MediaPolicy.ca

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – the new season of Stursberg’s CBC – the federal budget – Le Devoir’s Meta work around – Australia will regulate Netflix

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Are you not entertained? Richard Stursberg wants CBC audiences to say yes

November 8, 2025

This week MediaPolicy posted a guest column from Richard Stursberg, the former Vice President of CBC’s English language service, reflecting on the public broadcaster’s recently announced Five Year Plan.

You won’t be sorry you spent five minutes with it. It’s a compelling read. Stursberg is one of the few commentators who puts as much emphasis on CBC’s entertainment programming as he does the news service.

Stursberg sets a simple performance bar for the CBC: is it good television? And then he offers a hypothetical new season(s) of great shows that could meet that standard and bring a real buzz to the CBC’s CanCon offerings, while satisfying our Canadian cultural cravings.

The CBC just got its $150 million booster shot in the federal budget. That money fulfilled an election promise. The 11% increase to the $1.4 billion Parliamentary grant (70% of CBC’s overall $2 billion revenue) won’t necessarily go into a bigger budget for entertainment programming: the Five Year Plan prioritizes local and regional news reporting. But it does give the public broadcaster more options.

The CBC’s new money was the Carney government’s sole increase to cultural funding in this week’s budget. Culture and Identity minister Steven Guilbeault told the Globe and Mail that the public broadcaster had also been spared from the “15% savings” spending review announced by the government several months ago.

Budget announcements for the Canada Media Fund, the Canada Music Fund, TV5MondePlus, Telefilm, the National Film Board and Special Measures for Journalism (community weeklies) are all multi-year extensions of supplemental funding previously put in place by the Justin Trudeau government.

On the other hand, the budget document includes projected cuts to Canadian Heritage expenditures which might be either civil servant salaries or “recalibrated” program spending. Guilbeault pointed out to the Globe that the $93 million savings figure was 5%, not 15% of expenditures.

The numbers on recalibrated programs might include the scheduled reduction of the federal labour tax credit from 35% to 25% of journalist salaries on January 1, 2027. As well, Guilbeault told the Globe the government was exploring a merger of the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm and the National Film Board.

The budget document included a brief note that changes are in the works for the Canadian Periodical Fund that subsidizes weeklies and magazines (the government only told me that the details would be communicated at a later date).

The status quo on cultural funding shouldn’t be surprising, given other priorities in 2025.

Still, TV and radio news outlets were miffed that the government didn’t end its arbitrary exclusion of broadcasting companies from accessing federal aid for their online news websites that —-but for the television and radio properties operated by their parent companies—- would be eligible for the $75 million pool of journalist salary subsidy available to all online news outlets.

***

There’s a useful explainer posted in Paula Clark’s Substack about the Blacklock’s Reporter litigation with the federal government over Parks Canada’s sharing of a paywall password obtained from an individual subscription, giving unlimited access to every article in the Reporter’s database.

The watchdog news website was in court last month, appealing a controversial trial ruling in favour of the government which appeared to bless the government’s actions and give short shrift to copyright protection.

Among the many legal frailties of the trial judge’s decision is that it appears to expand the public right of “fair use” sharing of quotations or text snippets to authorize redistribution of full articles and, thanks to the password sharing, Blacklock’s entire news archive.

It’s a legally complicated appeal, which is why’s Clark’s piece is helpful.

***

As you know, in 2023 Meta responded to Parliament passing the Online News Act by banning most news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada (a news outlet can pay Meta to post content as an advertisement).

The ban hit the many Canadian news outlets relying heavily upon Meta platforms for content distribution. While the news blackout probably impacted free sites harder, paywalled sites were affected too.

The marketing director at Le Devoir is claiming a measurable success in making up for the lost distribution by working a lot harder at its direct engagement with readers, especially demonstrating the value of content to new subscribers.

Meta hasn’t entirely given up on Canadian news journalism of course. Just last week The Hub published a well argued commentary advocating against the federal government pursuing a digital sovereignty strategy. Meta sponsored the article.

***

The Australian government has moved the yardsticks on implementing something like Canada’s Online Streaming Act for Netflix and the other foreign video streamers, a move it has been mulling over since early 2023.

The legislation hasn’t been tabled with details yet, but the announcement suggests the streamers will have to spend 7.5% of their Australian revenues on local entertainment programming. Australian-owned television companies are already required to meet spending quotas for local content and they see the new law as a measure to “level the playing field.”

The news coverage of the announcement is unclear as to the impact of the legislation, as Netflix already invests in video production shot in Australia. It may depend upon the definition of local Australian content.

Significantly for Canadian observers, Australia is not proposing that the foreign streamers make financial contributions to Australian programming through contributions to third party production funds.

A report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation speculates on whether the announcement will provoke a reaction from the Trump administration.

***

If you have the twenty minutes, I recommend Natalia Antelava’s incendiary interview of Google’s Richard Gingras in Coda, just for sheer entertainment if not enlightenment. Gingras is Google’s former VP of News and is currently the board chair of Canada’s Village Media.

Antelava goes after Gingras for some of Google’s controversial decisions in foreign autocracies, like agreeing to Vladimir Putin’s demand to spike a voting app set up for the Russian 2021 elections by the dissident, Alexei Navalny, who later died, possibly poisoned, in a Putin prison.

However on the main interview topic of the power asymmetry between Google and the news industry, Gingras sticks to his story that Google’s relationship with publishers is collaborative, not exploitive, which requires him to engage in some grimace-inducing denialism about Google’s abuse of market power over news outlets in Search and digital advertising, both of which have been ruled illegal monopolies by US courts.

Another tidbit: Gingras claims that Google CEO Sundar Pichai was embarrassed by the now famous line-up of tech CEOs attending the Trump inauguration and suggests the photo op was “cleverly staged” by the White House.

“That’s the last photo Sundar ever wanted taken,” says Gingras. “We don’t support this administration.”

