Valerie Creighton, CEO of the Canada Media Fund.Munz Media/Supplied
Canada’s television producers had a particularly nail-biting season last year as overall audiovisual production activity in the country fell to $9.6-billion from $11.8-billion. Now they’re facing a series of cliffhangers.
The CBC, the biggest commissioner of independent Canadian productions in the country, awaits either a long promised refreshed mandate from the current government – or a new government with defunding on its mind.
Then, there’s the looming threat of American tariffs and the possibility that President Donald Trump may have the Online Streaming Act in his sights.
So, why is Canada Media Fund’s Valerie Creighton’s still hopeful for Canadian television? The Globe and Mail spoke to the president and chief executive officer of the public-private funder crucial to making so many TV shows.
It was your office that reached out with the idea of an interview. Why are you interested in getting a message out to the public right now?
The industry can be very self-absorbed, right? It talks to itself all the time, but we don’t talk enough to Canadians. We don’t tell the story of what this sector is, about its impact on Canada. When you get down into some of the financial impacts and the jobs and how this sector carries our nationhood or our identity internationally, there’s not a high level of awareness on that. While it’s down, our $11-billion impact on the GDP is still a pretty big number.
How would you explain to someone on the street what the Canada Media Fund is – and where it gets it money from?
It gets its money from the federal government through tax dollars and through the telecoms, through what are called BDUs – broadcast distribution undertakings. That’s long language for Shaw, Bell, Rogers et cetera, who are required through regulation to invest in Canadian storytelling, because if we didn’t do that we may not have much. What we do is we invest in the actual content.
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How do you invest?
Historically it’s been if the broadcasters say, yes, we want to finance this and put it on TV, then the producer can come to us for some investment. We recently opened up the ability for our distribution community to also trigger the CMF – and there’ll be more news on that April 1. We’ve seen a lot of contraction in the industry, so having a single trigger in this day and age, it just doesn’t work any more.
Let’s talk about the Online Streaming Act. If I’m to summarize it correctly, as of August, streamers will be paying 5 per cent of their Canadian revenues to a variety of places – with 2 per cent (or 40 per cent of that 5 per cent) going to the CMF. Right?
It’s true except for one thing: It doesn’t take into account that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) allowed the streamers to access 1.5 per cent of that 2 per cent to do either original productions or acquire Canadian content to fulfill their regulatory obligations.
Ah, okay.
It a very confusing thing to understand for the average person. After that CRTC announcement, right away streamers were already calling to acquire content that had been made by the Canadian system to fulfill those regulatory requirements. It’s a bit of an odd policy direction, but that’s the reality. As for the dollar value, a lot of people said, “You’re going to get $50-million or $80-million.” Well, it’s about $14-million to the CMF if it all works out to the best possible scenario.
The current CMF budget is $357-million – and you expect that to go down by about $57-million next fiscal due to the decline of cable revenue. So the Online Streaming Act money isn’t going to solve the problem.
No, this money isn’t gonna solve the structural problems we have in the sector. There’s no shortage of innovation – we also fund digital media and virtual reality – and there’s no problem with creativity in Canada, we’re blessed with the wealth of it. The problem is the structures that we’re trying to work within are more than 40 years old, and we’re not living in that universe any more.
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We’re in the streaming universe.
We love having the streamers in the country. They’re great partners and we don’t want that to stop. I think there’s a way we can partner with the streamers more pro-actively. North of North is a great example. CBC was in. APTN was in second. We’ve got a lot of money in that show – and Netflix has the lion’s share. It’s a great model for the country of how the streamers and the Canadian system can work together to get a really innovative and stellar piece of Canadian content.
How might the tariffs Trump has been threatening affect film and TV production in Canada?
It depends. Our sector isn’t technically speaking importing/exporting goods. We’ve got a good cultural exemption that happened when they negotiated CUSMA in 2020. The government fought hard for that and it was maintained. We hope the government will take that same position, whatever government is in power when that comes around in 2026. I’m sure that President Trump will focus on the cultural exemption and trying to get rid of it.
Do you think Trump’s going to go after the Online Streaming Act?
I can only comment on that based on past behaviour: It’s likely. It’s part of what Canada is trying to do to make a level playing field. He probably won’t see it that way.
This downturn in the audiovisual industry, it’s not just in Canada. We’re seeing production down around the world after peak TV. Where can local producers who want to make shows in this country find hope right now given the state of the CBC and the Online Streaming Act not necessarily being a sure thing?
When I was at the Canadian Media Producers Association Prime Time conference last month, I observed that I hardly knew a lot of people walking the halls. There’s a whole influx of new ideas and new creativity.
There’s so many different models now – producers are very clever at finding their way through all of that. You’ve got models where some larger production companies can easily negotiate rights with the foreign streamers. We have a very deep experience in co-production with Europe. There’s a new emphasis and heightened attention paid to that. Our producers are out there in the international markets doing deals. The hope doesn’t ever go away.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
