Canadian Heritage Committee on May 24th, 2007

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your presentation this morning.

Ms. Wilson, I'd like to follow up on the last sets of comments. We've heard fairly consistently about the disappearance of resources from the regions, not just of the funding envelope, but the complete loss of a generation of producers, of script support, of the people at CBC in the various regional offices who were looking for the new ideas. If they're not there, you're going to have to go to Toronto to pitch your story. That seems to be a sense we're hearing across this country.

I'd like to ask you a two-part question. Firdt, is it your experience here in Newfoundland that the actual infrastructure of ideas and support at the regional office of CBC here is disappearing through the loss of key people?

Second, we haven't had a major drop in budget at CBC in the last 18 months, and yet it seems that the empire strikes back. Toronto and Montreal are pulling in all their markers. Is this a senior management decision? Are they just not interested in the regions of Canada? What would you say is the cause of that?

[Lynne Wilson]

I don't know. It's been my experience.... I've been producing for seven years, and Paul along with me, and in that seven years I've noticed that we used to be able to go to the regional CBC and pitch an idea and get some money for development and then you'd end up going into production shortly thereafter, especially in the documentary world, where it's very quick. But I've noticed in the last two or three years that we are going to Toronto to pitch our ideas, and we are having to go to the Banffs of the world and talk to the national people more so than the regional. We used to be able to do this, start a project regionally, and now we're finding that's not the case.

I'm not sure what your experience is with that, Paul, but that's what I'm finding.

[Paul Pope]

It's always been a situation of generating some interest at the local level, which we still can do, and then getting it into the network to pitch.

You ask a really interesting question about why it's happening, because we look at it the same way. I guess we ask ourselves the same questions. I'm an eternal optimist, and I would argue that, please God, if we talk about this enough it will be a self-correcting course. I believe the CBC is committed to regional production and I believe that regional production has worked for them in terms of the audience and the numbers they've had.

So if we're going through this CBC reorganization right now, which we have been in terms of their taking a direct approach to adjust market share upward, I don't think I'm talking out of school to say we've seen certain reality and lifestyle in Julie Bristow's department move in to take over some of the spaces that were typically documentary. That's a programming decision. Whether you like it or not, some of these shows are doing extraordinary numbers: Test the Nation, 1.5 million; The Next Great Prime Minister, 700,000; even Dragons' Den, 400,000 or 500,000. So you can't sit back and say this stuff doesn't work.

So the challenge for producers and for us is to keep ourselves front and centre and to make sure our ideas are in there and being well received, which I think they are. I think the role of this committee and of Heritage Canada is to make sure the CBC's management, whoever they may be at any given time, are well aware of the responsibilities of having the keys to the canoe.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

We've seen examples. Little Mosque on the Prairie is our big hit machine right now. It's produced in Toronto. Is there a neighbourhood in Riverdale in Toronto that we can make look like St. John's, and can we do regional St. John's programming down on Eastern Avenue? Is that possible? And what effect do you think that would have not just on the legitimacy of the show, but the relevance of it?

[Paul Pope]

Not being from Saskatchewan, if you're going down the path of appropriation of culture, Little Mosque on the Prairie may be an interesting one to talk about, but I don't have a comment as to whether that's good or bad.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Okay.

We look at the cost of television. Reality TV is cheap, so people produce it. It used to be that—and you can correct me—documentary would get half the audience that drama would get, but it would only cost one-third. So there was always an interest in going for documentaries because the returns were fairly good. Yet what I'm hearing is that documentaries seem to be flatlining. So we're not getting the regional drama or comedy and we're not getting documentaries at the same level. Is that an experience you have here in Newfoundland?

[Paul Pope]

I think the audience of today is less interested in a show on how the car performs on the highway and more interested in a show on “car in the ditch, car in the ditch”. It's feeding a certain element of the audience's taste, but at the same time I think it's important there's a balance out there when we make programs.

You're talking about the cost of production skyrocketing. It certainly is, and if you look at the last set of CTF guidelines there is recognition that the cost of pilots is almost double the cost of an aggregated one-hour series. The guidelines have been revised to reflect this. You can expect a half-hour pilot of Little Mosque on the Prairie to cost $800,000, with a run rate of around $400,000 if you are doing 13 of them. This has just been recognized by the Canadian Television Fund in the new guidelines, and there are new licensing and contribution thresholds to reflect the high cost of pilot production. So the cost of production is also a stress on the amount of production that will be done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

I want to comment on the “car on the road” and the “car in the ditch”. It reminds me of a personal thing. I did a walk a number of years ago. I lost weight, trained, and walked from Tobermory to my little town of Sebringville. I had an agreement with the local newspaper to call them every day at nine o'clock.

On the first day I called in I had walked for a couple of days, and the day before I had walked 27 miles. They asked where I was, and I told them. They asked how I was feeling, and I said I was fine. They asked if there was anything wrong, and I said no, but I have a blister. So it came out in the paper that Shellenberger had developed a blister on his walk. The next day when I called in, the very first thing they asked was, “How is your blister?” I said, “I got two more.”

It's like “car in the ditch, car in the ditch”. People back home thought I was crawling down the road on my hands and knees with these big blisters. They were sore, but I made it through. That really sold newspapers. In fact, by the end of the week, when I finally got home, the people were very relieved that I was finally there. But the interest wasn't necessarily in me walking down the road. As soon as I was in the a bit of distress or “in the ditch”, that's what sold the papers.

So I know what you're talking about, from that particular instance. That's just a little history. Sorry about that.

Mr. Scott.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

You referred to your region a number of times. What is your region? How do you define it?

[Lynne Wilson]

I define my region as Newfoundland and Labrador. Politically speaking, in the CBC world I guess our region is Atlantic, which includes the four Atlantic provinces.

[Paul Pope]

We are actually CBNT, which is Newfoundland and Labrador. CBHT is in the Maritimes.

[Lynne Wilson]

St. John's gets a chunk of the TransCanada Fund, and then Halifax, New Brunswick, and P.E.I. get a chunk. So we do have that.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I'm exploring the possibility that part of the problem has to do with the definition. Mr. Pope referred to the CBC over time, and you referred to it more recently in the context of the different proponents. Is it the same CBC? We've heard a lot about resources. Coming into this exercise, I would be one to believe it's really a matter of resources. But beyond that, is the thinking the same and is the vision the same?

If there were not a resources problem and we figured out an amount of money equivalent to what would have been available to the CBC when it was in its heyday--when things were happening that you've described--would the effect be the same, or would that resource go to an entirely different vision? How do you feel about that?

[Lynne Wilson]

I'm not sure I understand.

[Paul Pope]

Well, I feel like Castro: I'm on my third vice-president of CBC television, and I'll probably still be producing when I meet with my fourth. So the CBC vision is, I think, still the same.

I would argue that what Mr. Stursberg is doing is really interesting. I mean, it's going to offend a lot of sensibilities because of the so-called lower-brow reality lifestyle type of stuff, but I would argue that if he had the resources to be able to open up what some may think of as non-destructive time slots, like regional time slots that you can put material into to see how it resonates with that audience before it went to the national audience, I think he would jump at it.

If you can't sell a product at home it's not fair to expect that you're going to sell it at foreign. If you're making a prairie show and you can't sell it in the prairies, well, then it's not reasonable to expect that it's going to do well on the network or that it's going to do well internationally. Of course, there are exceptions. If there were the resources available to be able to produce for smaller audiences, I think they would jump at it. I also believe that they would jump at being able to produce pilots that do not necessarily have to be televised in prime time.

In Canada, it's virtually impossible for a television station to produce a pilot through the conventional system with independents and not air it. If they do not air it, they're offside with the tax credits and offside with the Canadian Television Fund, so the freight has to be carried completely by the broadcaster. If there were an ability to be able to do pilots and then run them out in Newfoundland or the prairies, I think they would jump at it. But this is an expensive undertaking.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

So they've been financially squeezed. My question was around the--

[Paul Pope]

I think they would. I think their ideology would have them do that.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Okay, that's good to know. I appreciate that.

The question was around whether the financial squeeze that has overtaken CBC over time has actually changed the way they view the world. It's not their fault. This isn't a value judgment in terms of the management as much as they're simply doing what they can with what they have.

There's so much change in the thinking, that if you reinvest at the levels you would perhaps like to, whether that would in fact manifest itself in more support for regional or whether that idea's one.... I appreciate very much your confidence, because I'd like to have it myself, that if the investment were made the outcomes you anticipate with the investment would come. I would hope that as well. I'm reassured by your comments.

[Lynne Wilson]

There will. I mean, we've proven it in the past. We've made shows. We produced Random Passage. It had 1.2 million viewers on CBC television. It was one of their most popular mini-series ever. So we're not afraid of competition. We can compete with other producers across the country. I think what's happening with CBC is they have to chase advertising dollars, so they're getting into more homogenized...and of course regionally, we're not homogenized.

I'm sure we'll adjust to that. We have to.

[Paul Pope]

There is an audience for regional production. Above & Beyond aired in October-November, and it held the audience record for drama, beating out Intelligence and a number of shows, up until the Margaret Atwood movie beat us out in February. I mean, there is a demand for it.

In terms of audience, that's an ideology. If we go back to Slawko Klymkiw, I'll quote him, and I think I can quote him from speaking in front of you guys, “audience numbers is a mug's game”. He had a dollar amount that would cost them a point. He said he could spend $600,000 or $700,000 in off-network advertising and drive the audience share up one point. So the question becomes: Is that point important enough to displace that money being spent on programming?

Mr. Stursberg clearly set out that one million would be the benchmark for go or no-go for drama, and I'm prepared to eat a little crow here, because I was one of the people who said “You're nuts; those days are gone!”, until of course Little Mosque on the Prairie averages over a million per show and comes in at two million for its opening episode. So it's the art of the possible.

That's the decision they're going for, and I believe they feel it's important to meet the accountability requirements of the government of the day, which was, let's not forget, one of the pillars of the government that we have in Ottawa at the moment. In terms of broadcasting, accountability is how you spend your money and what you get for it. What you get for it are the ratings that come out, so there's clearly pressure on the CBC to get good ratings, and there is a management team in place with that as a goal. It's not for me to say whether that's good or bad. It's for me to try to produce programming that they want to buy that will meet those goals.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Ms. Bourgeois, did you have a short question? Do you want to ask any more questions?

Mr. Angus, you'll have a chance for a short question too.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Personally, I do not think that the problem is only an issue of resources. Ms. Wilson, in your presentation, you talked about a current situation that is serious for independent producers. It is difficult for us to understand the problem you are facing, because independent producers are vectors of change and evolution in our society. It must be said: you both have a social role to play in society by presenting evolving ideas and elements to the population, and to youth.

I would really like to understand the precise nature of the problem you are having with the CBC. Perhaps it is a problem of negotiation or something of a completely different nature. I would greatly appreciate your giving us a very specific, honest account, so that we can truly understand whether the problems you are experiencing here are the same as those we have heard about in the rest of the country.

Ms. Wilson, you also spoke about the issue of philosophy. Do you not believe, both of you, that the committee, like the Canadian government, will have to choose at some point between promoting local and regional culture and American culture?

[Lynne Wilson]

I think the only way they would have to make a decision like that is if the CBC no longer existed, and then the shelf space for Canadian content would drop dramatically and, yes, we'd have American television on Canadian television totally, because it draws more advertising dollars and they make more money. That's not to say the American shows are better than the Canadian shows. I think that people who are watching Canadian shows enjoy them. It's been proven with Little Mosque on the Prairie and with those numbers, so people do want to see Canadian content and they do want to see themselves reflected on television. I don't think the CBC is ever going to have to make a choice between culture and U.S. television shows. I don't think that's going to happen.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Pope, what do you think?

[Paul Pope]

I think that clearly, as a supporter of the CBC, I have to couch it as a supporter of the CBC. I think I'm still allowed to criticize them, and I certainly have. If you're looking for particular criticism, I would encourage the current management to spend a little more time looking at institutional history and to see what has worked and not worked in the past and to integrate that in with their bold new vision. I have a concern that they have a trend to go more urban. I'm not sure if that's paranoia or if it's real, but it's certainly something that we're watching, and we're putting good stories in front of them.

I have to just go back to add to what I felt about Little Mosque on the Prairie being shot in Toronto. I'm currently developing a project that is an incredibly famous Canadian book by a famous Canadian writer, and it's set in Toronto, at the University of Toronto. If I option that and do it, I will shoot it here and double it as Toronto. I think I'm allowed to do that; that's okay in our country—we have mobility laws. So that's why, I think, I didn't sort of knee-jerk and say “Those Toronto bastards, taking Little Mosque on the Prairie from Saskatchewan and bringing it in,” because perhaps I will shoot a Toronto show here. Who knows?