Only the ballroom.

Associated Press photo of Tech CEOs Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai and Musk.

***

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I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Are you not entertained? Richard Stursberg’s five year plan for the CBC

November 6, 2025

In October CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard unveiled her eagerly anticipated five year plan for the public broadcaster.

MediaPolicy commented on her map here and here. Months earlier, I also provided a platform for a number of guest columns or interviews with former CBC insiders and pundits who offered some broad brushed comments on how the CBC ought to reinvent itself, one of the nation’s great and never-ending dialogues.

One of those guest columns was from Richard Stursberg, the former CBC Vice President of English language programming, “welcome Ms.Bouchard, here’s some advice.”

Now that President Bouchard has weighed in, it’s the right time for another guest column from Stursberg, the author of The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes inside the CBC.

***

The CBC’s Five Year Plan

By Richard Stursberg

In 1965, Robert Fowler, the Chair of The Royal Commission on Broadcasting and The Advisory Committee on Broadcasting, noted in a much quoted observation that:

“The only thing that really matters in broadcasting is program content; all the rest is housekeeping.”

He was, of course, quite right. The measure of a successful broadcaster is the quality and popularity of its shows. All the rest – technologies, personnel, locations, financing, studios and platforms – are housekeeping, there to support programming.

Recently, the new President of the CBC, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, announced her new five year plan for the corporation, her vision for its future. It is called: Here For Canada, 2025-2030 Strategy.

The plan begins by stating – correctly – that “the core purpose of the CBC (is) ‘to contribute to shared national consciousness and identity.’” She then goes on to discuss the audiences she will target and the housekeeping measures she will employ to get there.

Her focus, she says, will be on children and youth, who she acknowledges are largely lost to digital platforms, newcomers, and “non-users and dissatisfied users”. She is planning to focus CBC’s programming on those least likely to consume it. This seems a tough assignment.

She goes on to target small towns, the North and minority language communities. Canadians, however, mostly live in large cities. Almost 60% of the population lives in the ten largest urban areas that produce 75% of the country’s economic output. Her focus on the places where Canadians are least likely to live also feels like a tough assignment.

Having established her target populations, the President describes the housekeeping measures she will employ. She proposes to be “digitally agile”, to emphasise “partnerships”, to get “closer to communities”, to expand “FAST channels”, and to”increase investments in independent productions”, among other things. These are no doubt sensible things to do; they should receive The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

There is, however, little or no discussion in the President’s plan of programming, “the only thing that really matters in broadcasting”. There is no indication of what kinds of shows will be financed over the next five years. There is nothing in the plan that describes the types of dramas, news, documentaries or comedies that will be produced. It provides no discussion of what Canadians can expect to see, hear or read on the CBC’s many platforms.

Mme. Bouchard is not alone in providing a plan that emphasises housekeeping. Almost all of her predecessors did the same thing. Despite Robert Fowler’s caution, they have produced strategies, plans and visions that decade after decade have been preoccupied with the nuts and bolts of broadcasting, and only rarely with its content.

What, then, might a real plan look like, one centred on programming and not housekeeping?

In producing one, it would be wise to start with Mme. Bouchard’s observation that the core purpose and mandate of the CBC is “to contribute to shared national consciousness and identity”.

It must also recognise that – as the president makes clear – “social and political polarisation are on the rise, as are threats to national sovereignty”. Canada feels badly divided: the West is alienated; Quebec is flirting again with independence; indigenous people are rightly aggrieved; and the young feel deeply disadvantaged. At the same time, Canada is confronted with a belligerent and unpredictable neighbour to the south that threatens the very existence of the country. Whatever program plan is created, it must speak to the moment.

The programming must also stand out in what is a very crowded field. New, beautiful foreign shows are available everywhere There is more content than anyone can consume, and the sheer excess dictates that only the really original, dramatic, relevant and exciting will be watched, listened to or read.

By way of a simplistic formulation, let’s break shared national consciousness and identity into three key questions and see what kind of programming might speak to them. The questions are:

1. The classic: Who are we?

2. The obverse: Who are we not?

3. The Northrop Frye: Where are we?

Here For Canada: 2025-2030: The Program Strategy

Who are we?

Twenty-five years ago, the CBC released Canada: A People’s History. Its narrative connected the different periods of our history into an overall account of Canada’s national identity. It was an enormous hit.

The CBC will produce three new histories.

– An Indigenous people’s history of Canada. The history of the conquered is invariably different from that of the conquerors. For Reconciliation to be achieved, it is essential that all Canadians understand what happened. It will be dramatic and revelatory.

– A history of French Canada. The struggle to preserve French Canada’s language and culture is little known in English Canada. Understanding is the key to shared consciousness.

– A history of Western Canada. The emergence of a Western identity is not well understood in the East; its grievances, triumphs and ambitions are often met with scorn. To create a national consciousness, its story needs to be told.

With these three new histories, the CBC will reclaim its position as the principal source of broad public debate about who we are and the events that formed us. The new histories will inevitably precipitate debate. While we will try to make them as factually accurate as possible, there will surely be controversy. We welcome it. Arguing together is how we find out who we are.

Who are we not?

The answer, of course, is not Americans. Canada has historically defined itself in opposition to the United States, now perhaps more than ever. But not wanting to be American is not the same as not wanting to understand them. In the current circumstances, with the ongoing trade war and threats of annexation, it is essential to understand deeply what is happening south of the border.

The CBC will explore Canada’s relationship to the United States through comedy, news, documentaries and drama.

It will resurrect its comic exploration of the States. A new version of Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans will be produced, with a sparkling new host.

A new half hour situation comedy will also be commissioned about a Canadian family that has to move to the heart of MAGA-land. It will be similar to Schitt’s Creek, but funnier – if that is possible. Think of it as MAGA Creek.

