Village Gamer

The Canada Media Fund (CMF) will embark on a cross-country consultation this fall as part of a comprehensive consultation process. The process will comprise a number of components, including focus groups in 18 cities, in all provinces and territories; industry working groups and advisory committees; as well as online consultation. Feedback received from stakeholders will serve to shape CMF policy moving forward as the two-year program guidelines come to an end and new guidelines are developed for 2014-2015 and beyond.

“The consultation is an important opportunity to connect and have meaningful discussions with our stakeholders” says Valerie Creighton, President and CEO. “These open and frank conversations will help us to continue to meet the needs of the industry and to shape CMF policy. With our stakeholders’ input, we can learn from the CMF’s first three years of operation and embark on the planning stages of how best we can continue to support content creation in Canada. ”

During the focus groups, all CMF stakeholders will have an opportunity to discuss the following issues, amongst others:

• The current policy architecture of the CMF programs with two distinct funding streams: convergent and experimental.
• The activities the CMF now supports such as predevelopment, development, production, marketing, promotion, versioning, etc.; and the expenses currently eligible at these stages.
• The genres and essential requirements that define eligibility for Canadian content.
• Current funding triggers and the relevance of introducing additional triggers.
• The level of support provided by CMF to support a diversity of creative voices and the mechanisms currently employed to this effect.

Focus Groups Preliminary Schedule

City	Date
Toronto	September 12, 2013
Saskatoon	September 16, 2013
Regina	September 16, 2013
Edmonton	September 17, 2013
Yellowknife	September 18, 2013
Calgary	September 19, 2013
Winnipeg	September 23, 2013
Whitehorse	September 24, 2013
Victoria	September 25, 2013
Vancouver	September 26, 2013
Montreal (two sessions—1 in French and 1 in English)	October 15, 2013
Ottawa (two sessions—1 in French and 1 in English)	October 16, 2013
Iqaluit	October 17, 2013
Halifax	October 21, 2013
St- John’s	October 22, 2013
Charlottetown	October 23, 2013
Moncton (two sessions—1 in French and 1 in English)	October 24, 2013
Québec City	October 31, 2013

Following the focus groups, the CMF will conduct a series of working groups and advisory committees with industry stakeholders to delve more deeply into specific, program-related issues. These include:

Working Groups and Advisory Committees Preliminary Schedule

Proposed Date	Topic
September 5	CMF’s Digital Media Measurement Framework
October 2	Performance Envelopes – production and development
October 3	Support for Documentary Projects
October 10	Funding Mechanisms: CMF’s use of recoupable and non-recoupable funding; CMF’s standard recoupment policy; envelope-based , selective and first-come, first served programs
November 4	Support for Regional Projects

Pursuant to the focus group, working group and advisory committee meetings, the CMF will convene a meeting of the National Focus Group to report out on the feedback received throughout the consultation process. This group is comprised of representatives from the broadcast distribution undertakings, broadcasters, producers, unions and guilds, private funds, provincial funding agencies and other industry associations from the television and interactive digital media sectors.

The venues and specific times for each event will be communicated as they become available.

All documents presented and discussed during the consultation process will be posted to the CMF website.  CMF stakeholders are invited to share comments and questions via the CMF website or through our social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook.