Outside company to sell CBC shows internationally
The CBC plans to sell the rights to distribute its progamming internationally. Currently, those titles are sold through the CBC’s international sales division.
If the deal goes through, expected in the New Year, Fireworks International will get the rights to sell 135 of the CBC’s shows and films to international broadcasters. Fireworks, owned by a British film called ContentFilm International, would also pick up any liabilities and receivables associated with the catalog.
The agreement would not affect any of the CBC’s broadcasting rights nor its archives.
Neither CBC nor Fireworks would say how much the deal was worth. A list of the 135 programs isn’t available until after the deal is concluded.
“The way this business works is it requires ready access to large sums of capital,” CBC’s head of business development Steve Billinger told me. “There’s a high cost of selling to international markets — large booths, lots of staff on site, and you’re competing against major studios like MGM and Fox, and major independent distributors. You are truly competing with them. [And since] we have no formal relationship with any of the independent producers, we either outbid or lose the business.”
Billinger says the the sale is permanent; it’s not a multi-year licencing agreement. “We were trying to maintain the level of scale and resources required to compete internationally… We just weren’t able to sustain that on any kind of go-forward basis.” After all, the money trying to sustain this business would have to come from programming. In a funny way, it was like one half of the CBC investing in the other half.”
Staff Impact
Currently, 13 people work in the CBC’s international sales department. Asked how this would affect those people, Billinger said “I’m not sure what the impact is going to be. We haven’t issued any [layoff] notifications. I understand ContentFilms is interested in talking to all of those people in regards to how they go forward.”
About Fireworks
Fireworks was originally a Canadian firm with two arms: A production arm and an international distribution arm. The firm was bought out by CanWest Global which shut the production arm down and sold its library to ContentFilm. ContentFilm will establish a Canadian office to handle the CBC business. Billinger says other distribution firms were not considered: “We were really not shopping the business around at all.”
ContentFilm did more than $16 million worth of license agreements last year for shows and films, including the Emmy Awards, Andromeda, and Relic Hunter.
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Really bad idea. Where are the public consultations where I can go and oppose this?
Steve’s another “go-forward” kinda guy, isn’t he? Do they remove plain English when they hire these people?
I’m not opposed to contracting someone else to sell our programs internationally, but a permanent deal (as opposed to a license) will lock CBC in. What if a more profitable potential deal comes up later? How many other firms did they consider before choosing Fireworks?
Good questions, both.
With Gabriel’s first comment on this — the public should be consulted on deals that are this far-reaching.
You are kidding, aren’t you? I’m not particularly enthusiastic about this deal either, but what you’re proposing is crazy. Do you want to have a referendum on every business decision in every Crown Corporation? (Coz if so, I’ve been trying to get some RAM for my work box for the past 6 months – maybe we could take the purchase order to the polls in early January?)
If you want to talk about public say in the media, about really vital things where the voice of the people needs to be heard and soon, maybe you should look at the most recent private CanWest merger, which the CRTC just rubber-stamped, or the new copyright bill being proposed in January, or the planned integration of CBC TV and Radio. Whatever your stance on these issues, they will shape the media landscape for years to come, and they directly affect what the Canadian public gets to see and how they get to see it. The outsourcing of international syndication by the CBC, while important to the people involved, and hopefully to their union reps, is nothing by comparison, nada, zip.
Apparently all 13 staffers will be cut from CBC.
Well that just sucks. Someone must have read the first couple of chapters of A Christmas Carol and mistaken it for Secrets Of Successful Executives.
But Kevin, most of those other things that you say I should be concerned about are not CBC-related (except for the integration one, which I’m not sure I’m opposed to). Also public consultations ≠ referendum.
I am shocked that the CBC is selling these programs outright rather than licensing the distribution for a limited time. They were created with public funds; they should stay in Canadian hands. I wonder also how this deal affects residuals, royalties, etc.
Media consolidation definitely affects the CBC. Copyright law changes, not so much, it’s true, but if you care enough to freak out over a relatively minor (not to the people who’ve been cut obviously, but to the industry in general) outsourcing decision then you should be at least aware of the changes there.
And what form do you think this public consultation should take? If it’s not a poll of the general public, what else is there that’s fair and not just a way for special interest groups to unduly influence your public broadcaster? And what about the effect it would have on the responsiveness of the organisation to change? It just makes no sense at all to me, but maybe I’m missing something.
For the record, I am quite concerned about copyright law changes.
Both issues worth of attention.
The department was actually making money since the intro of several series including Heartland, The Border, etc. The problem is that Billinger doesn’t want the portfolio. He handles Digital and Business Development. The department didn’t have a chance under this structure because of it’s misplacement within CBC. Once the Director of CBC International Sales was relieved of her duties the department was easy pickings. It had no voice. We all realise the interesting strategy.