Honey, we shrunk the kids’ programming industry

Turn the dial to CBC or TVOntario during the weekday, or specialty services such as YTV and Treehouse any time, and you might be convinced that Canada’s children’s programming industry is healthier than ever. But according to a panel at the Canadian Film and Television Production Association’s (CFTPA) Prime Time conference last month, the picture is anything but rosy."The kids are not alright," moderator Peter Moss, chair of the Alliance for Children and Television (ACT), said. He noted that the children’s programming genre has been in a protracted decline since 1999 and the CRTC’s "Building on Success" conventional television policy. In a corollary to that document (Public Notice 1999-120), the commission ruled that kids’ programming was a viable and exportable segment of broadcast production, and – aside from shows produced outside the main production centres of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – shouldn’t be protected under the new dramatic programming credit regime. As a result, the kids and youth genre has fallen from making up 22% of all English-language production in Canada to 16% most recently.The session highlighted in part a report conducted by Nordicity Group Ltd. and prepared for the CFTPA in partnership with ACT, the Shaw Rocket Fund, and the National Film Board. The document, titled A Case for Kids Programming, was released in February and contends that much has changed since the CRTC’s 1999 policy ruling that the children’s programming industry was vibrant and benefiting handsomely from export markets.More recently, falling budgets, declining production volume and diminishing levels of funding from the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) have debilitated the industry, along with a decline in international co-productions. All this, despite the fact that the genre is one of the most lucrative in terms of return on investment according to the Nordicity report, boasting a 15.3% ROI compared to an average ROI of 7.4% across all genres.Decode Entertainment president Steven DeNure, whose firm is behind such hit series as Franny’s Feet and Naturally Sadie, observed that on the face of it, there is no better place than Canada to produce children’s programming. Between contributions from the CTF, the tax credits available at various levels of government, and other sources, producers here can expect to raise up to 70% of their production budget from venues other than broadcaster licence fees – a rate that compares very favourably with other parts of the world, where as little as 30% of funding comes from production funds and other sources. "From the outside looking in, our system is the envy of kids’ programmers around the world," he said.However, some of those sources can no longer be counted on to provide the level of funding they have in the past. CTF president Valerie Creighton said that while the introduction of Broadcaster Performance Envelopes (BPEs) – which reward broadcasters that have strongly supported priority Canadian productions in the past – has instilled some certainty in how the fund allocates money, it also means that they’ve ceded some control to broadcasters as to how that money gets spent. In the most recent status report on BPE funding – announced after the conference, on March 6 – the CTF allocated $242 million to eligible productions across four genres: children and youth; documentary; drama; variety and performing arts. Of that amount, $32.4 million – or 13% – was allocated to children and youth.The CTF, noted Creighton, is "compelled to deliver on what audiences are doing," and right now 14% of Canada’s population is kids, meaning demographics are in part limiting the appeal of children’s programming – and the amount of funding it can get under the BPE system.However, Kevin Wright, senior VP of programming at Astral Media’s The Family Channel, said his organization has benefited from some of that BPE-induced certainty at the CTF, thanks to its success with the Shaftesbury Entertainment-produced Life With Derek. Nonetheless, he adds, "we know the compromise of doing more with a successful series means we can’t start a new series," thereby contributing to the decline in production volume.But even the CBC, once a mighty force in children’s programming, has fallen off in recent years, said Galakids president and CEO Louis Fournier, who notes that while other public broadcasters in other countries are maintaining or growing their allocation to programming for youngsters, the CBC has "retreated from the kids’ area" and cut its funding for such programs, a decision all the more counterintuitive given that demographic’s prominence in its overall audience numbers."If you look at the market share by age group, CBC has the strongest share in kids 2-11," Fournier said. "If you have a strong hand, you should play it."When asked for solutions on how to rebuild the children’s programming segment of Canadian television production, all panelists murmured agreement with Decode’s DeNure, who said: "You could double the size of the kid’s envelope in the CTF." Nordicity’s full report can be found at: http://www.act-aet.tv/PDF_aet_act/The_Case_for_Kids_programming.pdf.

Honey, we shrunk the kids’ programming industry

Broadcast | March 16, 2007

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