Ten years ago, the broadcasters went to the CRTC and whined that "priority programming" was too restrictive, and they wanted "relief" on their obligations -- allowing them to count things like reality and magazine shows as "priority" programming, not just that nasty expensive comedy and drama.
The WGC, among other unions, said that would devastate the Canadian industry -- that Canadian drama would disappear overnight. "Don't be silly," said the broadcasters. "Flexibility!" We need it!
The rules changed.
The WGC was right -- everything they said would happen, came true over the next few years. Within two years, the number of Canadian drama shows dropped from 12 to 2.
We've spent 10 years struggling up from that floor. In that time, Canadian consumers were so well served by the system that they had to suffer the indignity of some of their broadcasters buying shows NOT to show them -- but to keep them on the shelf, out of sight, so that the competition couldn't get them. (This happened ALL THE TIME.)
These same companies let their spend on U.S. programming grow exponentially, while gobbling each other up, reducing competition, and gutting local television stations across the country for some mythical 'synergy' that never came.
Then the recession hit and they turned around and everything became about a fight between the rich cable and satellite companies -- the Bells, Rogers, Videotrons, Shaws, etc -- the top five so called BDU's that control about 80 percent of the Internet and TV distribution pipe in the country -- and the broadcasters, whose cushy regulatory pillows protected them from having to compete, and gave them nice fat profits from rebroadcasting American signals with little effort. "Give us free money!" The broadcasters cried. Later: "Give us free money or local news will die!"
The BDU's screamed back -- "It's a tax! A new Tax! And we'll pass it on to you! Yes, we have the one of the highest cost cell phone services in the world, with some of the worst service plans! Yes, our profits have been record breaking for years now! Yes, we're essentially protected monopolies! Yes, we charge you 15 cents a text for something that is essentially FREE to us, because of the way the technology works!"
And at every step, at every hearing, the WGC and the other creative unions traipse up and make their presentations and are treated like the annoying little children, and not the only people in the game who are, you know, trying to actually get all that stuff about the airwaves being owned by the people to be something other than a joke. And they fund studies, and commission reports, and prepare presentations -- and unlike the Bells and the Rogers who have phalanxes of lawyers and policy wonks, this involves a very few people toiling to make the deadlines.
And then what happens? Well, one group of millionaires sues another group of millionaires and suddenly the summer preparing for the big hearing is banged down into the fall.
Delay, slide, pay the lawyers, drag it out, sue the regulator, drag it down, wear out the people with the least reasources, and send the crazy artists away with a little old head pat.
Canadian TV's fate now delayed til November, or beyond.
I hope the CRTC's Commissioners are having a nice summer.
Cause the little folk are about to lose another whole season to the whims of the millionaires. A story now in its' 10th great year!
Corporate Capitalism triumphing over the good for the people is not a new story. But it's funny how in Canada, nobody even bothers to put a smiley face on it.
Eat it, Canadians. Eat it raw. In the end, you always do.
In the USA, where the media game is all about profit, at least everybody wants the same thing. The studios, the networks, the creative unions, the producers -- they all want hit shows -- because it makes them money. They might disagree about what a 'hit' is but, they're at least looking for the same thing.
In Canadian media, nobody wants the same thing. The BDU's want to perfect the game the broadcasters started -- they want to be able to charge you for pipe, take your money, own channels that get them free money, be able to prioritize their own stuff over anybody else's no matter how unfair it is, and no matter who tells them to stop -- and they want to do all this with all their myriad regulatory protections intact, without having to give anything back to you. Not money to support programming, not money to build an industry, not even an adequate service level for Canadians.
The broadcasters want free money to be able to buy cheap U.S. programming, and to be able to get away with funding as little domestic stuff as possible. They don't even care if it's particularly good.
Producers want to be able to make shows. Some of them want them to be good, some don't care, but pretty much all of them now have got it in their head that what they really need is a U.S. sale, so they want to be able to use their Canadian tax credits to hire American talent, because that's what they think will get them the sale.
