A few podcasts ago, cohost Anthony Marco and I grilled Canadian media policy wonk Kelly Lynne Ashton, who has been my resource for a lot of “is it CanCon or not?” type of questions. She answered a lot of questions around funding, coproductions, the CRTC and vertical integration that keep popping up, so I thought I’d include a partial transcript in a post for easier reference for all. I also thought I’d get Rachel Langer to help transcribe (thanks Rachel!)

On Vertical Integration Re: The Bell/Astral Merger
We’ve got the vertical integration policy which encouraged cable companies owning broadcasters owning prod cos owning internet service providers. Over the years the commission encouraged that under the idea that bigger is better and these companies needed to be bigger to be able to compete international and be stronger Canadian companies.

The market has shown that big companies have evolved. Whether we agree with it or not, the horse is out of the barn. They’re big companies. They own almost everything. We do need competition, we need to have different options and voices, but one of the problems is that Astral wants to sell. We can’t make them continue business.

Regarding Our Blended System
We are completely muddled. Every cable company argues out of both sides of the mouth. “It’s a free market, you have to let us do what we want to do” then “but we survive because of regulation”. So we are blended. Everybody knows it’s a blended system, but when you’re standing in front of the commission [CRTC], you argue out of one side of the mouth or the other…frequently at the same time.

On Mandatory Carriage
It’s the individual broadcasters who are looking for mandatory carriage. Other than Sun News, it’s Vision, Starlight, APTN — these are small guys and they’re looking for mandatory carriage to have a secure revenue stream, because they’re niche broadcasters, for the most part.

As for Sun News, their arguments aren’t very strong. They’re a news service. News was released as a competitive, it’s not a protected genre. For mandatory carriage there is a very high standard that you need to meet of exceptionality. You have to be an exceptional service that is necessary to Canadians, and there are all the other news services.

On the Power of the CRTC
The CRTC is growling more than they used to. They have the same tools that they’ve ever had. They seem to be much more willing to use those tools, and be aggressive with those tools. [In terms of enforcing consequences] the big hit is pulling your license, but they can also issue a short license. With Shaw Cable, they didn’t fulfill a number of their obligations, and they didn’t do the reporting they were supposed to do and they were playing games with the services they didn’t like, so they got a short license – instead of the usual 7 years, they got 3.

It’s a real pain [for broadcasters]. Those license renewal hears are huge. The amount of staff you have to put in, the amount of money and projections and studies– it’s actually quite costly to have to go through that process, so to have to go through it twice in the normal period you were expecting, it’s a real wakeup call to any licensee.

On OWN Network operating under the original licence’s educational mandate
To bring it back to Oprah Winfrey [and the OWN Network] the commission is doing something it always had the power to do, but wasn’t willing to do and that is a mandatory order. That is telling a licensee “you have to do this and we are filing the order with the federal court.” The federal court has much greater penalties than anything the CRTC has. They can fine, they can seize assets, they can seize personal assets of the directors of the company.

On Network Reporting Obligations
[Networks] DO have annual reports, but all that info is deemed to be confidential so the commission aggregates it. So what the stakeholders, the unions and guilds are trying to do is to get that info a little bit disaggregated so you can actually have SOME idea whether say Corus or Shaw or Bell is living up to their expectations as a group.

You can’t get [stats for] one channel. What is publicly available to everyone in annual reports — “this is what is spent by Canadian broadcasters.” They argue the info is competitive between one service and another. I’m not going to defend it, I’m just saying this is the game we have to play.

On the “Confidentiality” of CanCon Reporting Data
The CRTC says that they’re privy to all the information and we have to trust them, that they’re reviewing it all. We do know that they go back. We hear the commission being frustrated and saying “You didn’t meet your CanCon regulations”. … We want to encourage the current commission’s toughness. It’s gotten more and more opaque. We used to get data whenever a company was buying another company (like a Bell/Astral), we used to get a lot of financials but then they just started calling it confidential.

