High Drama at the Canadian Television Fund Hearings

Last week was a thrill-fest if you're one of the handful of people who find the machinations of Canadian broadcasting fascinating.

The issue: a public consultation about the future structure of the Canadian Television Fund. A task-force was convened last year by the CRTC to look into the CTF. This came after a couple of its biggest investors, Shaw and Videotron, threatened to pull their money out of the fund. Among the report's highlights is the suggestion that the CTF create two lines of funding: one line of support would be audience-driven, where issues such as market size and return on investment would determine the eligibility of productions. The other line would go to "cultural" productions, which would be measured according to a different formula. Ostensibly what we have here is the siphoning off of money that would give the "audience" programming to private broadcasters and the "cultural" programming would go to the CBC.

Dividing culture from commerce is tricky stuff. How are we going to determine the difference between the two? What will be the determinant of audience success? It should come as no surprise when an uproar followed. First, Jim Shaw refused to attend the meetings because the head of the CRTC wasn't chairing the proceedings. So he sent in his own second or thirds-in command, who declared the Fund is "dead" and a "failure". This set off a response by a number of different groups in the production community. In one case producer/director Peter Raymont who used an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail to draw parallels to the public/private funding arrangement in television production to that of Canada's health care system. Then he called on Canadians to reject what he called "2-tier television".

Also rushing to the defense of the Fund were Canada's broadcasters, including Global and CTV, which called for the continued support of the fund -- and for the creation of a market-oriented stream of funding for private broadcasters.

So less than a week since the dust settled in Gatineau (soon followed by -25C weather and our umpteenth dumping of snow), what can we take away here? In short, it's not clear that anything was really accomplished, except the public airing of grievances from the interested parties involved. That being said, we can use the hearings as a chance to point out a couple of tendencies both about the CTF and about television in Canada.

Let's start with this: The Canadian Television Fund is not about television, but about a Canadian approach to the "problems" of television: Here's what I mean. First, the idea of the Canadian Television Fund wasn't to create successful programs. It wasn't even concerned with "market-driven" or "audience-driven" initiatives. Quite the opposite. The CTF was created to "high quality" programs that were, "under-represented". In other words, the fund represents a market corrective -- stimulate the production of certain kinds of programs based on an economic model that may not be representative of what the local market can absorb. While it is true that is an industrial measure, one which supports the development and maintenance of the independent production sector, it is also a nationalist measure, too. The reasons for supporting this kind of system is based on the fact that Canadians should have access to this kind of programming even if the market won't provide it for them. It equates choice with Canadian choices. It is one of a range of market correctives already in place in Canada, including foreign ownership restrictions, rules on simultaneous substitution, and, of course, Canadian content regulations.

Each of these measures share the same assumption about the failure of the Canadian marketplace for certain kinds of television, including children's programming, variety programming, and drama. So to say that the CTF is a failure is not true. The structure of Canadian broadcasting is built on all sorts of perceived failures in the Canadian television marketplace. And all of the players involved benefit both from the construction of a system built on failure and from the constant reminder that it always stand on the brink of collapsing.

So we can debate the merits and demerits of the logic that has structured Canadian broadcasting, but suffice it to say for now that "audience-success" is an odd metric to add into an already complicated environment built on the problems of Canadian television.

We have no real understanding of television audiences. A colleague reminded me of this fact. In Canada we have a very thin appreciation of the audience. We typically hear that Canadians "want Canadian stories" without appreciating what exactly that might mean. We sheepishly point out that the audience "likes American television" because we commonly think this is a symptom of a larger cultural pathology and a reflection of our suspicion about the ways Canadians enjoy themselves. We say "it would watch Canadian television if it were available", as if it were a sickness in need of an antidote.

These conceptions of the audience are so dominant in Canada because consumption of media texts is laced with the rhetoric of cultural nationalism. In other words, when we talk about the audience for television, we're not talking about audience preferences for television (a result of the inconsistent systems of ratings we have in Canada) Nor are we talking about the audience's relationship to television as a medium -- one which is based on familiarity and intimacy, on casual forms of address, on entertainment and spectacle. What we get instead are discussions about what audiences don't do or should do in the name of the national interest. In other words, the audience is politicized (or nationalized) for an activity that may not articulate such an agenda.

As a result, the television audience is largely ignored in the discussion about "audience success", only to be trotted out by private broadcasters to say that people don't watch Canadian programming or by others to say that they would. The issue of what Canadians actually do watch has been largely irrelevant.

The discussion of culture vs. commerce has a longer history than you might suspect. Observers of Canadian film are aware that in 1967, the government created the Canadian Film Development Corporation as a way to fund feature film production. This was part of a broader move -- one which pushed the National Film Board into the "cultural" camp and, slowly eked the private film production industry into the "commerce" camp. Might it be the case that this is what is happening here?

Canadian producers are caught between a rock and a hard place. What do you do when you make things your retailers don't really want but have to carry because someone else tells them they have to? This is the problem facing the Canadian production community, which is that no matter how hard they try, broadcasters rarely show the motivation to actively encourage Canadian programming. And that's because there's little incentive for them to do so. Since the object about content regulations is quota filling first and quota filling with successful programming second, then, most Canadian shows can be easily replaced or that content regulations can be met by other programming perceived as being less risky.

