Aboriginal Program

The Aboriginal Program is designed to support Aboriginal-language independent production in Canada. 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 Aboriginal Program for development and production was $6.7 M in 2013-2014. Aboriginal-language projects received $826K in additional CMF funding from the Performance Envelope, English Production Incentive, and Northern Production Incentive programs.

Production 2013-2014

	Funding ($M)
	TV	DM	Total	Number of projects	Hours	Budgets ($M)
Children's & Youth	1.6	0.3	1.9	4	23
Documentary	3.0	0.5	3.5	10	34
Drama	0.4	0.2	0.6	1	2
Variety & Performing Arts	0.0	0.0	0.0	0	0
Total	5.0	1.0	6.0	15	59	13.1

Production Trends

	2010-2011				2011-2012				2012-2013
	Funding ($M)	Number of projects	Hours	Budgets ($M)	Funding ($M)	Number of projects	Hours	Budgets ($M)	Funding ($M)	Number of projects	Hours	Budgets ($M)
Children's & Youth	1.6	4	20		1.4	4	14		2.8	6	39
Documentary	3.5	11	41		4.0	11	37		2.8	11	28
Drama	0.0	0	0		0.8	2	3		0.0	0	0
Variety & Performing Arts	0.3	1	7		0.3	1	8		0.5	1	7
Total	5.4	16	68	12.6	6.5	18	62	13.5	6.1	18	74	11.6

Aboriginal projects came from Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. Funding support was predominantly in Documentary, at 58.9% for 10 convergent projects.  Children’s and Youth funding received a 31.2% share. One Drama MOW received 9.9% of funding. There have been only 2 other Dramas funded in the last 4 years. A total of 15 digital media components received $1.0M in funding out of the Aboriginal program in 2013-2014. Also, 49 development projects were supported in 2013-2014, a four-year high.

Development 2013-2014

	Funding ($K)	Number of projects
Television	632
Digital Media	29
Convergent Total	661	49

Development Trends

	2010-2011	2011-2012	2012-2013
Funding ($K)	577	394	803
Number of projects	18	15	36

In 2013-2014, APTN licensed 12 projects, Nunavut Independent Television Network licensed two, and Super Channel licensed one. The number of funded television hours decreased to a four-year low of 59. However, the average television production budget per hour was at a four-year high at $223K. Six out of 15 television projects had production budgets of $1M or over.

 

Financing Sources

CMF funding provided 50.9% of television production budgets (a drop from 56.7% last year) and 63.2% of digital media budgets in 2013-2014. Broadcasters provided 14.3% of television budgets with government sources adding 25.5%. A total of 9.3% of project financing came from private funds, producer investment and native band grants. Broadcasters contributed 8.9% of digital media component financing.

Production financing 2013-2014

	Television		Digital Media
	($M)	%	($M)	%
CMF - Aboriginal	5.0	43.7	1.0	62.9
CMF - Performance Envelope, English Production Incentive, Northern Production Incentive	0.8	7.2	0.0	0.3
CMF	5.8	50.9	1.0	63.2
Broadcasters	1.6	14.3	0.2	8.9
Provincial	1.9	16.9	0.1	7.0
Federal	1.0	8.6	0.0	0.0
Private Funds	0.5	3.9	0.1	7.1
Producers	0.3	2.9	0.2	9.0
Foreign	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Distributors	0.0	0.0	0.1	4.8
Other	0.3	2.5	0.0	0.0
Total	11.4	100.0	1.7	100.0

 

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