," also a CTF-funded show, is pulling in more than 600,000.

The pilot of "Flashpoint," the CTV police drama, was also supported by the CTF, and CBS's decision to snap it up is proof that world-class Canadian programming is being created with help from the fund, Creighton said.

The CTF is utterly necessary, she added, to encourage and support quality Canadian content in the face of the cultural behemoth to the south of us.

"When you look at the country of Canada, we're a really small market and we're up against the biggest producer of entertainment in the world in terms of television," she said. "We've got a very compelling story to tell the CRTC and the facts will speak for themselves in terms of the shows that the CTF has supported."

© The Canadian Press, 2008