Shaw Rocket Fund asks CRTC to champion kids content

The org, which is expected to stop receiving funding from Rogers in August, wants the Canadian regulator to require that 20% of broadcasters’ programming spend to go to the creation of children’s content.
January 22, 2025

In a bid to protect Canadian-made kids programming from an even more precipitous drop in production volume than it has already experienced, Shaw Rocket Fund has asked the CRTC to create a funding obligation to support this content. 

In a filing to the Canadian regulator that went public yesterday, Shaw Rocket Fund is asking the CRTC to impose a mandate whereby 20% of Canadian programming expenditures (CPEs) would be allocated to children’s programming. (CPEs refer to the expenditures that broadcasters must spend on programs of national interest, or PNI.) 

For broadcasters that don’t offer kids content, Shaw Rocket is asking that an equivalent of this 20% CPE allocation be directed to a fund or entity (like itself) that supports the production of Canadian-made children’s programming. 

Shaw Rocket Fund made this filing in response to the CRTC launching a Canadian programming public consultation window in November as part of its ongoing efforts to modernize Canada’s broadcasting framework under the Online Streaming Act

Behind Shaw Rocket Fund’s 20% figure is the reasoning that while children represent close to 20% of the Canadian population, making them a significant audience that must be catered to within the country’s broadcasting framework, they “have not been identified at all in the regulatory plan to modernize Canada’s broadcasting framework.”

While children’s programming can fall under the current PNI mandate, Shaw Rocket president and CEO Agnes Augustin notes that broadcasters ultimately get to choose what kind of Canadian programming they make. And with recent commissioning cutbacks continuing to challenge the whole television industry, she explains that children’s programming has suffered in particular due to a lack of guardrails. “We’re trying to get the Commission to not focus on children’s as a genre, but actually as a responsibility. That’s the difference in the end.”

“What we’re trying to establish is an actual obligation in the broadcasting system to make sure that we make content for children,” says Augustin, who has been vocal for quite some time about the need for more change and significant support to help Canadian children’s content producers as they continue to grapple with tough market conditions. 

To paint a picture of this in numbers, the Canadian Media Producers Association’s annual Profile 2024 report shows that the volume of Canadian children’s/youth production has decreased by 38.4% over the past decade (since the CRTC removed genre protections in 2015/2016). And over the course of the past year, Canadian children’s/youth production dropped 47% in the English-language market and 41.2% overall. 

The filing also sounds an alarm that these declines could potentially worsen this year as Rogers Communications intends to discontinue directing its Certified Independent Production Fund (CIPF) contributions to Shaw Rocket Fund as of August 31—which will likely be another big blow to Canada’s kids content industry. “If that is the case, and no other mechanism is put in place, Shaw Rocket Fund’s ability to support this very important sector will be diminished, leaving no fund in our broadcasting system dedicated to the creation and production of Canadian children’s and youth programming,” the filing states.

Further updates on the CRTC’s response to this proposal should come out of a public hearing scheduled for March 31.

Image courtesy of Jason Hafso/Unsplash

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