Canadian writers want to work. They want to be able to create shows they can believe in, they can be proud of, that shows their best work, and speaks to an audience and entertains and tickles and amuses and maybe along the way says something true about people's lives that they recognize.
It's too bad nobody else really wants that.
What a crooked game it truly is.
20 rumbles:
Man this really pisses me off. Honestly, there've been times I skip this blog 'cause it's so depressing. And that's NOT a slight against you, Denis. It's so damn aggravating. Question is, what do we do about it? (I'm not just talking pro writers here. Even us aspiring types) What hasn't been attempted yet? What tools haven't been utilized to get through to the general public and the policy makers?
There are a few shows you and I want to do that can't be done in the States (e.g. THE BORDER). And it is supposed to be Canadian TV.
But the need for a US sale can be a corrective against shows getting too precious. American execs can be more focused on things like strong narratives. I can think of at least one show that would have been a lot less confusing for the audience if there had been an American network involved, or at least a serious desire to sell there.
The point of the current wind, Alex, is that you won't get to sell that show. Not unless you move back to Los Angeles.
Believe it.
Daniel, I don't know anymore. I really don't. I would love to hear some suggestions from other people. I feel like I've been a broken record than nobody else but me and couple others ever listen to.
There was an initiative a few years back at Telefilm (when Richard Stursberg was in the house)where L.A. writers were being pursued to write Canadian films, and I had a project that suffered from that initiative. There was a deal made at CAA - la la la -- I'm sure you remember this well. It died slowly on the vine at Telefilm when Richard left and went over to the CBC, and at that point a lot us breathed a sign of relief. But it now seems to me, from what I understand reading your blog, that the same game is afoot in T.V. land.
It didn't work in feature film, because of the economics. It was discovered, much to everyone's surprise, that L.A. screenwriters come with a hefty price tag.
Perhaps that will also prove to be the case in terms of luring L.A. T.V. writers to create and write Canadian shows.
It all seems to go round and round in circles, doesn't it? I wonder if there are some initiatives so absurd and prone to failure, that they die on the vine of their own accord.
What does the WGC recommend we do about the situation?
Global, CTV and the CRTC are in cahoots. They prop each other up and they prop up the cable and satellite distributors. The reason: their futures depend on the system we have. The CRTC needs cable and satellite otherwise Canadians might all switch to watching U.S. shows on U.S. TV and there would be no need for the regulator. The networks need the system so they can keep the simulcasting going thus reaping a huge harvest of money. Cable and satellite need the CRTC and the Canadian networks to give them a reason for being thus making millions for doing not much. Incest is not illegal or immoral in Canadian TV, it's a way of life. Welcome to the broadcasting Ozarks my friends.
It always seemed so simple - Canadians are not allowed to buy American TV directly, it has to be through the middle-man of cable and rebroadcaster.
In order to keep that sweet deal, all the rebroadcasters have to do is make a few Canadian shows.
It really doesn't sound like too much to ask for such a sweet deal. You never know, some of those Canadian shows might even be good and make a profit.
hey John it was great to meet you and I want to read your books. Your commnts are spot on but ... Uh ... Newbie
Which is to say, john, I agree with you
Okay Daniel, what hasn't been attempted yet? We've tried the letters to our MPs, but you're either (like me) in a downtown Toronto riding that is represented by the NDP, in which case you're told "I agree with you, the government has abandoned its oversight responsibilities, so how about a $25 donation to help us help you?" Or you're in a riding where it's politically sensible to say "Screw you champagne socialists with your Young People Fucking and your anti-God CBC."
And that's just the ones who reply.
My little suggestion would be to forget the Feds. Even after the efforts to frame this as a Canadian sovereignty issue, there is nobody, NOBODY in Ottawa who will take this torch and run with it.
So why not try to make it a local issue? The broadcasters threaten to shut down local news coverage, have the mayor of Thunder Bay call up Harper. And then the mayor of Red Deer. And then the mayor of Trois Rivieres.
They want to get out of shooting original series? Their Worships Gregor Robertson and David Miller make some noise on the evening news.
