Speeches and Interviews

April 24, 2003

CBC/Radio-Canada and Television Production Financing in Canada

Speech delivered to the Association des producteurs de films et de télévision du Québec (APFTQ), Daniel Gourd, Executive Vice-President of French Television

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. Originally, this meeting was supposed to be my chance to tell you more about the parameters and conditions for success of the new positioning of CBC French Television, and the role that you could play in supporting this initiative...on the heels of our meeting last week at Maison de Radio-Canada.

But given the seriousness of the current situation and the events surrounding the recent decisions by the Canadian Television Fund's Licence Fee Program, I'm going to talk to you instead about the things that are troubling our industry and creating a climate of uncertainty and anxiety of nearly unprecedented proportions.

I'm speaking to you not only as Vice-President of CBC French Television, but also as someone who, for the past four years, has represented CBC's four TV networks on the Fund's Board of Directors and has sat on the Fund's Executive Committee, first as Treasurer, and currently as Vice-Chair.

It's disturbing to see just how fragile our industry is and just how hard it's become for all of us, producers and broadcasters—as well as all the talent and craftspeople who depend on our success—to plan and look ahead.

Indeed, you the producers live in constant fear that your best-laid plans will be victims of the funding game, whose rules change—sometimes dramatically—each year. Even one setback can have serious consequences for small producers (which most of you are) who work on several projects at once.

Meanwhile, we the broadcasters never know from one year to the next what shows will become the strategic linchpins of our programming schedules and, hence, how much money we'll have to invest and the overall yearly planning we'll have to do.

The substantial cut in funding from the Canadian Television Fund this year is a powerful indicator of this fragility and instability. It forces all of us to question the rules of a game that seems increasingly harsh and cruel.

Some people go looking for scapegoats for the disarray in our industry and single them out for punishment. Our private-sector colleagues often point the finger at Canada's national public television, even though they all belong to media groups that either dwarf us or are comparable in size, and can hardly be described as poor, deprived or unable to make their voices heard.

These same interest groups now suggest that the quickest fix for the current crisis is to inject funds into their own networks' most popular programs—programs that had not received funding under criteria that had been UNANIMOUSLY approved.

In my view, this suggestion poses insurmountable problems, because it does not include all the other players the system has left behind: regional producers both from Quebec and outside Quebec who received no support; major cultural events such as the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Montreal High Lights Festival, the Quebec City Summer Festival, Le Festival de Lanaudière and Les Francofolies de Montréal, which will not receive any television coverage; CBC French Television's youth programming; and so on.

What criteria should we use to allocate these additional funds? Should the popularity of unsubsidized programs or the limited success of certain broadcasters be the only factors? To me, such criteria seem too arbitrary to be compatible with the rules of a serious agency that administers substantial public funds and that must uphold its reputation for integrity and impartiality.

Also, what will we do about the sizeable discrepancies and obvious anomalies that exist on the English side and that could also lead to major corrections?

And lastly, what will we do about all those producers who have played by the rules like everyone else and whose projects ranked high enough to be next on the list? These producers could reasonably expect to be the next ones to receive the necessary funding under existing rules. Why would they agree to sacrifice their futures without a murmur? They would surely be in a legitimate, legal position to demand their rights.

For all these reasons, we can't change the rules in the middle of the game, even if we all agree that these rules are not working as planned. We would end up creating far more problems than we would solve.

Anyone who knows me and my track record at the Canadian Television Fund, knows that I have always championed the idea of a single fund, based on a coalition of the public and private sectors, with the same rules for everyone and a single management structure for both programs, or at least greater cooperation between the two.

But today, I am no longer sure that this is compatible with the direction our industry is taking.

With the new positioning of CBC French Television, national public television and the private sector are heading in opposite directions and are pursuing increasingly divergent goals.

Our private-sector colleagues want the Fund to finance ever-more hours of programming at ever-lower cost with ever-higher ratings targets.

In contrast, the national public broadcaster wants to do more exploring, to take risks and to continue producing smaller numbers of high-impact programs at a greater hourly cost—not to mention regional programming—sometimes to the detriment of audience size. This holds true for all program genres.

This is not a question of passing judgment on these diverging priorities, but of asking whether a single agency and single system can serve all of them adequately.

On top of this, there is the climate of insecurity and uncertainty that recurs each year because of the changing rules and delayed decisions that leave the entire industry in suspense. Then there is the cost of administering the Fund, which continues to spiral out of control. This cost will exceed fifteen million dollars this year.

We urgently need a simpler model, one that allows national public television, educational television and private television to achieve their differing goals without one feeling undervalued compared to the others, and without the funding agency's being paralyzed by the conflicting nature of these objectives.

We need to find a model that provides greater predictability in decision making, and allows broadcasters and producers to plan for the longer term—a model that creates stability in the industry, rather than uncertainty.

A model that spends less money on Fund administration and more on producing quality programming. And, finally, a model in which all broadcasters, public and private, traditional and specialty, have the freedom and responsibility to decide what programming they are going to air.

CBC French Television feels a special responsibility toward independent producers, not only because we are your biggest partners in terms of the number of projects, hours of annual programming and the size of investment in your productions—with or without the Canadian Television Fund—but also because we feel a responsibility toward our industry as a whole, which produces some of the best, richest and most varied television in the world, despite the small size of our market.

We are proud to belong to an industry that has done such a fine job of creating, nurturing and enhancing a star system that is unique and unparalleled among other cultural minority communities. A remarkably creative industry teeming with top-notch writers, directors, producers, talent, craftspeople, and technicians.

Television has been and will long continue to be the main tool for the cultural development of our community, our nation, and our country, whether it speaks French or English. As the key disseminator of culture, television is neither a luxury, nor is it frivolous.

Beyond our differences and our divergences, we have a shared responsibility to work together to find solutions that take everyone's interests and differences into account, and that let us look to the future with confidence. One means of achieving this goal is a new, simple, sustainable funding model that will create stability and let us build this future together.