Past year eventful for Bell fund and industry in general, says Sheffer

The past year has seen a key breakthrough in the evolution of the partnership between broadcasters and new media producers, says the head of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund on the eve of that organization’s fifth anniversary. Musing on the past five years of funding broadcast/new media projects, Andra Sheffer says the partnership only began to accelerate following a key meeting at last year’s Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) annual conference in Ottawa. Since 1997, the Bell fund has supported 214 new media and television productions and invested $20.5 million into the sector. New media projects supported by the fund have been sold to about 40 broadcasters worldwide, and Sheffer says many of the most respected and pioneering Internet initiatives in Canada wouldn’t have been possible without the fund’s support. "We think that this whole industry in Canada of web related to television would not have existed without the Bell fund. That’s a huge reward," she tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. "Internationally, the Bell fund is looked on as a leader and many countries are jealous of what we have here. As a result, I think a lot of the Canadian web sites that we are selling around the world are making a real reputation for Canada, and they wouldn’t have existed without the Bell fund." Sheffer says the successes haven’t happened overnight. New media producers have complained for years that broadcasters have discounted the value of Internet content, something Sheffer says has changed gradually as producers have learned to craft their pitches. " come a long way. They’ve come from the point of saying, ‘what is a web site?’ which was where we started from five years ago where they really had no idea, to being quite negative about them, to being ‘ok, show me what you can do’ to being ‘we’re willing to put some money in this’ and now, very recently, we’re actually seeing some success stories with broadcasters actually able to recoup their licences for the web site through advertising on the site. "There’s some great examples. CHUM has the best examples of that, but CTV is starting to do a few. They’re finally able to get the traffic. What they need are the numbers using the web site before they can actually make sales, and that is starting to happen." Turning point at CFTPA conference A key turning point, Sheffer says, was a summit at the 2002 CFTPA annual conference between broadcasters and producers at which barriers to industry growth were explored. "That just broke the ice. Things changed after that. I think what happened there was there was a really honest and frank airing of issues facing both the new media producers, the TV producers, and the broadcasters. Finally, everyone understood what the issues were, what the problems were. Once they recognized what the problems were, they all came up with the solutions, which was very nice." Industry perception has long held that broadcasters have been in the cat bird seat with respect to licensing interactive content, but Sheffer says new media producers have been able to make concessions – or at least change their modus operandi to encourage broadcasters to embrace new media enhancements to their shows. Producers, for instance, are gathering more hard numbers and better crafting their pitches to appeal to broadcasters’ bottom line concerns. Companies funded by the fund are unequivocal in their praise for it. CTV’s Degrassi web/TV project has often been cited as a leading example of tightly integrating web content with a television show – something the producer of the new media component says wouldn’t have been possible without Bell funding (CNM, Sept. 6/02). Roma Khanna, senior VP of SNAP Media, says the fund has been an important partner. "The Bell fund has been integral to the development of content related to television in the interactive space. Without it, I think some of the most interesting projects that have been created in Canada wouldn’t exist," Khanna tells CNM. "Certainly, without the Bell fund, Degrassi.tv would have been a challenge to create. I can’t say for sure it wouldn’t have happened because there’s lots of partners in there, but the Bell fund was a key stakeholder in that process. The fund’s support was invaluable in creating it. "So, on a project-by-project basis, the Bell fund is one of the few sources you can go to to create innovative content without having the pressure of promising to pay back – and that revenue model that’s so elusive for all of us…The fund allows new media producers and television producers and broadcasters an opportunity to experiment and to try new things and to push the boundaries, and to just test things that we believe to be true, like the web is valuable for television. Without the fund, I’d say the bulk of what’s happening in this space wouldn’t happen. Certainly, on a company level, companies like SNAP Media would be very different companies without the Bell fund. Without the opportunity to go to them, we’d end up focusing much more on fee-for-service work, which is marketing and corporate stuff online." Sheffer says projects like Degrassi are convincing broadcasters of the utility of having associated web content. "Even they will probably now start to agree that there are benefits to having web sites," she says. "It’s taken a while, but they’ve seen the light. Many of them really truly see that it increases audience loyalty to their program. It helps them to keep audiences between seasons. They’ve got great feedback from parents from pre-school sites where they say they’re learning so much from these sites and it’s such a wonderful experience to watch these programs and to be able to go and actually follow through on the activities that were on the show. "There’s a whole long list of things that broadcasters are now saying, ‘gee, we’re basically getting this for free,’ because it’s being funded by the Bell fund and other sources and it’s costing them next to nothing. Plus, they are saying that there are truly benefits." Whenever the Bell fund is discussed, inevitable comparisons arise between it and the Telefilm Canada New Media Fund, which is rapidly becoming the only other pool of money in Canada into which new media producers can tap to create entertainment content. Producers often use Bell fund grants to try to convince Telefilm judges of the business case for their properties, though recent rounds in the latter have been frustrating as the rejection rate approaches 80% (CNM, Jan. 23/03). Asked whether a productive partnership has arisen between the public and private sector funds, Sheffer expresses some cynicism. "So far, unfortunately, the partnership has not worked very well. Telefilm has a much broader mandate than we do, so they have other priorities. I like to think that when we fund something, that’s taken into consideration when they’re making their decision when a project has already received 50% of its funding, but I can’t be assured that’s always happening…I think they may have to be more specific about what they want to fund because it is rather extreme that they fund two out of ten projects." But Sheffer says the Bell fund can continue to be effective regardless of how the Telefilm fund evolves." Telefilm fund didn’t exist for the first three years of the Bell fund," she notes. "We just trotted along merrily without any Telefilm money. So we can exist, but it is increasingly difficult for new media producers to come up with the other 50% of the money. It’s getting harder, not easier. In the first couple of years they were very willing to invest their own money or to defer their own fees because it was all a learning experience. Well, now they’ve learned. And they don’t want to do that anymore. "So it is difficult to find that other 50% without Telefilm. They are finding, you know, they’re getting tax credits and they’re getting corporate sponsors. So there’s bits of funding coming from other sources, but I think having strong government support there is crucial for this little industry."

Past year eventful for Bell fund and industry in general, says Sheffer

News | 02/07/2003 5:00 am EST

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