What I Wrote to the CRTC

The disastrous recommendation to split the CTF in two continues. The CRTC is "allowing" public comments until July 27. Read more about it here and here. Here's what I wrote to them in my submission. Warning. It's long and about Canadian TV.



To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing you today about the results of your task force on the Canadian Television Fund. (CTF) Specifically, one recommendation that will do great damage to a sector which cannot afford it: the community of artists working to create and write Canadian Television.

At issue here is the Task Force’s central recommendation that the current CTF fund be split into two: a fund administered by Canadian Heritage which would fund so-called 10/10 programs, and a Broadcast Development Undertakings fund, which would come from cable/satellite contributions and be subject to a lower, 8/10 creative threshold.

This recommendation, if implemented, will have a disastrous, immediate, and possibly irreversible deleterious effect on the Canadian Television Industry. It will strangle further the one sector of the industry the CRTC has done nothing to protect in the last several years. It proceeds from a faulty premise, represents a return to failed policy, and represents both an abdication of the CRTC’s mandate to support the Canadian domestic industry, and administer the airwaves for the good of all Canadians. The CRTC stands on the precipice of breaching its responsibilities under the Broadcasting Act, and of making bad policy that will further erode Canadians’ cultural identity at a time when maintaining that identity is most crucial.

The Premise is Faulty

Splitting the fund into two is a solution predicated upon a problem which does not exist. Supposedly, the 8/10 fund will allow for programs with greater commercial appeal. In fact, the shows that are popular with Canadian audiences – by definition, the shows with the most creative appeal – flourish with Canadian talent, writers, and directors front and centre. CORNER GAS, a program that is consistently seen by over 1.5 million Canadians a week, uses exclusively Canadian talent both above and below the line. If anything, it should be a matter of some embarrassment that the most popular Canadian show receives no CTF money. CORNER GAS has been moved around the schedule on its originating network, CTV, many times in its six seasons on the air. This has done nothing to diminish its popularity.

In the case of a smaller, cable show that does receive CTF financing, we have TRAILER PARK BOYS. I don’t know if the commission gets out to gatherings of audience members very often, but I was moved a couple of years ago when I ventured out to a personal appearance by the stars of TRAILER PARK BOYS at a Toronto theatre. One thousand people braved January cold to mob the Bloor Cinema in Toronto to get a look at the three actors and creators of this show. The line snaked around the block, and the audience was a cross section of Canada: teens to grandmothers. I have witnessed this TPB effect many times; they have sold out personal appearances at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom; they are mobbed for autographs at film festival parties where other stars go unmolested. The show spun off a movie version last summer which was one of the nation’s highest grossing homegrown comedies. Showcase, in the show’s seventh season, still regularly draws numbers on a cable channel that dwarf the numbers for CBC’s terrestrial drama offerings. By any reasonable measure, this low budget, aggressively Canadian show is an enormous hit. Its specificity of place and attitude is 100% Canadian, as are its creative team.

As for CBC, this January, they gave us LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE, a show which drew a regular audience of over one million people.

CTV’s DEGRASSI: THE NEXT GENERATION continues to connect with audiences both in Canada and in the USA precisely because of its unique, Canadian take on social issues and the problems of growing up set it apart from similar American fare.

I could name more. These shows are all 10/10 shows. They are all commercial. They have all connected with their respective audiences. If these shows can all be made within the current system (one without any CTF money at all,) what is the justification for saying that there needs to be a separate fund for “more commercial” fare?

A “two-fund” solution implicitly defines “Canadian” fare as something that is not audience-driven. It feeds into a faulty and false piece of propaganda: that Canadians don’t want to watch Canadian shows, and therefore any programs that are made here are going to be loss leaders. They will watch them, as long as they're good. Splitting the fund in two does nothing to make shows good. At the same time, a two-fund solution results in another set of bureaucratic guidelines, more hoops, and more meaningless benchmarks for Canadian creatives to jump through. Less time spent on the creative, more time on the forms. Is this really what the system needs?

It is a matter of great concern to me that the CRTC can proceed from this premise, while doing nothing to take a look at the programs which are successful, and say, “what are they doing right?” To tinker with the funding makeup for the industry before figuring out the answer to that question is, frankly, mad.

