Overview
The CMF is a not-for-profit corporation that delivers $360.7 million in funding annually to support the Canadian television and digital media industries through two streams of funding: the Experimental Stream and the Convergent Stream.
CONVERGENT STREAM
Through the Convergent Stream, the CMF supports the creation of convergent television and digital media content for consumption by Canadians anytime, anywhere. The convergent stream is made up of various programs and incentives that target key activities and audiences.
Please see the table below for an overview of each program.
Eligible projects
The Convergent Stream supports multi-platform Canadian projects: they provide content on at least two distribution platforms, one of which is television. It is made up of various programs and incentives that target key activities and audiences.
The digital media component must be rich, interactive content such as games, interactive web content, on-demand content, podcasts, webisodes, and mobisodes.
Canadian elements for the television components must achieve 10/10 points on the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office (CAVCO) scale.
Through the Convergent stream the CMF supports the creation of content in four underrepresented genres: drama, documentary, children’s and youth, & variety and performing arts.
The programs and incentives that comprise the Convergent Stream are designed to encourage production in all regions of Canada and in the variety of languages spoken by Canadians.
Forms of funding
Forms of funding include licence-fee top-ups, equity investments, and repayable contributions that are paid directly to applicant producers.
The majority of funding in the Convergent Stream is disbursed through the Performance Envelope Program, which encourages partnerships between broadcasters, television producers, and digital media producers.
Convergent Funding Programs
Below is a brief reference guide to the objectives of all the programs under the Convergent Stream. Please use the menu at left for more information, including specific guidelines, for each program.
| DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM | |
| Development | Support projects at the development stage. |
| PRODUCTION PROGRAMS | |
| Performance Envelope | Encourage partnerships between broadcasters, television producers, and digital media producers to create convergent content that Canadian audiences want to consume anytime, anywhere. |
| Regional French Incentive | Support the growth of French production by Quebec producers who are located outside the Montreal production centre. |
| Northern Production Incentive | Provide additional support to producers in Northern regions. |
| English Production Incentive | Support the growth of production in areas of Canada where English production volumes have declined more than 20% below their five year historical average. |
| Francophone Minority | Ensure that Canadians have access to French production reflecting francophone cultures outside the province of Quebec. |
| Aboriginal | Support the growth of Aboriginal-language production. |
| Diverse Languages | Ensure that Canadians have access to content that reflects the variety of languages they speak. |
| Convergent Digital Media Incentive | Encourage the production of value-added digital media components that are related to CMF-funded television productions. |
| English POV | Support the growth of English point of view (POV) documentaries. |
| Anglophone Minority Incentive |
Encourage English language content creation by production companies in Québec. |
| VERSIONING PROGRAM | |
| Versioning | Increase the reach of existing programming to Canadians through language versioning. |