The news department will expand its coverage of the Republican strongholds in the Red states. It is no longer possible to understand US politics and society with reporters only in LA, New York and Washington; Canadians also need to hear what people are thinking and doing in Florida, Texas, Alabama and Utah.

The CBC will initiate new documentary and current affairs coverage of the key sectors of the MAGA movement, providing in depth explorations of American gun culture, the manosphere, evangelical Christianity, and white nationalism. They will look not only at what is happening in the US, but how these movements overlap developments in Canada. Our coverage of the Americans will focus on how what happens there matters to us.

Finally, a major dramatic series is in development about the invasion of Canada by the US. It has happened twice before.This series is set in 2029 and features tense negotiations. Doomed lovers, drone warfare, blockades, split families cyber attacks, tragedy, excitement and victory – but for whom?

Where are we?

Many of the CBC’s most successful shows have criss-crossed the country, letting us know and laugh at ourselves. The Debaters and The Rick Mercer Report showed us who we are in all our variety. The new season will bring back travelling shows that explore the country’s music, sense of humour, accents and general weirdness in all our regional variety.

A big unscripted exploration is also planned, a sort of Survivors: The Winter. It will be short on swimsuits, but long on snowstorms, frozen lakes, treachery, huskies, snowmobiles, ice fishing and bad behaviour. Where are we if not in The Great White North?

The physical country has increasingly given way to a virtual one. Canadians live more and more online, in social media, through avatars and artificial intelligence, the CBC will explore our new digital environment through news, documentaries, drama and comedy.

The news department will assign journalists to the major platforms, as they are assigned now to major cities. They will be covered as distinct places with, like all places, their own characters, myths, values and events. Their reporting will be enhanced by documentaries on how these worlds are structured, how they treat their citizens, and what they mean for Canadians’ sense of their own identity.

The CBC has a number of dramedies in development that will explore what happens when people are stuck in and cannot escape their favourite social media platforms, how they respond to falling in love with an AI based lover, and what it means to give up normal life altogether for the pleasures of a purely digital one.

These new programs will supplement the great shows the Corporation already produces.

We will also update our flagships with a broader set of views and guests. The National will be modernised; and the News Network will search out a broader set of voices. We will invite Canadians to see not just politicians and “experts” but also the vast range of thought leaders throughout the country: the zany, the ignored, the keepers of secrets, the ideologically marginal and the hilarious.

The CBC will judge the success of its five year plan on how Canadians respond to our programming. We will measure our success not just in terms of audiences, but also the debates and controversies it engenders. Our hope is to be funny, wise, difficult, exciting and unforgettable. Our ambition is to be as charming, cantankerous, funny and well informed as the country itself.

This may not be the best program strategy for the CBC in 2025-2030. It may be too ambitious, too expensive, too hard to execute or simply wrong headed. The point of it is not that it’s right but that it provides a point of departure to talk about what the CBC should be programming over the next five years.

If not this approach, then what? After all, “The only thing that really matters in broadcasting is program content; all the rest is housekeeping”.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Letter to the Editor: there’s an alternative to S-209 choice of age verification

November 2, 2025

In response to the October 30, 2025 post from MediaPolicy.ca, I have some ideas on how Canada could proceed with accomplishing the objectives behind S-209, “An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material”, while respecting user privacy and dramatically reducing the chances of a data breach.

Who am I? I’m a Java software developer with over 25 years of experience not only paid to write code, but participate design software solutions, assess requirements, work with product managers, and occasionally lead times. As part of our profession, we’re expected to proactively address potential security vulnerabilities, such as upgrading software libraries before they become outdated, and thus, more likely to be vulnerable.

Prologue:

First of all, I have no fundamental objections to restricting internet porn from minors via an age verification scheme that guarantees anonymity.

My issues with S-209 are how it captures many sites and services that are not primarily for porn, and how it risks violating user security and privacy, especially for those not seeking porn, by storing their age (and possibly identity) proofs on the internet, where they could be breached.

Maximizing Privacy and Limiting Data Breaches:

Any age verification scheme ought to maintain biometric data used as an input exclusively on the client device.

By client device I mean the phone, table, or PC used to access the internet, but on no server on the internet itself. In turn, this client-side software sends proof of the user’s age, in a way that can be authenticated as legitimate, to the site in question. This means no server on the internet would have the biometric data, such as a face scan or government ID.

This doesn’t eliminate risk, but since each piece of user-identifiable data is on one client device at a time, it means a far lesser incentive for bad actors to try to steal such data. That is, it’s far more work for far less benefit than targeting a single server.

Lower Compliance Costs for Sites Hosting Porn:

Any site that’s captured by this law would still have compliance costs, but would be much lower than what is currently proposed under S-209.

The client device vendors (Google, Apple, Samsung, etc) would be responsible for implementing this scheme. They’d be tasked with providing software for the sites in question, and those sites would simply have to install and configure this software in order to complete the verification process.

Blast radius of the law:

In addition, I propose there be clear guidelines for a site to opt out of being captured by this law.

Part of the controversy of S-210 and its current iteration S-209 is the number of sites captured by the statute. This would have included search engines and social media sites, which are light years away from primarily hosting porn but on which porn is hosted to a small degree.

In my opinion, the proposal to exempt search engines is insufficient, since many people including myself largely use AI instead of Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo searches. Also, social media has a whole series of non-porn uses. I believe the vast majority of AI and social media users are not interested in porn, at least, not while using those vehicles.

So what I propose is a way for any site, such as with news under the Online News Act Bill C-18, to opt out of this law by meeting guidelines to not expose porn at all to the users of those sites.

I admit to not having fully considered the mechanisms under which this would, but likely it would involve AI scanning for pornographic images and text. Obviously, it wouldn’t be 100% bulletproof, so sites would have to merely prove a good faith effort to accomplish this. Such sites could then offer premium versions, which would be captured by age verification mandates.

