The Canadian government today announced that it would combine the Canadian Television Fund and Canadian New Media Fund, two government-run funds that give money to Canadian productions, into the Canadian Media Fund, which would give $134.7 million a year to support both conventional television and “new media”, meaning those Internet things.

It’s being described as removing funding guarantees from CBC/RadCan (the CTF “crisis” started when cable companies refused to hand over money because they said too much of it was going to unpopular programming), though the Mother Corp is happy about the announcement because it allows its in-house productions to be eligible for the fund.

The Conservative government emphasizes that the new “fixed” fund will be focused on funding popular programming like Flashpoint, and not those boring CBC dramas that only get a few hundred thousand viewers. I’m hoping this means there will be more Canadian porn out there, because porn is always popular.

So, where can innovative Canadian new media developers get their cash? Not so fast:

“Applicants will be required to make their projects available across a minimum of two distribution platforms, including television.”

In other words, you can’t apply for the Canadian Media Fund unless “media” is television. It doesn’t matter if you’re popular or not, whether your content is primarily video or not. Canadian productions like LoadingReadyRun or Prenez Garde Aux Chiens are not eligible, because they’re not on television.

Just the kind of forward-looking outside-the-box ideas we’ve come to expect from our federal culture overlords.

UPDATE: Michel Dumais agrees with me, and has other critical comments about the new media fund.