As U.S. streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime make greater inroads into the Canadian market, a stateside trend has shown up north of the border: Less local coin for feature documentaries as broadcasters chase docu-series.
The Documentary Organization of Canada, releasing its latest Get Real report on Sept. 12, said local TV networks are backing more documentary series that look very much like reality TV series. “Now, when we talk about documentary production in Canada, we are increasingly talking about series,” DOC’s executive director Sarah Spring said in a statement as the seventh Get Real report was released.
Canadian filmmakers have long burnished their image with award-winning theatrical documentaries like Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning Navalny. But the DOC report argues that, going forward, Canadian broadcasters have less appetite for one-off feature documentaries with points-of-view and sophisticated storylines, as they increasingly push for glorified reality TV series via docu-series.
That’s as Netflix and other U.S. streamers take a bigger slice of the Canadian TV market with audience-pulling documentaries like Harry and Meghan, leaving local Canadian broadcasters with less interest in auteur-driven feature documentaries.
Even foreign streaming platforms have seen their investment in Canadian doc series rise from $34 million in 2017 to $66.8 million in 2021, the last year surveyed by the Get Real report. Getting that docu-series investment from U.S. streaming platforms, however, remains an uphill climb.
“Although streaming has allowed creators to connect with larger and targeted audiences, it has also created a very competitive and crowded environment,” the report argued. In the meantime, between 2017 and 2021, the volume of feature-length film or TV documentary investment by local broadcasters fell from $29.6 million to $19.4 million, while the number of projects backed by Canadian networks slid from 60 to 35, and the number of hours of documentary production declined from 80 to 53 over the same five-year period.
And per-hour budgets are falling. In 2021, the last year surveyed for the Get Real report, the average per-hour production budget for one-off documentaries was $376,353, with feature-length film or TV docs having an average of $350,556 per-hour budget. And documentary series had lower per-hour budgets at $289,115 in 2021.
What’s more, the greater share of documentary financing does not come from broadcasters, but instead from tax credits, the Canada Media Fund, a major TV fund, Canadian distributors and foreign coin.