Furthermore, many computing devices are “headless” and quite simply can’t comply with an age verification scheme to access the internet. Among these devices are servers like NAS’s, which must access the internet for updates. There are also minitower PCs, which don’t come with cameras.

Final thoughts:

Many users have zero interest in porn, but are very adamant about accessing the internet anonymously, and are understandably wary of data breaches given the Discord experience in the UK.

Furthermore, many minors have a long list of legitimate reasons to access the internet, AI, and social media while having no interest in porn.

Why risk blocking non-porn seeking minors from accessing the internet, or make it harder for non-porn seeking adults to access the internet?

According to many polls, Canadians are wary of digital ID schemes. On the other hand, many are also rightfully concerned about minors accessing pornography.

The solutions to the stated objectors to the framers of S-209 is a client-based age authentication scheme that maintains biometrics and other age proofs on the client device, and off servers.

It also involves allowing any general site to make porn unavailable to the vast majority of its users and thus opt out of being captured by new porn-gating mandates.

Luke deGruchy, Cornwall, ON

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Will YouTube take it all? – the CRTC’s intriguing question for music streamers – leading news avoiders to water

Graphic from the Hollywood Reporter

November 1, 2025

It’s not exactly breaking news, but YouTube is taking over television. Or to put it more vividly, YouTube is threatening to storm the Alamo of television programming, live sports and scripted drama.

The Hollywood Reporter has a lengthy feature story about how that’s happening in the US where, in addition to YouTube’s mushrooming ecosystem of self-broadcasting “creator” YouTubers, the paid subscription service YouTubeTV is a much bigger player in premium television programming than it is in Canada.

The Reporter story begins by breathlessly anticipating that YouTubeTV might, someday soon, elbow its way into the inner circle of exclusive rights to broadcasting NFL games (currently parcelled out among Disney’s Fox and ESPN, Amazon Prime, Comcast and a few others).

But an even bigger breakout for YouTube would be joining the platinum club of streamers like Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Paramount who dominate the market for premium scripted drama.

YouTube’s relationships with a seemingly endless parade of YouTuber stars could morph into something very different from, and competitive with, the fraternity of big studios and streamers, i.e Hollywood.

As AI drives down production costs for premium video, and advertising slowly migrates from television drama to the most successful YouTubers, we could witness an explosion of independent producers of scripted drama who toggle back and forth between selling to the big streamers or else broadcasting on their own YouTube channel.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is so cocky that the Reporter quotes him proclaiming “today, YouTube has become the epicentre of culture. And I don’t mean short-lived fads or a one-off hit show. I mean culture with a capital ‘C.’ The place where day after day, year after year, the events, conversations and voices that define the moment break through.”

The Reporter doesn’t put it this way, but YouTube is uniquely positioned to offer audiences both premium and non-premium content with an unbeatable distribution algorithm.

What the Reporter story doesn’t do is explore the deeper ideas about video consumption that media futurist Doug Shapiro is talking about in his most recent blog post “Big Media’s Structural Disadvantage”.

A dumbed down summary of Shapiro’s column is that the cheaply produced videos flooding YouTube and social media apps make our brains happy because it’s both addictive and passive, like a getaway spa session: we don’t have to expend energy (or money) finding just the right kind of premium content, we just lay there.

Shapiro’s argument is that tut-tutting about quality is a waste of time, this shift in audience attention is happening and the advertising dollars are following.

***

The CRTC has this handy way of telling you what’s on the commissioners’ collective mind when it publishes a post-hearing list of questions for industry and cultural groups to answer. What the questions tell you is where the public record is light on key issues and that the Commission wants to fill those gaps.

The CRTC just finished public hearings on the full implementation of the Online Streaming Act for the foreign audio streamers who were previously ordered by the Commission to make a cash downpayment of five per cent of revenues to Canadian media funds for music and radio news (the streamers appealed the order to Federal Court and we’re waiting for the ruling).

One of the intriguing ideas that Commissioner Bram Abramson kept raising during the hearings was a concept he called “pay or play.”

The idea he’s running up the flagpole is that each streamer might be allowed to make trade-offs of direct expenditures on Canadian audio content in favour of making special efforts to give prominence to Canadian content on its services, something that’s worth money to music labels and artists and hypothetically is a cost to audio streamers.

Abramson is only one of five commissioners deliberating on the audio file, but in question 20 of the CRTC’s list the commissioners ask “what kind of exchange rate between financial contributions and Canadian content aired would be appropriate? For example, for every 1% increase or decrease from a hypothetical baseline percentage of Canadian content, what should be the corresponding percentage or dollar-value change in the required financial contribution?” (Emphasis added)

As a speculative example, if the Commission expects Spotify to spend 30% of its Canadian revenues on Canadian content (including the 5% cash contribution to media funds) Spotify could reduce the 30% to 15% if it made heroic efforts to increase listening to Canadian songs through more recommendations or song selection for playlists.

More radically, the Commission might be thinking of reducing Spotify’s 5% media fund contributions by, say 1%, if it ups its streams of Canadian music from the current 10% of its top 10,000 songs to something like 20%.

That’s analogous to what the Commission already did with video content. Last year the Commission said it will allow Netflix to reduce its 2% cash contribution to the Canada Media Fund —-a contribution that Netflix appealed to Federal Court—-to 0.5% by using the money to buy more Canadian shows for its streaming service.

***

And now for something completely different: news subsidies and news consumers.

When writing about the sustainability of news organizations, I always think about the importance of news outlets making information about current affairs available to Canadians who aren’t news junkies.

My thinking is undoubtedly too binary, but you could divide the world into those who are interested enough in current affairs to pay for news, or at least coaxed into doing so, and those who say to themselves “if news is important, it will find me.”

If the news avoiders aren’t engaged with current affairs —unless it’s free, intriguing and right in front of them— our democracy is kind of screwed.

Cue this new poll conducted by the Globe Strategy Group in the US, summarized by Joshua Benton in Nieman Lab.

