Almost Back.

SO, ANYTHING HAPPEN while I was away?

Sadness for Bernie Brillstein, and Bernie Mac and Issac Hayes too. Interesting thoughts following the Canwest business story over the last week. (Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone other than a doing-it-for-free blogger took at look at this from, say, a creative point of view? As in, "hmm, what happens when your easy-money business plan goes away and you have nothing else behind it?" Ah, never mind.)

Will's got a post up on the definitive Canadian show. Terms of Trade discussions aren't going well, if you cotton to this skinny from commenter Caroline (who also filled in one of the blanks in a topic we had raging a few weeks back, about how Canadian nets have some of the lowest license fees in the world):

The CFTPA intended to negotiate a minimum standard of terms of trade with each broadcast group ... if you as a producer could better your deal, great, but it was supposed to set at least a benchmark. The broadcasters have banded together and refuse to negotiate as individual companies and are instead insisting on one common terms of trade agreement for each genre. Quite unfair given the very different financial and business situations at each network. I know it will probably be unpopular to say, but the producers are getting squeezed even harder than writers and if they don't get some support, the pain is just gonna trickle down the line. I'm already hearing bad bad stuff about CanWest demanding a 50/50 back end split and not even allowing enough margin in distribution and expenses to get yourself a decent international distributor.

With regard to Australia, they have a similar system to us ... not quite tax credits but a tax based scheme. Inherent difference is that Aussie shows consistently outperform most foreign ones so the broadcasters can justify spending big dollars on them because they get viewers and ergo advertisers. When last I checked, broadcasters were kicking in 40-70% of budget, averaging 50%. With tax kickback and a small (10-20% worldwide) distribution advance, you are pretty much at budget there.

I've also been thinking a lot of where I want to go next, with this little blog. There's a lot about it that's had me quite dissatisfied for the last little while. I might share some of that or I might not. In the short term, I think I might take a tack toward some more craft-related stuff. We'll see.

Regular posting resumes later this afternoon.