There IS a model for this, although it isn't perfect, and that's the alliance of municipalities that got together to lobby the Feds for transit funding. Yes, yes, we're not there yet, but they've made a case, as a united front, and now it's a mainstream idea that Ottawa should help fund mass transit. The federal parties will still squabble over how much or how little or with what control, but the municipalities did the heavy lifting: They changed the conversation.
Oh I don't know, it's 1:30 in the morning, and maybe it's the gin talking, but all I know is this: Municipal politicians are a paranoid, skittish breed. Your MP will coast on the fortunes of their party, but if we got a noisy mayor to take this on, who knows?
I don't wanna hijack Denis' blog, but, Gregory, that's the sorta thing I was wondering. Not being "in" the industry, I was asking out loud, "What do we do about it?" And your idea about getting a noisy mayor is the sorta thing I was thinking about all day after I posted my original comment here. Got some more thinking to do, so some of this might not be coherent or make any sense, but couldn't we back Miller into a corner on this? Has this been attempted before? I'm not Miller's biggest fan, but IF I understand correctly, the guy was behind FILMPORT and even went down to LA to try to drum up business if the news is to be believed. So couldn't we go to him with that? Hang it over his head? "Hey Dave, you spent all that money on FILMPORT, you flew down on our dime, are you gonna wussy out on us? Don't you want canadian storytellers to use those facillities?" I don't know... I'm not the most informed person on these matters. It's why I've been trying to pay more attention to this blog.
any of us dinosaurs will tell you that we've been down this road before. The CanCon television created out of LA writing departments is called "industrial" TV and there were a lot of those shows. Canadian producers are free to hire Americans to write Canadian shows - they just do not qualify for CTF - and that's the problem. They have discovered they can't raise enough money without the CTF and in order to qualify for the CTF they must use Cdn writers. Alas, alack.
What recourse do we have - I can only think of one - and that's about the use of taxpayer dollars and the CTF. Do Canadians want their tax dollars spent in the country providing jobs and revenue for Canadians? Or do they want to see their tax dollars spent in LA.
Also - The general public doesn't care about who makes what show. They only know what they like to watch. A Cdn show on national broadcaster with viewership under 700,000 should be cancelled. If no one is watching, no one will care if it is gone. In the main, shows are left on the air for one season if not two because development is lacking and the two season scenario is a way to earn back some of the money. As we all know, in the US if a show does not perform, it is gone.
And consider the disconnect between what Cdn network executives "greenlight" and what Canadians are actually watching. Most of our execs seem to be five to seven years behind the TV trends. But they are very happy to buy those shows from the US.
But these are issues that have always plagued Cdn TV.
Daniel -- what you can do depends on how not "in" the industry you are.
Are you somebody who *wants* to get in? Ie: an aspiring writer, producer, etc.
Or are you just a Canadian who likes to watch TV and does something else for a living?
I say this because there's a certain weariness I have to getting the "big picture" questions over and over and over. I have two queries in my email box right now from people whose questions are basically, "what should I do if I want to be a writer?" And the answer is, um, well, "don't waste your contact with someone who could really give you great advice until you've done the basics yourself and can ask a really valuable question." Email man, it's made everything too easy.
If you are in the number 1 position: educate yourself. I would suggest at first, choosing the CRTC or Canadian TV tags in the sideboard here, and reading through the last four years of posts. That will give you a pretty good grounding as to what the issues are, even if you just skim (and believe me, you should just skim.)
Then I would suggest going over to The Legion of Decency, Jim Henshaw's blog (it's on the sideboard) and Uninflected Images Juxtaposed (Will Dixon's blog, same.) They both frequently write about the industry and issues here both creative and structural. Jim has a particular no holds barred style that puts me to shame.
Once you have armed yourself with what the issues are, come back -- and then we can talk about what you can do next. But agitating with mayors, contacting your MP's and writing letters to the editor are a good start. Feeble, but something. There's a whole lot of people in this industry who hide behind bitching as an excuse not to do anything. It's part of why I'm discouraged.