The poll divides Americans into active and passive news consumers and it would be fascinating if someone ran the same poll in Canada. The results don’t reveal a single litmus test that predicts who’s a news junkie and who’s not, but the results offer signposts to where the less engaged, passive consumers are to be found.

***

This week MediaPolicy posted an update on the Parliamentary journey of Bill S-209, the age verification law aimed at protecting children from pornography. Judging from the readership numbers (thanks to Reddit), folks are interested in this law which also raises issues of viewer privacy.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Canada’s age verification bill S-209 faces its first Parliamentary test

October 30, 2025

The Senate’s justice committee will soon be voting on Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s Bill S-209, an age verification bill for pornography that was launched in the upper house and will eventually make its way to the House of Commons.

The committee was scheduled to stop hearing witnesses and consider amendments on November 5th but hit a snag on October 29th when a representative of the German online regulator told Senators that the Canadian-owned PornHub had not complied with German law, something that appeared to contradict PornHub lawyer Solomon Friedman‘s testimony on October 8th that PornHub would obey a Canadian law as it had elsewhere, specifically mentioning Louisiana and the United Kingdom. The Senate committee is now considering its options which could mean recalling the fiery PornHub lawyer to answer questions again.

Regardless, the bill will likely get to a committee vote in November and then move on to the full Senate where an earlier version was previously endorsed in 2024 as Bill S-210.

The committee debaters, including Senators, seem to be divided into two groups, one for those that are single-minded in their concern about the privacy risks to porn consumers and another for those fed up with the lack of a policy response to the scourge of violent pornography miseducating children about sex.

UBC law professor Janine Benedet, in the bluntest possible language, described porn as a harmful cultural product sold by companies hiding behind an expansive view of the right to privacy:

UBC professor Janine Benedet – 4 minute video

LCJC meeting no. 8 17-38-02 Download

So far the Senate debate has been preoccupied with adult porn subscribers being outed in a data hack. The policy challenge for the bill is how to avoid, minimize or secure the risk of personal data stolen through hacks, a risk that goes up when Photo ID is required.

That’s why the bill is designed to exploit age estimation as far as possible to dramatically drive down the number of Internet users who would ever have to verify age by submitting ID proof of majority.

Age estimation technology is driven by AI-fueled online surveillance and web scraping: the age-estimating company searches the web or commercially available data for the Internet footprint associated with the viewer’s e-mail address, suggesting either an adult or a child. To the extent that estimation misfires and wrongly concludes the viewer is ineligible as a minor to access porn, the viewer can then submit ID to the age estimator.

The fear of data leaks is an anxiety that can’t be medicated by amending the bill, but likely amendments will be tabled anyway.

Right now, S-209 says that porn sites (which could include social media platforms that allow porn) have to contract with a commercial age verification service that meets federal government standards, including a critical requirement that personal data is digitally expunged as soon as age is verified.

In this regulatory model, thousands of websites or content applications become the age-gaters for porn in partnership with age verification companies. This is how the UK is doing it.

Some US states, like Utah and Texas, have moved the responsibility for age verification further up the chain of online distribution and are hanging the age gating role on apps and content applications (like Meta, X, Google etc.) by making them contract with age verification companies. If age estimation generates false positives and denies age verification to an adult, ID would likely be required.

California has gone one step further up the tech chain. The California bill puts the onus on companies selling device operating systems to require device users to volunteer their age. Perhaps the reason that the state’s Silicon Valley giants endorsed the bill: there’s no ID required at any point.

(An interesting aside, Google’s corporate policy is to use age estimation first, requiring ID if necessary, but only for their own products available in the GooglePlay app store).

The thinking seems to be: the bigger the tech company managing the age estimation task, the better their access to data, and therefore the better their age estimation results.

The downside to moving age verification up the Internet chain is that all adult users of a major online product, like Google Search or Facebook, might be caught in the age verification net, even if they’ve never sought out porn or never will.

Google’s approach to S-209 is generally supportive: it applauds sticking the porn providers with age verification responsibility and opposes PornHub’s view that it’s simpler and less risky to make a few Big Tech companies responsible.

The S-209 amendment that Google is proposing to the Senate is to narrow the scope of porn regulation to online entities that are porn sites by nature, as opposed to most websites, apps and platforms whose overall content is not “primarily intended” for porn. That might let Elon Musk’s X off the hook even though X officially permits porn. (Google’s YouTube does not allow porn, but age-verified adults can find it on Google Search if you disable the SafeSearch default settings. On the other hand, X allows under age children to view pornography if they opt-in).

As drafted, the Bill delegates to a future government regulatory body the line drawing exercise of which online entities with porn content are going to be in or out of the age verification scheme. Age verification could be restricted to conventional porn sites or expanded to a site like X which reputedly is the source of 41% of porn consumption by children.

Critic and law professor Michael Geist told the Senate committee that such an impactful decision on requiring age verification for social media apps or search engines ought to be written right into the legislation, not deferred to a regulator.

Geist does not offer an alternative to S-209 however, other than suggesting the bill be scrapped entirely and the problem of underage consumption of violent pornography punted to a broader Online Harms bill that the government has yet to table.

***

Letter to the Editor: there’s an alternative to S-209 choice of age verification

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Canadians don’t want culture thrown under the bus – the CBC’s trust factor – Wikipedia or Wokepedia

(Some classic Canadian humour to start your weekend)

October 25, 2025

MediaPolicy previously made the observation that while Culture and Identity Minister Steven Guilbeault rejects any further trade concessions to Donald Trump on cultural legislation, we haven’t heard from Mark Carney. And probably won’t. The PM is shying away from those kind of red lines as he transitions rhetorically from “elbows up” to bended knee.

Those of you who recall your history might remember that, according to reports, Canada’s theatrical film legislation was the very last thing on the negotiating table when Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan agreed to Free Trade deal number one in 1987. It didn’t go our way.

