Canada Media Fund Announces New Two-Year Program Guidelines and 2012-2013 Program Budget
The Canada Media Fund (CMF) has announced new two-year Program Guidelines for the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 fiscal years. It also announced the program budget for 2012-2013 set at $375 million.
“The changes to the Program Guidelines reflect feedback received during extensive consultations with the industry”, stated Valerie Creighton, CMF President and CEO. “In line with our objective to simplify our programs, we have worked to develop multi-year guidelines and have condensed presentation documents for greater clarity. We’ve also furthered our goal to reward success by implementing a soon to be released Digital Media Performance Measurement Framework. Stakeholders have greatly contributed to the advancement of our policies and programs and we would like to thank them for their valued input.”
The 2012-2013 Program Budget (PDF) is set at $375 million, an increase of $4 million over the previous year’s budget.
Changes to the guidelines reflect the two strategic objectives identified last year by the CMF’s Board to continue moving the organization forward, namely to simplify the CMF’s policies and programs and to reward success. Key changes included in the new Program Guidelines are as follows:
All Streams and Programs
* In keeping with the CMF’s objective to reward success, all CMF-funded projects will be required to report on sales. This data will serve to design an incentive to reward success in terms of sales in order to complement those currently in effect to reward audience success.
Convergent Stream
* In order to encourage the production of more rich and substantialDigital Media components and reduce the current financing gap in the production of these components, the CMF’s maximum contribution has been increased from 50% to 75% of the component’s eligible costs. The dollar caps applicable to each program remain unchanged.
* The Convergent Digital Media Incentive has been improved by removing the barrier to eligibility related to the broadcaster’s minimum spending requirement and increasing CMF’s contribution to 75% of eligible costs. The $500,000 per project cap remains unchanged; however a new minimum budget of $100,000 is introduced.
* Broadcasters will be required to commit 60% of their Performance Envelope to Eligible Projects that include a rich and substantial Digital Media component. Projects with pre-existing rich and substantial Digital Media components will no longer count towards this target percentage.
* The CMF will no longer recoup investments and participate in profits beyond 7 years after the submission of the first exploitation report, except in the case of revenues pursuant to a syndication agreement.
* The English Production Incentive has been amended so that all cycles of a series will qualify. Provinces and territories that qualify for the Incentive in 2012-2013, along with funding allocations, are available on the CMF website.
Experimental Stream
* In order to better align with current industry practices, the CMF is introducing a different approach to recoupment based on the type of project. A distinction will be made between Finished products and Live Exploitation products. At the producer’s request, this change can apply retroactively.
* CMF will now provide Marketing and Promotion support in the form of a recoupable advance, repayable from revenue generated by the exploitation of the project.
* To facilitate producers’ workflow, the CMF is introducing distinct application deadlines for development, production and marketing.
More Information on the Program Guidelines
Complete Program Guidelines, application deadlines, and a summary of all the changes are available on online. The CMF will hold a webcast to provide an overview of the changes to the programs on Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 at 11 a.m., EDT in French and 2 p.m., EDT in English. Participants will be invited to ask questions by email or through the CMF Twitter feed.
The CMF will organize Outreach meetings across the country to meet with stakeholders in person. A schedule of meetings will be announced shortly.
Performance Envelopes Program
On February 2, 2012, the CMF announced the Factor Weights used for 2012-2013 Performance Envelope Calculations. The CMF has since sent broadcaster agreements outlining the amounts allocated for the upcoming year to individual broadcasters. Details about each broadcaster’s Performance Envelope will be announced in mid-April, 2012, and posted on the CMF website.