This is why many of the broadcasters were so supportive of the Canadian Television Fund during this week's hearings -- since the Fund's contributors fund Canadian television -- not the broadcasters. By giving the money to producers to give to broadcasters, the Fund gives the broadcasters the money to spend on programming it supports as well as the choice of whether or not to carry a particular program. So I remind you here that this is one of those quirky Canadian situations, since the producers get to spend someone else's money, the broadcasters have all of the power. They are the big winners in the system. So if we're going to move to an audience-driven funding system that exists in other countries shouldn't the broadcasters behave like other broadcasters, and give the greenlight to productions using their own funds? It's hard to agree with Shaw here, but as it stands the system is funded largely by cable and satellite providers who pass on those investments to their customers. It is true that Shaw, like other big players in the marketplace, has profited off of the backs of a protected market, but there might be other ways to pay back the system -- keeping the prices of access down seems like a more appropriate place to start.

Let's be clear here: I'm not saying that Canadian programming is undesirable because it is of poor quality or because people aren't interested in watching it. I'm also not saying that Canadians don't watch Canadian television. Both of these assertions are foolish. What I am saying is that such programming is undesirable because it's positioned in the marketplace as undesirable and compensatory. The thinking goes like this: because Canadians watch other programming and because broadcasters aren't willing to shell out the money to support it, and because local productions are important to a national broadcasting system, and because America is right next door, other measures must be put in place to ensure they reach the airwaves.

Improving the lot for Canadian producers is not just a case at throwing money at the problem -- although that might help. It's also about repositioning the place of local productions and rethinking the logics of Canadian television. From listening to the hearings and reading the coverage in the newspaper, I don't think that's the way the conversation is going.

There's one other thing I don't get -- among the recommendations is that the Canadian Television retains ownership in the productions it funds. Is that a new thing? I have to look into that when I get a chance. If that's the case, then do the people of Canada then own a library of shows? Like I said, I'll get back to you.

Diagnosing the CTF as a failure is easy to say, but difficult to prove. A failure in what sense? In the sense that Canadians aren't watching many of the shows produced by the Fund? In the sense that it is ostensibly Canadian cable and satellite subscribers who indirectly subsidize Canadian productions? In the sense that few Canadian shows can challenge major US shows? Perhaps each of these things may be true, but there are a couple of other irons in the fire here:

1. Let's remember the system pre-assumes market failure. Is that the producer's fault?

2. Let's remember that tons of shows fail in the United States all the time. Don't take my word for it, consider the significant (sic) career of any of the Seinfeld people post-Seinfeld. Any takers for the Michael Richards show? So the fact that many Canadian shows fail to resonate with audiences is a fact of life in television -- only in Canada do we think that its a policy problem.

3. Let's remember that shows fail for a variety of reasons -- including their place on the schedule, the way it was marketed, their availability online, the competition, and so on. Again, that is a logic of television which people involved in the television debate don't consider because -- again -- this isn't really about television as television.

4. Let's keep in mind that if points 2 and 3 are true, can we assume that creative staff learn from shows that fail about why they fail and that the experience gained from working on shows that fail may help the next time a show comes around? Consider the case of Rob Sheridan (an acquaintance of mine from yesteryear). He's a writer currently working on "Little Mosque on the Prairie", one of the darlings of the Canadian television world these days. He's also written or worked on the crew for a number of other shows that received CTF money. Might it be the case that he's developing what the business-types call "a core competency" that is now being put to work on a show that's a success? While I certainly haven't written it in the clearest way possible, what I'm saying here is, doesn't failure produce success in creative activities? Remember television policy in Canada isn't about television.

5. Finally, let's keep in mind that it is a different story entirely if we are talking about Quebec.

So Shaw's rhetoric was powerful and, not surprisingly, it prompted a loud response. On sober reflection, however, it is clear that the issue of success or failure isn't the appropriate determinant of what the CTF is doing. The relative success of a number of Canadian television shows may be due to a lot of factors, but developing the skills to make decent television (and getting the budgets to make them) has come, in many cases, on the backs of a lot of failed Canadian television shows.

Don't underestimate the power of performance. Since it's unclear to me exactly what was accomplished over the past week, it's important to point out the wider context in which this discussion is taking place. What we're seeing here with the CTF is a little skirmish in a big battle about how to regulate Canadian communications in an age of media abundance. One of the recommendations of the Task Force report was to encourage the CTF to earmark money towards the production of works to be aired on digital platforms. And the head of Quebecor has stated that he'd like to take some of the money that he puts into the CTF into a fund to support new media productions. At present, the CRTC has little to no jurisdiction on the Internet, so the moves it makes -- and doesn't make here -- are part of a broader re-purposing of the CRTC's position in the digital age. It is quite possible that Shaw sees an opening here -- take a run at the CTF while a supportive government is in power, see if he can get some backtracking, and then see if gains can be made in new media.

Since the CRTC's study on new media regulation hasn't come out yet, any moves it makes will have to be made very carefully. So let's remember that these public hearings are important forms of political theatre both for the constituencies represented by those in attendance, and the members of the press looking for angle, but also to the regulators charged with steering the course of the system.

What happens next is anyone's guess. The public notice says the CRTC agrees with the Task Force's recommendation to create separate lines, so all signs point in that direction. In the end, it may not look exactly what was being proposed, but rather that greater emphasis will be placed on audience figures in determining a) what shows get funding and b) which broadcasters will benefit. One thing is for sure --- the issue over the terms of reference that will be used tor regulate Canada's media landscape is still a work in progress.