It’s good to educate ourselves in anticipation of similar cliffhangers. Last weekend the Globe and Mail’s arts staff writers went all out with a collection of stories about the challenges for Canadian artists and media producers as Canada’s trade relationship with the United States wobbles.

Kelly Nestruck wrote about how television production, stage shows and museum exhibitions are going to manage when access to their main export market, the United States, could be up for grabs.

Brad Wheeler invited Rheostatics’ Dave Bidini to riff on his new album, as well as elbows-up nationalism (“Bumper sticker nationalism is not interesting to me,” says Bidini).

Josh O’Kane looked at the desperate state of Canadian-owned book publishing.

Kate Taylor offered a solid overview of trade deals and US retaliation (and trade law wonks can check out the latest from Hugh Stephens).

Eric Andrew-Gee explained the warm hearth of Québec’s cultural nationalism to anglophones (“The price of having a culture to protect is constant fretting about the state of that culture”).

And last of all Barry Hertz broached the sensitive topic of whether collectively we are up to supporting Canadian culture at all.

Hertz’s column references a new opinion poll just released by Pollara, sponsored by Canada’s independent television and film producers, that shows Canadians want Mark Carney to defend Canadian culture against American trade aggression.

The poll says that 87% of Canadians now support the Liberals’ Online Streaming Act Bill C-11 (up from 67% in May 2022). As for having a fight over Canadian culture with Trump, 68% of Canadians say yes, only 13% say throw it under the bus (the rest don’t know).

It’s true that half of Pollara’s respondents had no clue about C-11 in the first place, but the pollster’s “statement” polling below suggests Canadians’ values are nevertheless strongly aligned with defending cultural legislation.

***

In last weekend’s post, MediaPolicy summarized CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard’s plan for reinvigorating the public broadcaster. Her two biggest points were “more local” and “more diversity.”

Bouchard did the Parliamentary rounds last week, appearing before the Commons Heritage Committee and the Senate communications committee.

Bouchard’s line on ‘more local’ —-she keeps using the word “proximity” to capture both geography and audience affinity with content —- is that digital technology means the CBC can pivot back to local without having to build new stations.

Sitting next to Bouchard, CBC’s Regional Services GM Jean Francois Rioux also emphasized affinity. Canadians want to see people “like me” or “like us” on CBC. They also want other Canadians to see and hear their concerns on the national stage that CBC provides.

There are others who have a different take on affinity, and they mean ideological affinity, code for “more conservatism” on CBC.

Bouchard treads delicately on this one, although in her Commons appearance she thoughtfully suggested that the CBC’s retreat to major cities as a response to budget cuts in the 1990s probably meant that coverage skewed to metropolitan values, which can feel “more centre and left” to anyone living in the “more centre or right” hinterland of Canada.

Bouchard was also interviewed by CBC reporter Jayme Poisson on her October 16th Frontburner podcast. Poisson poked reasonably hard on a number of sore points. On ideological diversity, Poisson pointed out that although CBC’s “trust” rating tops the charts, CTV and Global score better with conservative listeners. Maybe more opinion coverage is what’s needed?

Bouchard didn’t immediately bite on the suggestion —- avoiding a debate over whether big-c Conservatives are treated fairly in CBC coverage— but said what was needed was consistent inclusiveness in CBC content:

Well, I mean, there’s all sorts of ways to make people feel reflected and included. It starts by being in the communities where they are. It also means including a more diverse set of points of view. If that’s possible. And it’s also about being constant about it. Not just during an election period or during a specific period of time. It’s just to have that reliable approach to a diversity of points of view.

That sounds like a shift in content curation as a conscious effort. The execution will be the hard part.

***

A public broadcaster that offers affinity as broadly as possible (my new description of being “highly trusted”) is something we need to keep our democracy glued together. It’s important that everyone is motivated to check in with at least one media source that tells them about all tribes, not just their own.

Wikipedia does something similar. The popular website is quietly just there in our Google Search results. If you read it critically, you’ll get both the uncontroversial facts and the contentious points, the latter helpfully linked to content that you can read and then draw your own conclusions.

That’s unless Wikipedia is a woke, left-wing mind control machine, which is how it gets disparaged these days by the MAGA movement. To that point, Elon Musk says he’s about to release his politically recalibrated competitor to Wikipedia.

Here’s an interesting read from the Washington Post about the political campaign against Wikipedia lead by co-founder Larry Sanders.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – CBC President unveils a new vision – Anti-porn bill is back in the Senate – did C-18 give Google a get-out-of-jail card on content scraping?

October 18, 2025

Last fall, when the CBC seemed destined to fall at the hands of an incoming Conservative government, MediaPolicy published a number of posts on “what is to be done” if the CBC received a stay of execution.

One post (MediaPolicy’s most popular ever) was a guest column from ex-CBC VP Richard Stursberg welcoming the new CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard with some advice for a re-engineered public broadcaster.

One federal election later and we are now getting a clearer picture of what a rethought CBC might look like.

This week Bouchard disclosed an advance copy of her five year plan to Canadian Press which published reports in English and French. The latter story is more in-depth, based on an interview with Bouchard.

Combing through the obligatory recitals for something new, Bouchard’s vision has some promising ideas.

The Plan document makes the familiar aspirational points about connecting Canadians with each other and fostering dialogue.

More concretely, her Plan commits to increasing CBC’s presence in local communities, “aiming to fund additional overage and hire sufficient journalists to cover 15-20 communities with a population greater than 50,000, that currently have no or little local CBC/Radio-Canada presence.”

Keeping that promise no doubt depends on the Carney government following through on its election promise for $150 million in additional funding.

Then there is the CBC’s platform problem. There are too many of them. But the CBC needs to be on them if it’s going to reach the nation’s audience —-multi regional, multi generational, multi lingual and so on. That’s a resource challenge for Bouchard.

Bouchard says CBC has to follow that national audience, youth in particular on digital platforms. The public broadcaster’s analog-to-digital transformation has been underway for years now —over time, television and radio funding has been cannibalized to support digital, especially the CBC News website. Its YouTube audience has grown quickly and TikTok is a must-do opportunity. Bouchard says the logic of the transition necessarily means cutting costs on other platforms, “stopping or transforming certain activities,” though she doesn’t say where or how much.

As for the CBC’s uneasy relationship with private sector media, always frayed because of CBC’s competition for advertising dollars on television and digital, Bouchard wants to focus on where the CBC can collaborate with local media and independent journalists, but also with the content creators and influencers who are popular with youth.

Bouchard also says the CBC should be “a pollinator, a helper to the [journalism] industry.” She told CP that “when we have services to share or offer, we should offer them on terms that are affordable for these media outlets. We have premises, we have space. We can consider facilitating access to [our] assets at zero cost or at a reduced cost that promotes budgetary balance for our colleagues.”

Finally, she grabs hold of the elephant’s leash: the widespread perception that the CBC isn’t ideologically ecumenical in its editorial curation; that it’s insufficiently conservative by content and temperament.

There will be no pleasing the CBC’s harshest critics, but Bouchard says the CBC wants to make a big effort to win over those who don’t tune in or else “undervalue” (what a euphemism!) the public broadcaster’s content. A step in the right direction is devoting more resources to the West and in rural Canada.

But that doesn’t just require money, it requires a migration of corporate culture.

The five-year Plan is officially unveiled on October 28th.

***

There is no sign of the federal government retabling its online harms bill in Parliament. It died on the order table at the last election.

Instead, Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s has revived her Bill S-209 which zeroes in on harmful pornography being made available to kids. The debate rages in the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee and MediaPolicy reported on it this week.

***

The much-slagged Online News Act Bill C-18 took another hit this week from The Hub publisher Rudyard Griffiths who told the Parliamentary Heritage Committee that C-18 protects Google from potential copyright lawsuits for ingesting and repurposing Canadian news content in its AI tools, Overview and Mode, embedded in its search engine.

The bill, Griffiths told MPs, “requires all news organizations [accepting money under C-18] must make all of their content available to Google. If you are a recipient of funding through the Online News Act, you are unable to prevent Google from scraping behind your paywall, scraping subscriber-only content to serve up in their [large language model]”

Sections 2 and 26 of the Act grant a copyright waiver for news content that Google “makes available” on Search by “ranking and indexing” so long as Google reaches a compensation agreement with news publishers.

The Conservatives’ slagger-in-chief of the Online News Act, MP Rachel Thomas, jumped on Griffiths’ claim and posed it as rhetorical question to subsequent witnesses appearing before the Heritage’s committee that is investigating the impact of AI on Canadian media and cultural industries.

As Canadian news outlets have yet to sue Google for ingesting their news content and repurposing it in Overview and Mode, this remains a hypothetical issue for now. If it got before a judge, the court would have to decide if “ranking and indexing” is what an AI tool does, as opposed to ingesting, summarizing and rewriting from multiple sources. The fact that Mode and Overview are embedded in Search, as opposed to a separate AI app, could be important too.

This idea that that Google might have snagged a windfall immunity from copyright challenges to its content-scraping for AI tools arose previously when Google struck its agreement in June 2024 with the Canadian Journalism Collective for the distribution of Google’s $100 million compensation for Canadian news content, a year after the Overview prototype was launched in the United States.

Taking its cue from section 26 of the Act, Google inserted a clause into its agreement with CJC:

7(h) The Collective will not initiate or participate in, and will include a similar requirement of the Members in the Members Agreement, from initiating or participating in, (i) any bargaining process or (ii) proceeding before the Commission, a mediator, an arbitration panel, or a court of competent jurisdiction, in each case related to (A) any bargaining process in connection with Google, any of its Affiliates, or any Intermediaries pursuant to the Act or the Regulations, or (B) infringement of copyright in relation to making available news content of Members by Intermediaries in the manner permitted by the Act. The Collective will enforce such provision in the Members Agreements to the fullest extent and in a timely manner.

When the Google-CJC agreement was submitted to the CRTC for approval, the Commission appeared to say that the copyright waiver didn’t apply to AI tools so there was no need for action “at this time”:

Some interveners, including the CP group, Village Media, The Logic, and Unifor, raised issues with clause 7(h) in the Agreement, which forbids news businesses from pursuing Google for “infringement of copyright in relation to making available news content of Members by Intermediaries in the manner permitted by the Act.” The interventions raised concerns that this would limit their ability to enforce their copyright against Google for uses beyond making news content available on Google Search. In particular, interveners were concerned about potential use on DNIs other than Google Search, or used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. Google argues that the provision is drafted specifically to reflect the use considered under the Act, namely the making available of news content on the DNI covered by the Agreement.

Section 26 of the Act protects an operator from copyright liability in certain circumstances where its DNI makes news content available. Clause 7(h) of the Agreement extends a similar protection to Google in respect of the making available by Google Search of the news content of news businesses in the collective. (Original Footnote: Clause 7(h) refers to news content made available by “Intermediaries” of Google. Under the Agreement “Intermediaries” is defined as DNIs operated by Google to which the Act applies, which is only Google Search). To the extent that this clause reflects protections from liability set out in the Act, the Commission notes that there is no need for any further action at this time. As a result, the Commission makes no order with respect to clause 7(h) of the Agreement.

So far there’s no copyright lawsuit, so there’s no issue. That might change.

While you’re thinking about news organizations and AI scraping, you might find interesting copyright expert Hugh Stephens’ latest post about the debate that is unfolding at the Heritage committee.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Child safety law S-209 is back in Parliament, porn sites want Californian-style age verification

Image by Open AI

October 16, 2025

Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s age verification bill for pornography is back in the Parliamentary pipeline.

The Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee has already held four days of hearings on Bill S-209 with two more days scheduled next week.

