A letter to the members of SCN Matters
June 22, 2010 by Richard
Filed under Just a Thought
Dear members of SCN Matters
Hand drawn SCN logo
I want to start by thanking all of you for working so hard to let everyone know how important SCN has been to our community. Thank you for saying the metrics used to justify the closing of the service were wrong and thank you to the audience who appreciated what SCN was trying to do.
I have been lured out of retirement by a private company that has the balls to believe in, and be willing to invest in Saskatchewan productions. SCN Matters has been saying that telling local and regional stories is important so I have teamed up with people who think a viable business can be built doing exactly that. We are committed to maintaining a Saskatchewan spend of at least the average of what SCN spent on local programming for the past several years and to continue to use the majority of SCN’s CMF envelope on Saskatchewan content. We are committed to trying to maintain as much of the essence of SCN as possible.
However, the money to do all this, and keep SCN on the air, has to come from somewhere so it is Bluepoint’s intention to commercialize portions of SCN’s schedule. We would love to do this with Saskatchewan produced content but this may not always be possible. It will be up to the local production community to show that they are up to the challenge of proving that local programming isn’t just “crap”, in the words of Alberta’s Minister of Culture. It will be up to local audiences to come to SCN in sufficient numbers to bring the advertising to support our efforts, and it is up to the management and staff of the new SCN to build a schedule that is true to what we believe SCN is about.
SCN has not been saved – Bluepoint Investments has given us the chance to work to save SCN. Now the really hard part begins, and we look forward to working with you to make this happen. We are just putting our local team in place but over the next little while we want to start a dialogue with you on how to we can make this work in all of our interests.
Richard Gustin
SCN Project Manger
Bluepoint Investments Inc.
Nice work, Richard! I am very excited to see you back at ‘er, and I know the ‘new’ SCN is in good hands.
Well said, Richard, and thank-you, for all that you have done.
I had hoped that, if SCN could not be maintained in its past form, then at least something good would come out of this process, and with the pressure on the government, I believe that it has through this deal. I’m sure I’ll hear more details in the near future, but wanted to say ‘congratulations’ now.
Your involvement, Richard, gives us all hope that the Bluepoint enterprise is founded on a solid understanding of the Saskatchewan production environment and the value of SCN to Saskatchewan viewers. Thank you so much for taking on this leadership role with Bluepoint’s SCN team.
These are the cards the Wall government has dealt us: they’ve turned their backs on SCN, withholding all funding, and telling Bluepoint to sink or swim on ad revenue alone. With no government involvement, it looks like viewers, producers and craftspeople will all have to step up, to do all we can to save SCN and build SCN. It is such a valuable resource to the people of Saskatchewan and so vital to sustaining the production community here that I’m confident we will be up to the challenge.
Thanks Richard. We are very fortunate to have you at the helm and I believe we can find a balance of stories that are told by Saskatchewan filmmakers, but still have an audience. As a Saskatchewan filmmaker I look forward to presenting some solutions to this challenge.
Congratulations to you Richard. If we can help you with good watchable cancon or foreign programing don’t hesitate to contact us. Best to you.Les Harris