On Determining CanCon Requirements for Productions and Co-Productions
It’s not that complicated. [For measuring CanCon] first we’ve got CAVCO. It’s a point system. You have to have 6/10 points for any show to be Canadian. That’s your writer, director, top two lead actors, composer, designer, editor. Plus on top of that the producer has to be Canadian and own all the copyright, and you have to have spent 75% of the money in Canada. So that’s a basic outline [for a completely Canadian show] and one of the writer or director has to be Canadian.

The funding system is set up for 8/10 point productions. Those are the truly Canadian shows. Flashpoint is 10/10. (Any Canadian Media Fund show) is 10/10. There are some exceptions – you can bring in an American lead if you apply for certain exemptions, but generally [the CMF funded shows] are 10/10.

Co-Productions: Two countries have agreed that when they work together the resulting product will qualify as domestic under each country’s rules. So for example, a Canada-UK production. You’ve got UK leads, UK writer, UK talent, but it still qualifies as a 10/10 Canadian production. It gets complicated here. It applies for broadcast [but not necessarily funding]. It depends on the size of your budget, whether it’s worth going to CMF. A lot of the copros don’t, but I think Borgias did.

There is a minimum level of Canadian involvement [required]. So first off, when you’re talking about copros, the idea is that overall your minorities and majorities are going to balance out, so other countries are not just using Canada as a source of financing. That’s the idea. I myself have looked at the stats, and overall they balance. But overall means feature films, it means docs, it means animation – a LOT of animation is done through copros. Overall it balances. Where there’s a problem is really prime time drama.

We started to bring to people’s attention that while the system worked overall it was NOT working with prime time drama – there was an imbalance there. When you’ve got excessive minorities (and you can name them all, The Tudors, The Borgias, The Pillers of the Earth) they’re using Canada for post-production, that’s how they’re getting their minimum. The minimum you have to do with the minorities is 20% of your budget. They’ll have a couple actors who are killed off early. Name actors with red shirts. ;)

On Canadian Awards for Copros
First off, do we want to be known as a country of post production? I agree that composers and post-houses and editors are important but they’re not the only part of our sector that we need to be supporting. When we celebrate Canadian, do we celebrate minority co-prods? I was offended when Telefilm said “We do such great Canadian productions like The Borgias”. … Some of the other countries have separate categories for international productions.

Regarding American Shows that Shoot in Canada
They get production service tax credits. So they do get funding from the government, but the benefit of that is that they employ crews. They don’t [count as CanCon].

On US-Canadian Co-Ventures
A co-venture is a very definite term. …Defying Gravity was a co-venture. I believe it was a co-venture because it didn’t have a US broadcaster. It had an American producer. It was a co-venture between a Canadian producer and a US producer to allow the US producer to have creative say.

A production with an American pre-sale (like Rookie Blue)… they don’t own a piece, there’s no need for a formal designation.

On the Public’s Understanding of Canadian Shows
I honestly don’t think that many Canadians think that much about whether a show is Canadian or not. If they find out it’s Canadian then they’re pleased and they’re happy and they’re proud. I do think that people are proud of the fact that …we have a really strong lineup right now. When you tell people that these shows are Canadian they’re surprised because they thought they didn’t like Canadian TV.

For more from Kelly Lynne Ashton, listen to the podcast or read her wonktastic blog. 

At least it’s not a Royal Commission?

Recently the Canadian Media Production Association posted to their blog an ask for advice and volunteers to help promote Canadian content:

At Prime Time in Ottawa a few weeks ago we provided an update to delegates about a National Promotional Strategy to raise awareness about the great on-screen content produced in Canada. While there are a number of initiatives underway, (creating a platform for access and discoverability, branding), the working group that I co-chair with Barb Williams from Shaw Media has a very specific mandate— and that is to promote the success of Canadian TV, film and second screen content in terms of shows, its creators, talent and economic value. …

The first project involves using social media and online tools (and you as experts and audience) to build a buzz about success stories by reaching a critical mass of grassroots supporters. …

We simply want our initial ideas to be catalysts for grassroots movements and engagement in creating and promoting Canadian success stories.

