“We can’t have foreign service production count as ‘Canadian content’ through window dressing. That has raised a red flag for the WGC president as he looks to ensure U.S.-backed local content offers work to guild screenwriters. digital giants will define what does and doesn’t count as “Canadian” for local content they invest in, especially as it applies to user-generated content on YouTube, TikTok and Facebook or as part of a streamer’s local spending obligations. The CRTC during upcoming hearings will also have to decide how regulated U.S. In the run-up to passing Bill C-11, American video and audio streamers convinced Ottawa to create a two-tier Canadian industry where foreign players will be allowed to use fewer local creators, like directors and screenwriters, than traditional broadcasters already have to as part of their regulatory obligations. The CRTC is also weighing requests by domestic broadcasters to reduce their own spending obligations for local content in the wake of reduced overall revenues due to the pandemic, continued cord cutting and an ad industry slowdown.
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His intervention to the CRTC came as the media regulator holds a series of hearings, including ones to establish a new framework to ensure foreign streaming giants subsidize local film and TV production in the wake of Bill C-11, or the Online Streaming Act, becoming law. We can’t just be a branch production plant for Hollywood,” Levine said. We need to make sure Canadian shows get produced too. “These series aren’t Canadian, they aren’t written by Canadians, and they don’t have an authorial Canadian voice. He said the guild’s own data suggests the current boom in Hollywood TV production in Canada creatively driven from Los Angeles benefits local crews and acting talent hired for production shoots, but not WGC screenwriters. More recently, the Writers Guild of America strike and a potential SAG-AFTRA labor action has had a ripple effect in Canada where Hollywood’s production shutdown has left many of the country’s soundstages dark or filled with homegrown film and TV shoots dependent on scripts by WGC members.Įven so, WGC president Levine, in his CRTC submission, appealed to the federal government to invest in more homegrown film and TV production as domestic broadcasters look to scale back on their own obligations to subsidize Canadian content development and production. The guild also stated that rising inflation has pushed up foreign and local production budgets in Canada, and living expenses, forcing local writer earnings down as a consequence.
The WGC did not quantify the fall in writer earnings over five years in dollar terms, but did tell The Hollywood Reporter the median earnings for unionized screenwriters was $28,284 in 2019, before the impact of the pandemic.
Writers Guild Pickets 'The Talk': "That Work Being Done Is Scabbing" Our domestic industry is dying,” WGC president Alex Levine told the CRTC as the media regulator looks to bring Hollywood online players for the first time into its regulatory framework. Out of work writers are switching careers. The 22 percent drop in Canadian screenwriter earnings has been devastating to our members. “These numbers demonstrate the dire straits that Canadian screenwriters find themselves in. The Writers Guild of Canada claims its members have seen their average pay slide by 22 percent over the last five years, when adjusted for inflation, in a submission to Canada’s broadcast and telecom regulator.
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