Village Gamer

Given that the federal budget tabled on March 22 was not adopted, the Canada Media Fund (CMF) announced today that it will shortly be releasing a preliminary program budget for the upcoming year which will not include the 100M$ program funding allocation that was proposed in the budget, as it cannot be confirmed at this time.

The CMF can only release a program budget based on confirmed sources of revenue. Therefore at this juncture, the program budget will include the projected monthly contributions from broadcast distribution undertakings, as well as the allocation of funding of 34.6M$ included in the budget of the Department of Canadian Heritage which is allocated to the CMF.

In the event that the CMF receives a further allocation of funding as a result of the adoption of a federal budget later this year, the CMF will release a supplementary program budget shortly thereafter.

Performance Envelopes will be calculated on the basis of the anticipated full program budget that was approved by the CMF Board including the $100 million funding allocation announced by the Government, in order to assist the industry with licensing and production planning. However, the contractually confirmed amounts of the Performance Envelopes will be based solely on the preliminary program budget described above.

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I for one am very concerned about what this election could mean to our Digital Media industry and all of the hard work so many of us have been doing to work towards a Digital Economy in this country. What ever your political affiliation, please, if you do nothing else leading up to this election, ask your candidates the hard questions – don’t let them wallow about with non-answers. Make them move beyond the finger-pointing and talk about the issues at hand. Do not let our industry fall back down between the cracks of the political landscape. Most of all, exercise your privilege – get out and vote on election day!