The problem? They’ve arrived at a tactic before determining the stakeholders or even a measurable goal. Never mind a critical mass of grassroots supporters – have they talked to a grassroots supporter?

I’ve said it before: TV, eh? shouldn’t exist. It ghettoizes Canadian TV. I’d be thrilled if a coordinated strategy could place Canadian shows on the same playing field as their American counterparts, so that the audience, the bloggers, the grassroots and mainstream media know about City’s upcoming Package Deal as much as NBC’s failed Office spinoff, and I could retire and start a site of cat videos. This isn’t that strategy. It’s not a strategy. It’s not even the start of a strategy. It’s the start of alienating people who should have been at the table before that post was written.

I don’t just mean TV, eh? I also mean First Weekend Club, The Shorts Report, Limited Release, The TV Addict, Mike’s Bloggity Blog, Press Plus 1, etc. – sites either dedicated to various forms of Canadian content or that include Canadian content in their coverage. The CMPA post lists industry groups as stakeholders, but no sites that have a direct connection to the audience they want to reach.

I’ve been promoting Canadian television success stories for seven years and they didn’t think to ask me who the audience for my site is, what efforts I’ve made that have succeeded or failed, what similar sites I know of (or even bother to look at my blogroll), or what I see as barriers to audience engagement. I know that TV, eh? was name-checked at Prime Time (“pretty good”) and they reached out to me after the post was published so ignorance of the site wasn’t an issue. This was a deliberate top-down approach. They made decisions about a grassroots effort without wanting to get any icky grass on their shoes.

Canadian television doesn’t have a shortage of success stories. It has a shortage of credibility.

The CMPA thinks it has to tell individuals to feel free to promote themselves without permission? Twitter — and my inbox — are overflowing with actors, writers, directors, producers, and public relations professionals promoting their latest series, and with industry organizations pumping out information about how amazing their latest project is. Who are these people that they aren’t inundated with everyone from their favourite TV star to their mother trying to push themselves as a “brand”? Can we trade places?

Gosh, you mean the people with a vested interest in the success of a show or the industry as a whole are telling me it’s good? Let me set the DVR.

Promotion isn’t engagement. One of the sites I mentioned above resorted to buying fake twitter followers – that’s how difficult it is to build a large audience when catering to a Canadian audience. And that’s how poorly the concept of engagement is often understood.

The suggestion is to get more industry people sharing success stories. And … then what? If you build it, they will not come. The average audience member isn’t following industry associations on social media, and has little incentive to seek out that kind of information. It’s a closed loop unless the media or one of these grassroots sites or a connected individual picks it up.

Where do success stories come from, the CMPA asks? In great part, they come from all of these sites and people already interviewing, reviewing, passing on information and building community who have no ties to the industry other than an interest or passion, wanting to share with other fans.  Engagement comes from contributing to conversations. It doesn’t come from sharing success stories.

Plus, a success story to the industry is not the same as a success story to the audience. Media releases from networks and industry associations often focus on the arcane – ridiculous parsing of ratings, foreign sales without context – that have little interest for any but the most jingoistic of audience members. And the CMPA post includes many of those examples that will cause the audience to tune out or, more likely, never tune in at all.

What’s my measure of success, as a member of the audience? Do I like the show. And I’ll only get to find out if I know about the show. Absolutely we should share successes, but more importantly we need to foster discussion,  positive or negative, about the shows.

To be fair, the CMPA is asking for advice, and they’re probably sorry they ever asked me to spread the word about that post. This is their invitation for the grassroots to speak up.  But the initial ask is dismissive to those of us who have been doing this work for years without waiting for a coordinating body, and without a vested interest in the success or failure of the Canadian industry.

Because of the way this idea has been launched, it feels like another attempt by industry types to create another bubble where what’s meaningful to them should be meaningful to the audience. Because of the way it’s launched, they’ve demonstrated an aptitude for alienating those they are hoping to engage.