Oh, one more thing you can probably do if you want to help writing and creative in this country: buy muffins sometime and deliver them to the WGC. They're going to have a lot of late nights this fall prepping for this latest delayed hearing.
If you're of the number 2) persuasion, well, the main thing I'd say is to read everything critically. Look at how much the cable co's are making now and ask "what are they giving back?" If you think it's not enough, contact your MP. Also, read all this stuff about "save local TV" equally critically. Why does it need to be 'saved?" Why are they so concerned about "saving" it now -- what have they been doing to it up til now?
Finding true info on this is going to be difficult, since in most cases the companies pushing "save local tv" own the newspapers and such. Maybe that might be worth a complaint to your elected authorities, too?
And when the call comes, in the round of CMF consultations -- you can find it here, then -- and the suggestion is tabled to let American writers onto CMF funded shows -- join your voice to the chorus singing bloody murder.
I don't know if it will make a difference, but there it is.
Deb, I think your "cancel under 700000" threshold is a bit harsh. Global will send out a press release with anything that breaks 800 -- and the CBC is always going to trail ratings wise because of the lack of simulcast.
When I was doing head to head comparisons and got the data each week, the thing that got me was that the CBC was pulling 7 or 800 K on nights when there were also 2 million watching Global and 1 and change watching CTV (or the other way round.) That's pretty impressive, really.
CBC has at least gotten away from the nadir of the shows averaging 400K like they were a few years ago. I think that floor should be more like a season average of 600 now.
Thanks, Frank, good to meet you, too. It's a scary pool to jump in here, sometimes and I'm certainly out of my depth, but what the hell.
Jesus you two. Get a room. :)
Denis:
Category 1. (Aspiring writer) And I actually started reading (and then skimming) yesterday. There's a lot to take in, and it will be some time before I can even formulate an informed opinion, let alone toss ideas out. But I'm gonna squeeze in some reading in between my writing sessions.
"Canadian writers want to work. They want to be able to create shows they can believe in, they can be proud of, that shows their best work, and speaks to an audience and entertains and tickles and amuses and maybe along the way says something true about people's lives that they recognize."
It isn't really fair to paint everyone else with the dirtiest brush and then open a brand new brush for us. Using the same nasty brush for the writers of Canada would lead more to:
The WGC wants the government to use protectionist intervention to make sure Canadian writers don't have to compete, force producers and networks to hire Canadian writers- and they consider every last Canadian to be a thieving, lying pirate and want the government to fine anyone who buys an MP3 player, hard drive or PVR.
I just feel that it is best to hold everyone to the same standards.
Clint, it took me about three times to try and parse what it was you were trying to say, but what you've got off the top is pure spin, and it's undercut completely by the 2nd half of what you say --
--which is bullshit.
And wrong. And completely ignorant of what the WGC's feelings about copyright are.
See, I and other WGC members just got the email on the WGC's position on copyright, and position the union is pushing takes a collective licensing approach - much more in the European model, and the same kind of approach that has worked well when it comes to the reproduction of works in the book field -- the copying levy side.
If you want to wave a flag for a line of argument, that's great. If you want to wave it for a line that is fundamentally in opposition to what I believe, too, that's fine.
But....
The WGC doesn't say what you say it says -- which makes it different than what I was talking about -- because what I was talking about represents things that members of the CFTPA have said in print.
It just looks to me like you excoriate the producers and broadcasters for self interested behaviour that is not fundamentally different from the self interested behaviour of the WGC. They are all shouting "Protect us and give us money!"
Maybe the producers have stated outright that they just want to make shows and have admitted that "some of them don't care if they are good or not" - but funny, I can't remember any of the broadcasters having stated, without weasel words, that they "want free money to be able to buy cheap U.S. Programming, and to be able to get away with funding as little domestic stuff as possible" and that they "don't even care if it is particularly good."?
