Message from the President and CEO
Photo credit: Regina Leader-Post
During the 2015-2016 fiscal year in a context of increasing market pressures and a rapidly changing industry, the CMF has continued to successfully support Canada’s audiovisual industry through our various funding programs, which last year contributed $371.7M to financing the development and production of 1,400 television and digital media projects.
Over the past 12 months, I have had the pleasure and honour of meeting with government representatives, our funders, many of the producers we work with and support, stakeholders across the country, as well as international partners. These interactions made it clear that the CMF is viewed as a credible and critical partner, well positioned to embrace and invest in the future of Canada’s content industry.
In 2015-2016, CMF funding triggered $1.4B in production activity across the country, an increase of $100M when compared to the previous year. Every $1 of CMF funding to new productions generated $3.87 in production activity. This level of funding and support was made possible thanks to the continued commitment of our funding contributors, the Government of Canada and Canada’s cable, satellite and IPTV distributors.
Key performance indicators reveal that the CMF’s funding programs succeeded in providing valuable support for producers as they create compelling content for Canadian and world audiences. The CMF’s ongoing promotional efforts, coupled with our in-depth industry research on current and upcoming trends, have continually benefited Canada’s content producers by fostering a positive environment for Canadian productions and identifying future trends.
The CMF’s programs remain well aligned with the industry’s current needs. In 2015-2016 alone, we managed 2,045 funding applications and our programs were almost fully subscribed at 99 per cent.
The quality of Canadian audiovisual content continues to be celebrated in Canada and abroad. Canadian audiovisual content received critical acclaim and, thanks to growing sales beyond our borders, Canada’s stories reached new audiences. In 2015-2016, CMF-funded projects received 952 award nominations, including 182 wins in 17 award ceremonies across the country. Internationally, 30 CMF-funded projects received nominations, of which 11 won awards in eight different awards ceremonies, including the Peabody Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards and the Kidscreen Awards, to name a few. Producers of Convergent projects reported 860 cumulative sales of 261 CMF-funded productions in markets on six continents.
The growing popularity of Canadian content is also noted here at home, where twenty-seven productions delivered television audiences of over one million viewers in the broadcast season. The weekly per capita viewing to CMF-funded productions was 1.51 hours in the English market and 3.48 hours in the French market. Total measured visits to CMF-funded digital media projects were 25.7M in the Convergent Stream and 2M in the Experimental Stream.
In 2015-2016, we continued to improve our processes to better meet the industry’s needs. Stakeholder satisfaction with the CMF’s communications role is at 85 per cent, satisfaction with program administration is at 86 per cent, and satisfaction levels of the CMF outreach tour achieved a score of 89 per cent.
Finance
Through its Convergent Stream, the CMF financed the production of 541 television programs. These were complemented by 234 associated digital media projects, allowing for additional audience engagement with supported content. Convergent Stream production commitments amounted to $314.9M in 2015-2016 and triggered over $1.3B in production volume. Projects emanated from all regions of the country, in a cross-section of languages spoken by Canadians, namely both official languages and Aboriginal languages, as well as Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
Through its Experimental Stream, the CMF provided $40.5M in funding to 104 projects at the development, production and marketing stages, triggering $63.9M in industry activity. Applications originated from across Canada.
Resulting from an agreement between the CMF and Corus Entertainment, we managed the Corus-CMF Page-to-Pitch Program dedicated to funding creative and business activities during the development of eligible live-action and animated television projects. Through this program, 17 development projects were funded, totaling $0.5M.
Promote
The CMF partnered with 54 industry events and contributed to an additional 22 industry events in Canada and internationally. These aligned with the CMF’s objectives of promoting Canadian content, featuring Canada as a partner of choice for coproductions, disseminating industry intelligence and leveraging CMF funding by developing matching fund programs with other countries. The CMF participated at international events such as MIPTV, MIPCOM, Bogotá Audiovisual Market, RioContentMarket and Power to the Pixel to promote Canadian content and continue fostering new opportunities to develop coproduction partnership agreements with select funding agencies in other markets.
The CMF reached out to the business community by presenting a keynote luncheon on the economic impact of the audiovisual industry before the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, resulting in exposure before hundreds of business and industry professionals as well as several Canadian media outlets.
Foster and develop
The CMF continues to build on its credibility in identifying key developments in the content sector. In 2015-2016, the CMF Trends website and the crowdfunding microsite performed extremely well in disseminating industry research through blog posts, research papers, and enhanced crowdfunding data. Our Keytrends reports were the most performing content on the CMF Trends website, attesting to the expertise the CMF has developed as a trusted source of industry information.
Other Highlights
As mentioned in the Message from the Chair, we are extremely pleased with the results of Canadian Heritage’s program evaluation of the CMF, which spans the first four years of the program. This sets the bar high to maintain and surpass the assessment of our program in the months and years to come. I know our team is up to the challenge, as there is still much to be done as we continue to adapt to the changing realities of the global content industry.
Our steadfast commitment to supporting Canada’s audiovisual industry guides us in everything we do. We are confident that the sound administration of the CMF’s programs will allow us to continue supporting a growing number of high-quality Canadian productions in the years to come. We look forward to our continued collaboration with Minister Mélanie Joly and her team at Canadian Heritage as we work together to ensure the CMF remains in a position to be responsive to the many changes ahead.
Thanks to the CMF’s commitment to meaningful consultation with our stakeholders and our operational responsiveness to industry developments, the CMF is positioned to face new challenges head on, while continuing to seize new opportunities to further advance the industry we are proud to work with and support.
I wish to thank the CMF Board of Directors for their invaluable guidance and support. I would also like to extend my gratitude to all CMF staff and the CMF Program Administrator’s employees at Telefilm Canada for their dedicated efforts and for the way they continue to embrace our culture of transparency and client-driven service delivery. Together, we see the promise of an increasingly vibrant and dynamic content industry in Canada, and together we will work to ensure that content is seen by the world.
Valerie Creighton
President and CEO