Canadian Television Fund Increases Program Funding for 2009-2010
Toronto – The Canadian Television Fund (CTF) has announced that it has increased its program commitments for 2009-2010 by almost 14% over the previous year. “During the current economic crisis, it is important that the CTF continue to invest in the television industry, an industry that contributes to the country’s economy, employing thousands of Canadians across the nation, and that is vital to our culture,” said Valerie Creighton, President and CEO of the CTF. “Investing in Canadian production puts Canadian stories on the small screen and keeps people working.”
The 2009-2010 program commitments include increases to key programs as follows:
The Digital Media Pilot Program, launched in 2008-2009, experienced high demand, with funds being allocated within six weeks of the application opening date, with the exception of the CBC/Radio-Canada allocation. Demand for this program exceeded the allocation of $2 million, and other digital media funds, including the Bell New Media Fund and the Canada New Media Fund, were also oversubscribed in 2008-2009. As a result of this high demand and in line with the recommendations by the CRTC to increase CTF funding of digital media projects, the CTF has increased the allocation for the Digital Media Program to $10 million in 2009-2010.
The main program through which the CTF allocates funds to productions, the market-driven Broadcaster Performance Envelope (BPE) stream, has been allocated $285 million in 2009-2010. This 7.2% increase year over year includes $194 million to English BPEs and $91 million to French BPEs.
The CTF has increased the funding allocation for the French-language Projects Outside of Quebec (FLPOQ) stream from $9.3 million to $10.2 million in 2009-2010. The share of funding to this stream remains at 10% of French language production funding, as per the requirements of the Contribution Agreement between the CTF and the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Funding to the Aboriginal-language Projects stream has increased from just over $3 million to $4 million in 2009-2010 in response to requests for additional support for a number of years from the Aboriginal production community. Demand for the Aboriginal-language Projects stream exceeded the allocation twice in the past three years.
The CTF’s Contribution Agreement with the Department of Canadian Heritage requires the CTF to provide incentives for regionally based productions to ensure a minimum amount of funding support to regional productions. The Production Incentive Pilot Program, introduced in 2008-2009, was intended to provide additional funding support to areas of Canada where English language production volumes had declined more than 20% below their five-year historical average. In its first year, the Production Incentive targeted Atlantic Canada and Quebec. With the continuing need for rebalancing across the country, the CTF has doubled the allocation for the Production Incentive to $10 million in 2009-2010.
The English development stream was fully allocated in 2008-2009. Given that English development is delivered through envelopes, this level of demand underestimates the potential oversubscription on program funding due to broadcasters only greenlighting projects in accordance with the total allocation of financing available in their development envelopes. To meet the demand for funding, the CTF has increased the budget for English development projects from $9 million to $10 million in 2009-2010.
Fostering the growth of television production in Canada through financial investment and industry research, the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) supports the development of Canadian talent, programs, and audiences. Since 1995, the CTF has contributed to the creation of over 27,000 hours of Canadian programming and has infused over $2.7 billion into the industry, triggering the production of over $9 billion of Canadian programming. CTF-supported productions have cultivated thousands of jobs in the Canadian
television sector. The CTF is funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage and Canada’s broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs).