Catching Up on MediaPolicy: the Google cash – CBC Rethink – the Big Cable Picture – DM@X registration

December 17, 2023

Holding the powerful to account: including journalists

That’s a provocative headline but leads to an interview MediaPolicy conducted with Ivor Shapiro, formerly chair of the Ryerson School of Journalism, about journalism autonomy and accountability. I hope it’s a worthwhile read.

Heritage Minister divides up the Google cash

Heritage Minister Pascale St.-Onge’s regulation under Bill C-18 the Online News Act nails down the $100M deal she made with Google and sets the ground rules for how it’s to be divided.

The animals at the waterhole look at each other a little differently when the water is low and, with Meta’s news throttle combined with Google negotiating itself a lower financial liability, there is far less to go around. 

The CBC will get only $7 million of the Google money. Private television and radio broadcasters, who were anticipating about half of the C-18 money would go their way, are capped at $30 million. The remaining $63 million will mostly go to online publishers of text journalism (i.e. newspapers and magazines).

The regulation appears to give Google the choice of whether it bargains the distribution of the $100 million with a single consortium of news organizations —CBC, broadcasters and online news outlets squeezed together— with each news organization being compensated on a headcount of employed journalists. In truth, that doesn’t leave much to “bargain.” The headcount formula allowed Heritage to project an overall per journalist payment of $17,000. But that’s not distributed evenly because of the caps on broadcasters: Newsmedia Canada pegs the publishers’ share at $20,000 while the Canadian Association of Broadcasters is looking at roughly $7,300 per head. CBC’s per cap will be approximately $2,900.

With less compensation to go around than originally touted, it’s not surprising that St.-Onge decided the CBC would end up with a token amount. This might even seem a Solomon-like compromise if it weren’t for the fact that the CBC is laying off 600 staff, including journalists. No one is standing in the CBC’s corner on this, even some of the CBC’s biggest supporters.

The snarling at the waterhole is emanating from the broadcaster association which is questioning why television and radio news, a dead loss on the accounting sheet, is being given short shrift. The answer is undoubtedly political: the proper nouns “Bell,” “TVA,” and “Rogers” are self explanatory.

The broadcasters are already excluded from the federal government’s direct subsidies to text journalism in the QCJO program, recently juiced by the Liberals in their Fall Economic Statement, likely to counterweight Meta’s boycott. Now with broadcast news getting the short end of the stick under the Online News Act, the pressure on the CRTC to create a local news fund out of financial contributions from foreign streamers and online platforms will intensify. 

***

Expert Review of the CBC

Another explosive file that St.Onge is sitting upon is the CBC. Better late than never, the Liberals have announced their intention to strike an expert committee, mandate unknown, to think about the public broadcaster’s future.

Everyone will have an opinion on the CBC’s direction. Everyone should.

Jamie Watt of Navigator, a political consultant for hire, published a piece in the Toronto Star that demonstrates how much more thinking there is to be done. Comparing the CBC, news journalism and conventional television to the long deceased Blockbuster Video, he observes that politicians like Pierre Poilievre appealing to voters directly through social media represents “direct competition” to the news media and that the Fourth Estate must either adapt or die. 

Watt’s conclusion seems to be that the CBC (and all news outlets?) need to reinvent journalism for social media platforms, to out-viral the politicians.

On that note, I can hear news producers and editors across the land exclaiming “oh, gosh, why did we never think of that?!” CBC and all other news outlets are experimenting constantly with delivering news over social media as well as new streaming platforms like the free ad-supported CBC Comedy and CBC News Explore. 

Shooting from the hip on rethinking the CBC will do no one any good. The relationship between audience demographics, limited resources, and the meaning of “public” in public broadcasting seems like a giant riddle but not one that we can’t figure out.

The expert committee, and the government in setting its terms of reference, might use as its launch pad the observations and recommendations of the last expert committee, the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review that devoted section 3.7 of its 2020 Report to the CBC. It’s a pity that some of the governance and recommendations for the CBC’s accountability that require legislative action have been left so late in this government’s mandate. But at least the conversation is about to begin in earnest.

***

The cable guy

For those of you intrigued by the big picture of the entertainment media industry, I have belatedly discovered the blog written by Doug Shapiro. He’s a former Turner and Time Warner television executive, now with the Boston Consulting Group. 

His latest post zeroes in on the peace deal between the number two US cable operator, Charter Communications, and entertainment colossus Disney. Until September, the two were engaged in a bitter spat over renewing their content distribution deal. Against the backdrop of galloping cord-cutting in the US (15 percentage points ahead of Canada), Charter wanted to drive down the price of Disney’s linear channels or buy less of them. Charter backed up its bargaining position by threatening to drop Disney’s content.

We don’t know the exact wholesale pricing of Disney channels in the final deal. But we do know that Charter will buy and fold into their TV Everywhere (i.e. multi-device viewer access, like Rogers Ignite) cable service some of Disney’s ad-supported streaming content from various sports and entertainment programming services at no extra cost to the consumer. As paid subscriber options, Charter will also market some of Disney’s streaming apps while dropping some of the Disney linear channels it didn’t want to pay for.

The Charter-Disney deal prompts Shapiro to observe that the harmony of linear and streaming content (both premium and free ad-supported) carried on the same platform by major cable companies could result in a win-win-win for television distributors, Hollywood streamers, and paying customers. That winning combination would click in if the streamers and cable companies can team up to sell the most popular pay-streaming services as bundled discounts: for example getting customers to lock into multiple streaming subscriptions if the price is right.

It’s not fantasy to visualize the same opportunity here in Canada, to fight cord cutting and preserve cable television as a dominant and at-scale platform to distribute Canadian content. Keeping the older audience loyal, and drawing in millenials and other cord-nevers, can only be achieved by giving viewers a competitive bundle, better than a la carte shopping for multiple subscriptions and apps. “Free,” “discount,” and “good bundles” are the building blocks.

***

Registration for DM@X January 19-20

Speaking of the future of Canadian broadcasting and the big picture…the annual Digital Media at the Crossroads (DM@X) conference is accepting registrations for the January 19-20, 2024 event.

Over 30 speakers —29 besides your faithful scribe— will address key policy questions, including the obligations of streamers under the Online Streaming Act, social media regulation, artificial intelligence and cultural expression, and many other issues.  The Ontario Commissioner of the CRTC Bram Abramson will give the luncheon address on January 20.  And broadcasting consultant Nordicity Group will also update its annual report on the digital media universe in Canada.

All the details of the program, Including the bios and photos of the speakers, can be accessed at www.digitalmediaatthecrossroads.com.  The website includes Instructions on how to register for the conference.

***

If you would like regular notifications of future posts from MediaPolicy.ca you can follow this site by signing up under the Follow button in the bottom right corner of the home page; 

or e-mail howard.law@bell.net to be added to the weekly update; 

or follow @howardalaw on Twitter.