Meta’s Global Policy chief, Kevin Chan
June 24, 2023
A couple of years ago on a conference call, in an uncharacteristic moment of uncivil behaviour, I heckled Facebook’s global policy chief, Canada’s own Kevin Chan, by suggesting he worked for the digital equivalent of a tobacco company.
He seemed to take offence. So it’s possible I am responsible for the current mess with Bill C-18.
This week C-18 received Royal Assent and Facebook immediately renewed its threat to block Canadian news.
The breathless news reporting of that threat may obscure the fact that the end-game in this confrontation over Bill C-18 could be several months away. Helpfully, press reports offered some new information: there have been direct talks between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Big Tech twins, Meta and Google.
After a career of negotiating collective agreements I have learned that press reports of negotiations are often gamed by the participants. I know I did my best. You have to take it all with a grain of salt.
What is Google and Facebook’s price of non-defiance? Do they have one, or is Canada a convenient punching bag for their global strategy to defeat regulation by sovereign governments, no matter what the contents of C-18? If that’s the case, it’s an easy choice for Canada to make between defending our sovereignty or capitulating to a private company.
If press reports have it right (they may not through no fault of their own), what the web giants want is to pay off the Canadian news industry with a privately negotiated agreement and put C-18 into deep freeze; on the books but not implemented.
This is what Google and Facebook did in Australia and, two years later, they are making it clear that they aren’t keen on renewing those agreements.
Nobody ever stays bought in this business.
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If clear and honest policy commentary counts for anything in this difficult environment, I highly recommend a recent podcast on Sean Speer’s The Hub with his guest Taylor Owen of McGill University. Owen talks informatively about Bills C-11, C-18 and the promised legislation on Online Safety.
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The focus on the policy goals of our Netflix Bill C-11 often overlooks what’s happening to the streaming industry in real time.
Ever since Netflix’s subscription growth stalled —-coinciding with other Hollywood studios and web giants jumping into direct-to-consumer video streaming—- the industry has been scaling back from the spending spree that normally fuels an all out battle for market share (you may recall that Disney recently announced a production pause in Canada, ascribed to Bill C-11 by Michael Geist and Senator Leo Housakos.)
In a rhapsodic narrative published in Vulture, Joseph Adalian and Lane Brown describe the industry retrenchment in apocalyptic terms.
It’s difficult to know if this is just the expected dread of a market shake-out of winners and losers or if the streaming industry is discovering a similar fate previously revealed to the news industry, which is that monetizing content in digital is much harder than expected.
The article suggests there never was a streaming business model based on margin, only market share and stock price. Now there is a shake-out and a possibly a realignment of the business model. One aspect of that realignment may be rethinking the monetization arc of shows from first run to licensing and long term library revenue.
The article is thought provoking given its relevance to how we are going to make Canadian entertainment programming in this environment.
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Speaking of Bill C-11, let the implementation games begin.
Our Canadian broadcasters would have been delighted to read the Minister’s June 8th Policy Direction to the CRTC reminding everyone that, in the end, the financial contributions made by foreign streamers to Canadian content must measure up ‘equitably’ to those made by our broadcasters.
The broadcasters would like their current obligations slashed by up to a third and the streamers can meet them in the middle. MediaPolicy wrote about that here. Steve Faguy had a similar take here. Broadcast Dialogue did a straight news piece, here.
Another issue is the dry regulatory business of mapping out what digital services are in or out of regulation based on a media company’s threshold of annual earnings.
On one level, this consists of big media companies trying to save millions by carving their business, or parts of their business, out of the regulatory sphere. The CRTC will be inclined to agree to much of it, as including smaller digital services or those on the periphery of ‘broadcasting’ may sweep in more financial contributions but create unnecessary regulation.
However setting a bar for regulatory registration based on revenue thresholds has consequences for small Canadian programmers and the Canadian public. MediaPolicy covered that here.
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