I think what we have seen over the last years.... We need to remember that when I was a kid I mostly watched the French service of Radio-Canada, but it was full of American programming. We can say that we now have less American programming on our public broadcaster.
On the other hand, the kind of programming that is being produced is getting closer and closer to what the private sector is producing. The reason they are doing that is just to get those commercial dollars they can get through advertising to keep a certain level of production.
The lack of funding, the decrease in funding for the television service, has mainly created that race. To a certain extent, that has also been unfair competition to the private broadcasters. When the public broadcaster is overbidding for certain rights, it's not right. But they have to do it to get audiences, to get advertising. It's a circular problem that I think will just increase, given the fragmentation of audiences.
To come back to the production of specific Canadian programming for non-traditional media, at the NFB we have been operating for years on a very tiny budget. Our annual budget is $70 million. Compared to the $1 billion of the CBC, it's quite tiny. But we do niche productions. With the documentaries and animation films we do, we're able to reach the audience because we can focus closely on our target audience. Most of our revenues are not from broadcasting; they are from theatrical, institutional distribution, and DVDs. It shows there is a market, a smaller market, but for Canadian programming that is not the wide broadcast media that we know. If we can find a way to create those public spaces in the new digital world, that's the only way we'll be able to survive.
I have to tell you I'm scared when I get back home and I see my kids. I have four kids, 10, 13, 15, and 19 years old. They don't watch our public television. They've been raised in an environment where my family has been in the public sector and they're watching American shows on the Internet. Last week when I came back, my daughter was watching an American show subtitled in Chinese that she got on the Internet. It's scary. If they don't have those platforms, they will find programming that is close to what we are.