Navigating the Shifting Screen in an Era of Policy Reform

Audience Reality Check #2

Photo by Icarus Chu on Unsplash

Canada’s screen sector is in a rare policy opening.

In recent weeks, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller announced the creation of an advisory panel to help guide the modernization of federal support for the audiovisual sector. Shortly after, Telefilm Canada launched a reviewed Marketing Program that moves toward more flexible, audience-centred support for Canadian feature films.

Taken together, these changes signal something important: our institutions are beginning to acknowledge that the legacy frameworks of film distribution are no longer enough.

The question now is not whether Canadian films deserve support. Of course they do.

The deeper question is whether our systems are built to help those films reach, nurture, and sustain real audiences in the world as it exists now.

That is why I am publicly releasing my 2025 research report funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage: Navigating the Shifting Screen: Connecting Canadian Films to Audiences in 2025 and Beyond

It is part of a larger body of work I have been doing on how Canadian stories move through a screen ecosystem that no longer has a single centre.

The report examines how Canadian film distribution is being reshaped by technological change, audience behaviour, platform power, theatrical disruption, community-based exhibition, and new international models of support.

It also makes a simple argument: Canadian film policy cannot be future-ready unless audience strategy is treated as core infrastructure. Here are four audience reality checks from the report that feel especially urgent right now.

1. The audience is in charge

The traditional theatrical window can still matter deeply. But it is no longer a one-size-fits-all pathway for every film.

Audiences are digitally fluent. They expect access, convenience, relevance, and choice. Many Canadian films now need flexible release strategies that combine theatrical, festival, community, digital, broadcast, platform, educational, and event-based pathways.

The point is not to abandon theatres.

The point is to stop treating theatrical release as the only legitimate proof that a film has reached the public.

Different films have different audiences. Different audiences require different pathways.

2. Hyperlocal community matters more than ever

At the same time, digital access does not replace the power of gathering.

One of the clearest findings in the report is the importance of hyperlocal exhibition, including independent cinemas, cultural centres, community screenings, festivals, impact events, and other third spaces where audiences can encounter films together.

These spaces do more than show movies.

They build trust. They spark dialogue. They create context. They turn a screening into a relationship.

In an era of loneliness, fragmentation, and endless content choice, community-based exhibition is not a nostalgic add-on. It is one of the ways stories become shared culture, and that makes it a strategic audience and nation-building tool.

3. We need to redefine market demand

For decades, public funding systems have relied heavily on traditional signals of market interest, including legacy distributor commitments and conventional release plans.

Those signals still matter. But recent public debate about Canadian films and theatrical box office shows why those signals cannot be treated as the whole story.

When Canadian films underperform in theatres, the easiest explanation is often that the films themselves were not strong enough, commercial enough, or what audiences want.

Sometimes that may be true. But it is not a complete analysis.

A weak theatrical result can also reflect limited awareness, constrained marketing capacity, lack of access to the right screens at the right time, audience fragmentation, underdeveloped community partnerships, insufficient data, or a release pathway that was never well matched to the film’s actual audience.

Quality matters. Of course it does. But growing and sustaining audiences is not only a quality problem. It is a systems problem.

Today, proof of market demand can also include audience research, community partnerships, festival momentum, online engagement, crowdfunding support, impact networks, niche audience validation, social content performance, and direct relationships with specific communities.

If we want Canadian films to succeed, we need to recognize the many ways audience demand now shows up before, during, and after release.

4. Data transparency is non-negotiable

Audience strategy cannot improve without better data.

Filmmakers, producers, distributors, exhibitors, funders, and policymakers need a clearer understanding of where Canadian films are being seen, by whom, under what conditions, and with what results.

Without better audience and performance data, the sector is forced to keep making decisions through instinct, anecdote, and inherited assumptions.

That is not enough.

If audiences are assets, then audience knowledge must be treated as infrastructure.

The path forward

The new federal advisory panel and Telefilm’s evolving framework are important signals that the system is ready to ask bigger questions.

But structural reform must be matched by practical change on the ground.

We need policies and programs that sustain and help grow real audiences across the full life of a film. That means strengthening independent exhibitors, community screenings, impact dissemination, discoverability, data collection, audience research, and flexible release strategies.

It also means getting more comfortable with the fact that not every film should be asked to succeed in the same way.

Most of all, we need strategic translators who can connect policy reform, legacy screen systems, digital audience behaviour, and the lived realities of producers, distributors, exhibitors, and communities.

That is what Navigating the Shifting Screenwas designed to help with. I hope this report is useful to policymakers, funders, producers, distributors, exhibitors, festivals, community partners, and anyone working to build a more flexible, evidence-based, and audience-aware screen sector.

The audience is not waiting for us to catch up.

The real question is whether we are prepared to meet them where they already are.