Thank you.
Good afternoon, all. My name is Maureen Parker and I am the executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada. Here with me today is Rebecca Schechter, president of the Writers Guild and an award-winning screen writer.
The Writers Guild of Canada is the national association representing 2,000 professional screen writers working in English-language film, television, radio, and digital production in Canada. We welcome this opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in this review, and we thank you for the invitation.
We have all heard the cable companies and the broadcasters lobby this government. A public hearing at this committee provides small organizations such as ourselves with the opportunity to be heard on these issues, and we thank you.
We are puzzled by the conflicting information being presented to this committee about the health of our industry. Are we in the middle of a short-term economic crisis, suffering from a long-term structural failure, or maybe both? From our view, Canadian broadcasting is healthy.
In 2008, $2 billion was spent on Canadian television production, which created 58,000 direct jobs. These were highly skilled jobs based in the knowledge economy. Most of these productions engaged WGC members to write drama series, documentaries, variety, and other Canadian television programs.
Private conventional broadcasters earned revenues of over $2 billion in 2008. Specialty broadcasters earned a combined ad-and-subscriber revenue of $2.9 billion. Cable and satellite companies had revenues of $8.2 billion. Until this year, all elements of the Canadian broadcasting system were forecasting growth. Now, due to the global recession, ad revenues are threatened and broadcasters are facing losses--and so are we all.