Canadian docs need broadcasters’ support as production falls, DOC says

Canadian broadcasters’ diminishing appetite for documentary programming caused documentary production to fall since 2008, said Lisa Fitzgibbons, executive director of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC). In a telephone interview, Fitzgibbons discussed a draft DOC report, to be released publicly in May, that found the number of documentary projects in Canada fell from 591 in 2008-2009 to 457 in 2010-2011, causing total documentary production spending to drop by 21 per cent, or $105 million, during the period. The draft report, provided to The Wire Report and titled “Getting Real 5,” was compiled by Nordicity Group Ltd. and says the drop in production has accounted for a loss of 4,000 jobs in the sector since 2008. Fitzgibbons said Canadian television is the single largest market for Canadian documentaries and that Canadian broadcasters are the “primary source” of funding for documentary projects. She said documentary projects are declining because broadcasters' demand for shorter documentaries has waned while their appetite for feature-length projects has nearly disappeared. “ encourage broadcasters to see the value of documentary programming beyond the series,” Fitzgibbons said, noting that shorter, documentary series account for 72 per cent of all documentary production in the country. Fitzgibbons said the financing model for Canadian documentaries is “totally tethered” to broadcasters and doesn’t reflect that there are other, new media players and over-the-top services that can help market demand. “There are other ways, especially now that we have Netflix and digital distribution,” she said. “Market demand can come in many different guises.” According to the report, conventional television broadcasters in the French- and English-language markets ran less than 90 minutes of Canadian documentary programming per week, on average, in the 2009-2010 season. It says each English-language specialty channel aired 9.1 hours of Canadian documentary programming each week and French-language specialty channels each aired 4.5 per week, on average. The report says production volume in the French-language market hit its lowest point in the 2010-2011 broadcast year that ended on Aug. 31, 2011, falling 12 per cent from 2008-2009 to $85 million. Total English-language production volume also declined “dramatically,” the report said, by $85 million or 25 per cent from 2008-2009. There were eight feature-length documentary films under production in the English-market language in 2010-2011, the report says, down from 30 in 2008-2009. Twenty three feature-length films were under production in the French-language market in 2010-2011, according to the report, down from 35 in 2008-2009. It says Canadian documentary programming garners “respectable” audience numbers. In the 2010-2011 broadcast year, the report says, the 10 most-viewed English-language documentaries reached an average minute audience of more than 800,000, with one episode of CBC/Radio-Canada’s Doc Zone reaching 930,000 viewers. “In the French-language market, the highest rated documentary in 2010/11, Réal Giguère, l'homme derrière l'image, garnered almost 1.5 million viewers in terms of average minute audiences,” the report said. Fitzgibbons said Canadian audiences won't be aware of or won't be able to find Canadian documentaries if broadcasters don't offer and promote them. “Often we’re told, 'Well, people don’t want this,' but it’s sort of a chicken and egg thing,” she said. She said “broadcast is only part of the viewing ecology,” and that more audiences are engaging with documentaries at community centres, theatres and documentary festivals. According to the report, Canadian broadcasters contributed about $3 million to feature-length English documentary projects in 2008-2009, “but almost dropped off the chart completely by 2010/11.” Canadian broadcasters contributed less than $1 million towards French-language feature-length documentaries each year between 2008-2009 and 2010-2011, the report said. Fitzgibbons said broadcasters should take a more active role to have documentaries go beyond “series” productions that run multiple episodes, or short documentaries, that all explore the same subject. Instead, she said, the group would like to see broadcasters committing to more “one-off stands,” such as CBC’s The Nature of Things or Doc Zone programs, which air a documentary that examines a different subject each week. “I would love to see a broadcaster say, ‘Ok, we would like to take a strand, so that we are going to showcase an hour-long documentary and it’s going to be a different one every week, and we are going to promote the heck out of it,’” she said. Documentaries could be used to anchor prime time shows, she said. Mark Starowicz, CBC’s executive director of documentary programming, said by email that documentaries are “flourishing” worldwide with regular exposure at film festivals and on public broadcasting services like CBC and BBC. “Documentaries are becoming the mainstay of festivals from Sundance to Hot Docs, and do very well on public television networks like CBC, Radio-Canada, TVO and PBS, and many specialty channels like HBO,” Starowicz said. “It's only the commercial over-the air major networks that are missing the point. When they look around, see what young people are watching, and see what is happening on the internet, they may catch the wave.” David Perlmutter, head of production at Halifax-based Arcadia Entertainment Inc., which focuses on documentaries, said if documentary production is declining in Canada, Arcadia is not seeing it. “It’s not in decline at our company,” he said. Jean LaRose, chief executive of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network Inc. (APTN), said in an email Wednesday that documentaries are a large part of what APTN does, and will continue to be. “There are no plans to move away from that form,” LaRose said. “In fact, we expect it to grow as a content form for the network.” Fitzgibbons said in BCE Inc.’s reworked proposal to acquire Astral Media Inc. for $3.38-billion, which will be considered by the CRTC at a hearing starting May 6, the broadcaster committed to providing financial support to Canadian documentary festivals Hot Docs and the Rencontre international du documentaire. Fitzgibbons said she would like to see Bell commit more funding to documentaries. Bell's financial support would be drawn from $4.37 million in benefits spending to support Canadian film festivals over seven years, according to the company’s CRTC application. Bell said it would also spend $68.21 million in tangible benefits over seven years on independent programming of national interest, which can include documentary programming. Bell did not provide a comment for this story by deadline. —With reporting by Danika Grenier at dgrenier@thewirereport.ca and editing by Nicholas Kyonka at nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

Canadian docs need broadcasters’ support as production falls, DOC says

Broadcast | April 30, 2013

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