The Canadian govt. should create a $30 million-per-year fund to s...

power of drama, Canadian policy-makers have been more or less happy to leave it to the Americans. Of the drama we watch, 91% is American and 9% Canadian,” former CTV Pres. Trina McQueen wrote in the report. McQueen said Canadian broadcasters lost money on domestic drama they air because advertising didn’t recoup production costs. It’s cheaper, she said, to purchase ready-made U.S. series, which attract more viewers and therefore higher ad revenue. She said spending statistics on Canadian drama showed an “alarming picture,” with spending by CBC, the country’s national broadcaster, declining 26% in 2002 from the previous year and private stations 10%. Broadcasters had called on the federal regulator to ensure TV networks broadcast a minimum number of hours of Canadian dramatic programming, but McQueen said that would be “horrible public policy and against the interests of drama.” She recommended that instead of increasing the number of hours, broadcasters focus on attracting larger audiences, with the help of $30-million- per-year over the next 5 years in govt. funding and other incentives. The fund would replace the $25-million annual Canadian TV Fund that was cut in Feb. The media union blasted McQueens’s report as failing to tackle the real issue that public policy should require Canadian broadcasters to spend money on Canadian culture: “In the long run, it is our political leaders who must decide that culture is central to our nationhood and is worth funding appropriately both from the private sector which benefits from our public airwaves and from public coffers,” said Peter Murdoch, vp of the Communications, Energy & Paperworkers Union of Canada. Without that commitment, “it is unlikely Canadians can begin to get as excited about the future of their TV drama as they are about their hockey teams,” he said. Instead of regulating broadcasters, McQueen recommended the govt. direct the funds to script development and producing pilots for series, “to put more horses in the race for audience success.” She said U.S. networks commissioned one new show our of roughly every 100 scripts and 10 pilots, while Canadian networks usually chose from among 3 or 4 scripts and couldn’t afford failed pilots. McQueen also suggested encouraging specialty channels to show dramas, giving broadcasters an extra minute of advertising for every hour of domestic drama aired and reducing their Canadian content quota by an hour per week if they had a hit drama with more than a million viewers. The investment would be rewarded with larger audiences, new jobs and increased tax revenue, McQueen said, and building Canadian drama would benefit the country culturally and economically: “If the audience- building strategy succeeds, the government’s investment would be well rewarded in public benefits.” Ian Morrison, spokesman for the Friends of Canadian Bcstg., noted that the report was released while Canadian broadcasters were in L.A. buying U.S. programming for the upcoming season.