English POV Program

This program is designed to support the growth of English-language point of view (POV) documentaries. This program is part of the Canada Media Fund’s (CMF) Convergent Stream; thus, projects funded through this program must include content to be produced for distribution on at least two platforms, one of which must be television and the other, digital media. Funding from this program is allocated according to a selective process, using an evaluation grid. The budget of the English POV Program was $5.0 M in 2015-2016.

A total of 19 documentaries received $5.0M. 16 feature-length and a one-hour project were funded. Two projects were digital media components which had television components funded in a previous year. The average television project budget reached a 5-year high of $751K, over $100K increase from` 2014-2015. 15 out of 19 convergent projects had digital media second screen components. English POV Program projects received an additional $1.0M from the Performance Envelope Program and regional incentives. Regional projects received 40.6% of funding in 2015-2016.

Broadcasters triggering English POV program projects in 2015-2016 were Super Channel, Documentary, TVO, The Movie Network, CBC, Vision TV, Radio-Canada, Canal D, Knowledge, RDI, and CBC News Network.

The most significant financial participants in television projects, outside of broadcasters, CMF and government incentives were private funds. POV financial structures were mostly similar to previous years, although one project received 11.4% of its financing through crowdfunding on Indiegogo (seen in “Other”).