In Banff, Canadian film and TV industry climb twin peaks of sky-high anxiety and cautious optimism | Canada Voices

Nestled 4,500 feet high in the Rocky Mountains, where everything that the light touches feels more blessed than a development deal from Netflix, it is easy to see why the Banff World Media Festival attracts so many film and television power players every spring.

But for the festival’s 46th edition last week, the heavenly Alberta views also helped distract attendees from the ugly reality surrounding their industry. On the second day of the festival, Warner Bros. Discovery – a “platinum” level sponsor of BWMF – announced that it was going to split itself into two as the company tries to shake off its fading cable TV business. Just a day later, Paramount Global, whose streaming service Paramount+ served as a “Grand Patron” of this year’s festival and whose iconic mountaintop logo neatly mirrored the conference’s vistas, revealed that it was laying off 3.5 per cent of its North American workforce, which amounts to several hundred jobs.

At Banff World Media Festival, Canadian film and TV players push a new kind of star system

If all that news wasn’t enough to rattle the executives, producers and filmmakers crowding the Fairmont Banff Springs for four days of panels and pitches, then they could turn their anxiety toward half a dozen other continuing crises. Perhaps the glacial pace of Canada’s Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11), which has yet to wring any financial contributions from the foreign streaming services Ottawa feels should contribute to the homegrown cultural sector? Or maybe the increasing disinterest from Canadian broadcasters when it comes to programming original (i.e.: costly) scripted content? Don’t forget about the rapid impact of artificial intelligence on the creative community. And, of course, anything involving the word “tariff.”

In between sneaking quick peeks at the peaks or spotting a trio of bears roaming the Banff Springs golf course – an on-the-nose metaphor for the pessimistic state of the market if there ever was one – it felt as if Banff offered a front-row seat to an industry on the knife’s edge. As more than one delegate privately declared, Canada’s screen sector is either about to enter a revolutionary new era, or evaporate completely.

“There’s a lot of risk-aversion right now – maybe it’s just because of the state of the world or maybe it’s the trends coming into a recession, but a lot of people are holding the purse strings a little bit tighter,” said B.C.-based filmmaker Jody Wilson, who was in Banff to drum up buzz for the forthcoming release of her dark comedy, The Bearded Girl. “You have all the other elements that are completely new from this time last year – political unrest, AI – and it makes people more squirrely in general.”

There were fleeting moments throughout the week that promised brighter days just around the corner. Such as when Vicky Eatrides, chief executive of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, pledged in her keynote address that her agency is “making progress” on the official definition of “Canadian content” as it relates to C-11. Or whenever someone mentioned the success of the new Canadian comedy series North of North, which marked an unprecedented partnership between Netflix, the CBC and APTN. Were you to play a drinking game at the festival in which you had to take a shot every time someone in power mentioned either that series or Netflix’s Adolescence as programs to emulate, you would’ve been good and plastered by the afternoon of Day One.

Yet there were far more sobering scenes that brought the festival back down to earth.

Just after Eatrides promised meaningful action regarding C-11, Colette Watson, president of Rogers Sports & Media, countered that the pace of the regulatory conversation was far too slow, leaving the country’s traditional broadcasters beholden to outdated rules that hindered any hope of catching up to such globalized outfits as Apple TV+ and Amazon’s Prime Video.

“We’ve been thinking of needing to modernize for 10 years, and still the project is in flight as the CRTC chair just said, but the foreign streamers aren’t waiting,” she said. “The barn is on fire, and maybe we can think about that? … We need for the rules to be relaxed, we need fewer rules and we need them in a more timely manner.”

That lament for the necessity of “rules” didn’t exactly endear Rogers to the crowd, given that CRTC regulations have essentially kept Canadian culture alive in the face of the Hollywood machine to the south, a struggle that only feels more essential today given the current elbows-up era.

To their credit, Bell Media’s executives largely charmed the crowd on this front, including Justin Stockman, vice-president of content development and programming, who noted that the company is the country’s largest commissioner of original drama and comedy, and has the goal of “repatriating some of the biggest and best creators in the world who are Canadian.”

Largely unremarked upon, though, was Bell and other broadcasters’ recent requests to the CRTC to reduce their required spending on “programs of national interest,” such as scripted dramas, comedies and documentaries.

But no Canadian broadcaster could hope to match the confidence displayed by the major U.S. streamers in the room – the Canadian system’s “frenemies,” as Bell Media president Sean Cohan dubbed them: “We really need to work closely with them to advance the cause of Canadian creatives and companies and consumers. We need to be collaborating with the streamers, with the big U.S. players.”

Indeed, if there remained any hard feelings in the Canadian industry over, say, Netflix’s current appeal of the C-11 measures via the lobbying group Motion Picture Association – Canada, then they were kept bottled up tight in Banff.

The company’s “spotlight” panel was at overflow capacity, its development executives Tara Woodbury and Danielle Woodrow were fielding queries left and right, and the Netflix-sponsored Rockie Awards after-party was easily the hottest social event of the week. Even if, as one panelist pointed out, the streamer has only greenlit a handful of Canadian projects since the company opened its Toronto corporate office in 2021.

“There’s no one process – development can take a certain amount of time depending on each project. But what we won’t do is greenlight a show until we think it’s actually set up for success and ready,” said Woodbury, Netflix’s director of content for Canada. “Everything goes up on our global service, so we’re going to take our time and be intentional.”

At the end of the festival, though, it felt as if everyone was simply happy to still call themselves a member of the Canadian industry. Even, or perhaps especially, those who are currently feeling the pinch down south.

“The industry is so tight and miserable in the U.S. that I, maybe surprisingly, find that Canada is more welcoming to just getting stuff going,” said Calgary-born writer Joel H. Cohen, a veteran of The Simpsons who arrived in Banff alongside his older brother Robert, the pair having just secured a second-season renewal of their animated Crave sitcom, Super Team Canada.

“Everybody’s feeling the heat of this industry contraction,” said Robert, “but I think Canada has far more upside for the long game.”

“Or, you know,” added Joel, “we might be total idiots.”