Not to mention the fact that we’ve tried a version of this before, and it does not work.

A Return to Bad Policy

For years, leading up to the broadcast envelope system, Canadian TV producers had a panicked wait seeing if their show would pick up CTF financing. Sometimes they’d get it, sometimes they wouldn’t – some would get one fund, and not another. There was no way to plan, and everyone agreed the system was broken.

The system was broken because there is something inherently incompatible with trying to judge a program’s worthiness based on a bureaucratic checklist. The broadcast envelope system, at least, allows networks to get behind the projects they creatively support. It’s closer to letting creative drive whether a show should or should not be made.

If we go to two funds, we take a step back to a more confusing time. Which fund do you apply to? What are the criteria? Once we negotiate a fusillade of new forms, new criteria, two different processes, two different boards – we still haven’t gotten any closer to getting on the screen and serving the only thing that really matters here: trying to make programs that find and connect with an audience. The system cannot afford to be any more top heavy.

But going to an 8/10 funding system will defeat the production of good Canadian shows in another way: it will drive the creative decisionmaking process out of this country.

I know that the intent is to allow flexibility: maybe if a producer can cast an American star they can get access to foreign sales. Maybe they can make better product.

But the recent past is littered with examples that prove that this is not the likely trajectory of how things will go.

Until the international syndicated market dried up, Canada was the dubious beneficiary of many so-called “industrial” shows. These are shows that benefited from our tax incentives, lower labor costs, locations and trained crews. They were generally 6/10 shows. They shot here, they occasionally used Canadian directors, and actors in secondary roles, and the role of “service producer” was filled by a Canadian.

The key creative decisions, however, were not made by Canadians. They were made in L.A. There was an abuse of the spirit of the law – writers with “Canadian passports” or “landed” papers would come up to Toronto for a day and get their papers and be back in L.A. People with legal loopholes would go to Niagara Falls for a day and come back as "Canadian writers." Story rooms, creative, scripts, all big decisions came out of L.A. Canadians who wished to crack this process and have a meaningful creative participation in a show found that they had to move to L.A. to do it. Little or no effort was made to draw from the creative pool here. They found out how to work the system, and the L.A. decisionmakers hired their pet Canadian producer to make everything look square – but even these producers were hewers of wood and drawers of water – they did nothing to control the actual creative. These are the same producers who will benefit most greatly if we go to 8/10. Because then the L.A. based companies will be able to return to the days when shooting here was a great deal for them…the days when they used Canada as a location, a source of cheap labor, while retaining ownership and control themselves.

The difference is, this time they’ll be doing it with Canadian money.

Now, what of these more “commercial” shows? How did they do? Well, they sold for a while. They made their L.A. based production companies very wealthy in international sales. But they were cookie cutter, shoddily conceived, and few people missed them when they were gone. And once they were gone, the Canadian industry immediately suffered. Producers here were not used to making creative decisions - -they couldn’t shape domestic shows that could fill the gap. We were so dependent on the gravy train of low rent syndie shows that when they pulled out, the bottom dropped out. That’s what happens when you’re not the master of your own industry.

These are the “commercial” shows that the BDU fund is looking to restart? Good luck.

The CRTC needs to think long and hard before opening up funds contributed by Canadians’ cable and satellite fees to this kind of abuse. Will it serve Canadians with better shows? Will we get more Corner Gases? Or are we destined for another round of EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT and RELIC HUNTER, with generic characters, settings, and stories that enrich nothing and inform no one? Again, this is not the world based upon your false premise that Canadian shows are not popular. This is the reality, based on the kinds of shows that were made here before.

You’re Hurting the Very People Who Can Afford it Least.

In 1999, the CRTC changed a policy that stipulated that Canadian 'casters had to run a certain amount of drama. You allowed Canadian networks to count reality shows and certain other types of programs toward their Canadian content quotas. At the time, various creative unions and people warned that this would cause a terrible drop in the number of Canadian drama programs on TV. You chose to listen to the CAB and the broadcasters, who insisted this would not be the case, and who needed more “flexibility.”

We were right, and you were wrong. The number of domestic Canadian drama and comedy shows were halved overnight. Within a few years, 12 or 13 shows became 4 or 5. Now it hovers, depending on the time of year, around 1 or 2.

The CAB and other broadcast interest groups scream poor and say that there simply is no money to produce Canadian drama. Yet – broadcast profits are extremely healthy. And there seems to be plenty of money for consolidation and takeovers, as the CHUM/CTV deal and the Global/AA deal prove.

You have recognized that there are pressures on the broadcast industry – so you’re relaxing the rules on advertising. The broadcasters stand to benefit from this greatly. There was a plan a couple years back that maybe suggested that Canadian broadcasters could be encouraged to run more homegrown drama by using that to let them earn more commercial time. I guess that’s gone by the wayside now that advertising restrictions are lifted. So the ‘casters are rewarded. You’ve taken care of them.

You uphold a plank of broadcast law that allows for great benefit to the broadcasters: cable substitution. Cable substitution shapes the industry in this country profoundly. It allows Canadian broadcasters to buy U.S. programs, piggyback on their signal and P.R., and not have to worry about competing. Interestingly, if there was no substitution, maybe these channels would actually have to make more Canadian shows, because that would be the only thing they could offer that was different than the U.S. networks which are beamed into just about every Canadians’ homes. The spending on U.S. programming has reached record levels, by your own figures, while spending on homegrown programming has declined. You’ve moved decisively and quickly to prop up and support the broadcast side of things.

The Canadian Television Fund came into existence because the Cable co’s were asking for protection. That was their price, their social benefit, bought in exchange for extremely favorable terms and protections from the CRTC for their industry. You took care of them. Just last week, you released figures which showed healthy growth and huge profits for the Cable and Satellite distribution industry.

In fact, the CRTC has implemented a bunch of protectionist policies that have benefited many of the big, monied players.

But real incomes for Canadian creatives – writers and directors, the very people who most depend on things like the CTF – they’ve never been worse. We’re still suffering greatly from the rule change you put through in 1999. And now you want to tinker with the fund and roll the dice on us again.

We can’t afford it. We’ve been drowning for a long time. Why is it that we’re the only people in the domestic television industry who you refuse to help?

Cause and Effect and What’s at Stake

As a regulatory body, this is the part of my comment that might be hardest for the CRTC to digest, because it’s the hardest to quantify.

But it goes back to what I said at the start about the faulty premise at the heart of the recommendation to split the two funds. It comes down to two very fundamental questions: what makes a show Canadian? And what’s best for Canadians as a whole?

At the start I suggested that the CRTC try to consider why shows like CORNER GAS connect and are so popular with Canadian audiences. But in the end, I understand this is an impossible task, just as suggesting that cable substitution be lifted is an impossible task.

Quasi-governmental organizations like the CTF and the CRTC should not, and cannot, be expected to define what makes a program Canadian. There can be no checklist. Government fails every time it tries to decree what is art. There is only one body that can decide what is truly successful in this case, and that is the audience. You’ve gone a ways toward acknowledging this in your report by tying future funding to audience performance. This is a good step.

But as for that definition of what makes something Canadian? The very kind of definition we’re going to force administrators to make if we go to a two-fund system? It’s a fool’s game.

In a complex, globalized world, there is only one meaningful definition that can be used to decide what makes a Canadian show:

Is it created by and made by Canadians?

That’s it. That’s the whole definition.

We have a history in this country of incredible media innovation. From Marshall McLuhan to Moses Znaimer to Graham Spry’s vision of a national broadcaster that mixed both popular and public aims – Canada, by virtue of our position close to and yet apart from the greatest exporter of popular culture the world has ever known, has always been in a unique position.

Our creative artists – musicians, artists, painters, authors – have brought their unique disciplines to the world stage, and had an impact greater than you’d think for a nation of less than thirty million people.

Our Television artists have had a similar impact – it’s just that they’ve traditionally had to go to the United States to do it. And their Canadian viewpoint gets subsumed into the American machine.

The convulsions of our industry are such that we are constantly starting over. Writers, directors hone their craft, and then hit the periodic dry spell or find there’s not enough work, and then move to L.A. If Canadian TV has not achieved a level of greater popularity, it’s only because we are consistently forced to reinvent the wheel. We are not retaining trained people. It’s too hard to make a living here, and the pressure to go to a larger market where you can make a living is simply too great.

There’s nothing the CRTC can do to completely stop people from going south. That’s always going to happen to some degree. But what you’re contemplating doing is tantamount to throwing in the towel. And say that happens. What happens next? What is actually at stake with the loss of original Canadian drama on TV?

I can only offer you a few anecdotes.

The first is an example. This fall, there will be a program on U.S. television called ALIENS IN AMERICA. In this program, a foreign exchange student from Pakistan comes to stay with Americans and they worry that he’s a terrorist. The themes of cultural difference are explored. But we should note the format: the outsider is seen as that – a stranger, and the comedy comes partially from the fear of the other. In Canada, by contrast, we have LITTLE MOSQUE. In this case, a lot of the same themes are explored – but the Muslims are the main characters. They are not the other. They are us. This is such a small adjustment that says so very much about us as a nation and as a people. But I think it’s an attitude worth preserving, don’t you?

I am currently employed on a CBC show called THE BORDER. This is a show that’s set inside a Homeland Security type agency in Toronto. The post 9/11 fears about security and liberty are explored – but not from within the culture of fear and suspicion that dominates American views of the subject. On our show, one of the pressures is the pressure that Canadians feel everyday – an uneasiness about how the American nation has shifted, and how their new view of the world and their place in it affects all of us. If the creative was coming out of L.A., do you think that this would be the focus of the show? Do you not think this is a rich vein of potential story, with relevance to Canadians now?

DEGRASSI, in its original incarnation, appeared on PBS stations in the USA and picked up fans because it was so utterly unlike American teen shows. Part of that came from a willingness to address subjects that are too “third rail” in the United States. In the USA, teens cannot have sex without getting pregnant. No one can have an abortion. The lessons are proscribed within a tiny window. Ironically, the thing that made the original Degrassi such a hit in the USA was its Canadian-ness. That’s what made it different. That’s what made it appealing.

Right now, DAVINCI's INQUEST, the long running CBC show, is enjoying a new life in late night syndication in the USA. The fact that it's different -- that the stories and characters are NOT like cookie cutter American crime shows -- is the reason why that show is doing well. Preserving an independent Canadian voice can have a great effect -- if we have the foresight and courage to pursue it.

Studies published in the last year show definitively that socially, Canadians are moving further and further away from Americans in terms of social attitudes. Yet the American dramas we see frame issues of crime and social justice, and society in distinctly American terms.

Surveys show that Canadians are increasingly obsessed about crime, even though the rate of crime here is nowhere near the American level. Ingesting another nation’s values, longterm, is not good for nationhood or the shared national conversation. But when those values are diverging more and more, the stakes grow even higher.

There’s a phrase that’s bandied about a lot that I actually quite hate: “telling our own stories.” This is generally interepreted to mean Canadian stories; stories about Canadians or set in Canada – but I don’t think that’s what’s needed. Not at all. If we’re going to connect with Canadians, if we’re going to continue to build upon our successes and get more programs on the air that Canadians respond to, we have to recognize that “telling our own stories” really means “letting us tell stories.” The story doesn’t matter in this case; the person telling it does. Canadians have a different perspective on the world. That difference, when it’s allowed to surface – when we’re not trying to ape other types of programs or American models – finds resonance with our countrymen and women. And that difference, when it’s allowed to be organic, could actually help us sell those stories abroad. Because when you’re trying to be like someone else, there’s always a falseness. Only by being true and specific, can you find experience that is universal to all. That’s why Degrassi is a success.

American shows-in-all-but-name where the creative comes out of L.A. will never allow this difference. They'll be too concerned with trying to make Toronto look like Chicago and scrubbing out any local reference or custom. A raft of cheaply made, hacky, "Anywhere U.S.A." will accrue no social benefit, and very little actual entertainment value, to Canadians.

The only way to get Canadian stories out is to keep the reins on those telling them. You’ve recognized Canada’s unique position and moved to protect the interests of broadcasters, and satellite and cable operators. I’m asking you merely to extend the same philosophy to creatives. Don’t experiment with our livelihoods any more. You’ve done that enough. We’re struggling to get off the mat – largely because of your past decisions. Don’t kick us in the stomach when we’re down. Don’t implement this foolish recommendation, predicated on a faulty premise, echoing past failure. Find another way.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Denis McGrath
Toronto, Ontario, Canada