What they say doesn't matter as much as what they actually do. The WGC can bandy words around as much as they want but the fundamentals of it is that they wants the government to automatically take money from anyone who buys pretty much anything that can possibly be used to pirate or store content – and the only way that makes any moral sense is if they are working under the assumption that everyone will use it to pirate and store content.
According to the WGC website:
"This system already works for certain Canadian creators through the private copying levy – a modest fee on blank cassette tapes and CDs paid to the owners and authors of the sound recording. For instance, SOCAN collects funds from the private copying levy and distributes them as royalties to composers and music publishers. A similar levy can be added to ISPs, PVRs, hard drives and more, effectively licensing consumers to freely copy works for non-commercial purposes – they’ve paid for the right. No policing or enforcement necessary, and no criminalizing of common consumer behaviour. A win-win for consumers and creators."
It really doesn't matter how it is phrased, the fact is that they assume everyone is stealing so they want to make everyone pay. I have a Red camera that chews through 2GB per minute and a dslr that needs about 34MB every time I trip the shutter – so I've been buying hard drives by the terabyte for a while now. I don't steal music and I don't steal film or television so sugar coat it however you like, the WGC wants the government to automatically treat me like they've already convicted me of stealing and to levy a fine on me.
It is as if stores tried to get the government to put a levy on every car sold and on all clothing with pockets because these items are used to transport and store shoplifted goods. Hey, that would mean that no policing and enforcement would be necessary for shoplifting as long as it was for non-commercial purposes! Wouldn't that be nice if they could stop criminalizing a common consumer behaviour?
And seriously, how exactly is this supposed to work? If I am being made to pay for infringing copyright does that then give me carte blanche on downloading everything I want or am I supposed to calculate the levy and extrapolate from that? Looking back on the CD and DVD levies that I've already paid under the existing system... I'm owed at least 60 songs at the going iTunes pricing. Really, what does the WGC want me to do if these levies are added to and expanded for film and television? Should I simply start downloading the movies or TV shows I want rather than paying for them directly or should I just shut up and pay the fine so that others can happily go about their copyright infringement without fear since their "common consumer behaviour" can then be de-criminalized?
It is ugly, entitled behaviour on the WGC's part that is exactly in line with the behaviour of the broadcasters and producers that you so rightly call to task - but because it is your team, you won't blow the whistle on them.
And yeah, my writing can be rather obtuse and irritating to parse. It is something that I am working on.
Clint,
It's one of the great ironies and amazements of our time that the great social order shift pioneered by "it's okay to steal music" has created a whole whack of empowered people complaining about collective and individual rights, completely and totally restricted to that example and that example only.
There are no perfect solutions for copyright or for compensation schemes when it comes to digital media and intellectual property. But there are precedents that go back to the bedrock of other things that we do in this society, more imperfect solutions that tend to work rather well.
You choose to see it as labelling everyone a criminal. There's just as a legit a case to say that it's an attempt to get around that. We can either seek out and punish individual people (unworkable, and that results in the BS of the RIAA oversuing people who don't have money at all) or we can declare this a societal thing and just eat the small cost collectively.
I don't have children, yet my taxes (of which I've paid a whole shitload in the last few years) go to pay for parks and schools and playground equipment. Well, why?
I don't beat up women, and my money goes to women's shelters.
I am not sexually confused, but I'm rather happy that some of my tax money might go to counselling for gay, lesbian, or transgendered young people who are twisted up and hated on.
Why?
Because it's for the greater good.
We all pay for things we don't use and don't need. I have used precisely about 100 bucks out of my health insurance in the last couple years. I haven't needed it. But my paying in keeps the cost down for everybody.
Maybe you don't abuse plastic bags and you always use canvas, and the one time you forget it at the grocery store you're going to have to pay five cents for a bag (if you live in Toronto.) That's a drag, sure, but they're not saying you're an environment destroyer.
They're just trying to come up with an imperfect solution to a larger problem.
It's fine if you think there's "no difference" between what the WGC calls for and the examples I enumerate above. Your prerogative entirely. I think it's a myopic way to look at it, but there you go. Different strokes.
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