The television and film business has been far from sheltered from the impacts of the falling us dollar. Take NHNZ, a Dunedin-based prodco with Beijing and Washington, DC offices that produces over 60 hours of factual each year. John Crawford, NHNZ's general manager, says in the company's last financial year (which ended in June), the bottom line impact of the declining us dollar was NZ$1.25 million (US$960,000). "So it's pretty serious stuff," says Crawford. In September alone, the shift in the us dollar against the New Zealand dollar resulted in a NZ$200,000 ($153,000) reduction in income for NHNZ. Although the fluctuating us dollar is a problem the prodco has dealt with for at least three years, "the severe impact really has been in the last six to nine months," says Crawford.

While NHNZ does a lot of offshore filming - "so at least we're sort of spending us dollars offshore," says Crawford - the benefits are lost at home. "When you try to bring the money back onshore to pay the salary bill, you find you've got less money than you thought you had," he says. NHNZ does some trading in Euros and other currencies, such as pound sterling, "but probably 98% of our income is in us dollars," says Crawford. "So when you're dependent on another currency, the impact is enormous."

Michael Prupas, president and CEO of Muse Entertainment Enterprises, a Montreal-based indie film and TV prodco with additional production operations in Toronto and Vancouver, can relate to the hits that can come from doing deals in a struggling currency. He says the us economy's downturn has affected Muse "directly and concretely over the last year" because Muse has done several productions where its costs were in Canadian dollars, and it had presold films to us buyers back in January. "We did four Lifetime movies that way," says Prupas, adding he's sure many Canadian producers are in the same boat. "With 15% or 20% loss on the dollar in that period of time, our complete profit margin on those pictures was wiped out," he says. "That was a very painful process. It's been a real struggle to do those pictures; we stuck to our commitment, but it became a labor of love."

Cross the pond to Singapore, and Caldecott Productions International managing director Hee Yah Ong recalls the days when prodcos welcomed being paid in us dollars. "In 1997, when the Asian financial crash hit us, I paid an Indonesian production house in US dollars and they were very happy, but not anymore," says Ong, who works with a lot of independent Asian directors and producers.

A recent incident taught the company a lesson, she says. A producer submitted her budget in Indian rupees, while Caldecott had calculated everything on its end in us dollars from the beginning. When it came time to pay the producer, she refused to do her project because the difference was about US$2,000. "The difference was quite substantial," says Ong. "It's a lot of money if you look at it from her perspective, so we said 'Okay, we'll cancel out the whole us dollar thing' and we just paid her the original budget of rupees without the conversion because it's not fair to her."