Earlier this summer, MediaPolicy interviewed bill sponsor Miville-Dechêne about the legislation aimed at protecting children from the harmful pornography that is widely available on the web, both on porn websites and social media apps.

In the video below, Lord James Bethell, a British Parliamentarian who pushed through similar legislation in the United Kingdom this summer, had this to say to Canadian senators about the impact of porn on the “plasticity” of young minds:

Courtesy of SenVu

The lightning rod for critics of the bill is the introduction of age verification into regulation of the Internet.

In the Senate hearings, fears about data breaches and leaks, increasingly remote as technology improves, have consumed most of the oxygen in the room.

But the bill seems likely to get through Parliament, eventually. So representatives of the porn sites want Canada to follow California and shift the legal responsibility for age verification from porn websites to the phones, tablets and laptops pre-installed with operating systems sold by Google, Apple and Microsoft.

The device-centred approach emphasizes parental responsibility for setting up devices to send “adult-only” or “child-access” signals to app developers who still have to obey the signal but otherwise are off the hook for age verification, as are porn sites and social media platforms.

That’s a better system of age verification, say the Canadian-based porn providers, because it only has to regulate a few tech giants instead of a constellation of porn sites, especially the offshore sites that are likely to defy the law and force the government to chase them from one website address to another with site-blocking orders.

Another key issue is whether the bill will apply to social media platforms. As written, the legislation only excludes its application to search engines.

According to Miville-Dechêne, the bill can apply to social media companies. Elon Musk’s X is reputed to be the largest conduit of pornography to children, surpassing porn sites. But the text of the bill leaves the decision to cover social media services to the federal government or its regulator.

Miville-Dechêne says she’s content to defer to a regulator on that point as her age verification bill will have to mesh with the government’s online harms bill, should it decide to revive Bill C-63.

As the hearings progress, the elephant in the room is the Liberal government’s opposition to S-209.

Miville-Dechêne’s old bill passed the Senate and second reading in the House of Commons during the 44th Parliament with majority support before dying on the order table at election time. Barring a swing in the strong popular support for legislation, the bill seems likely to keep the votes of Conservative, NDP and Bloc MPs once resubmitted to the House of Commons.

The only question is whether the Carney government maintains the barge-pole distance from the bill that the previous Liberal administration kept. Former PM Justin Trudeau criticized the Senator’s bill as likely to push pornography-seeking children to the dark web and Liberal MPs voted against it in the House.

Alas, the Carney cabinet observed Parliamentary convention by not appearing at the recent senate committee hearings on the bill. Instead, heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault sent mid-level civil servant Amy Awad, his subject expert on digital regulation.

Awad handled the Senators’ questions adroitly and advanced the idea that the Liberals’ much broader Online Harms Act Bill C-63 —-which also died on the Commons order table earlier this year— could have addressed the same policy goal of making porn sites responsible for age verification through third party service providers.

Those of you familiar with Online Harms bill might wonder where she finds that in the text of C-63. Answer: it isn’t there, at least not explicitly

Nevertheless, Awad argued that the concept of age verification was not inconsistent with the self-designed safety codes that C-63 would have required from the digital platforms and that the proposed Digital Safety Commission might have ordered age verification.

The decorously unasked question of Awad was “where is Bill C-63 now?” A candid answer would have been “bolted to the back burner while we deal with Trump.”

This sets up a scenario in which Miville-Dechêne’s Senate bill gets back to the House of Commons in 2026 and forces the hand of the government on Bill C-63.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Spotify’s coy ignorance – Guilbeault’s agenda – Paramount, HBO and Crave

October 11, 2025

I am guessing the five commissioners running the CRTC’s public hearing on radio broadcasting and audio streaming read Simon Gionet’s column in Le Devoir, published on the last day of hearings, September 29th.

The story conveyed the Québec’s music industry’s message: we’re getting slaughtered and the CRTC better do something about it.

The online streaming consumption of Francophone music in Québec is 4.6% per cent of the top 10,000 songs, according to the latest projections by l’Observatoire de la culture et des communications de l’Institut de la statistique du Québec.

Approximately five per cent. In a province that is 80% Francophone.

This is happening in an environment in which streaming is gradually displacing the sale of digital and physical music formats in Québec; 55% of those sales are French language music. It’s skewed by age: the Observatoire notes that consumption of French language music remains high in legacy media such as physical music sales and radio, but rock bottom on streaming services, the medium of choice for the younger generation.

At the CRTC, the response of foreign music labels and global streamers went like this:

Patrick Rogers of Music Canada (the big three labels Universal, Warner and Sony) told the CRTC “what we don’t support is [a CRTC requirement for] the inclusion of any music, Canadian or otherwise, that wouldn’t normally make‑up that listening experience.”

Xenia Manning, Spotify’s Director of Global Music Policy, offered her coy ignorance of the French language problem. When asked by a commissioner if the Observatoire’s “five per cent” number was accurate for the world’s biggest music streamer, Manning said “we could look into it.”

The best known spokesperson for Québec’s music industry is APEM’s Jérôme Payette. “The future of the music industry as we know it is truly at stake,” he told Le Devoir. “Our Francophone and Canadian musical culture risks virtually extinction or becoming completely invisible and marginalized if nothing is done.”

His ask of the Commission was:

Make the streamers include 50% Canadian music in their song recommendations made to Canadian subscribers, including a French language quota;
Next, collect quarterly data on the consumption of music;
Take further action if the new numbers aren’t good enough, and
Look for an improvement from 2% to 8% consumption of French language music across Canada by 2029 (he didn’t specify a Québec-only number).

Payette’s parting shot to the Commission was “the CRTC has the opportunity… to show that we are capable of standing up to preserve our cultural sovereignty and our culture.”

***

Ah, the federal Heritage committee is back. How I have missed its performative politics.

All roads to Canadian cultural policy run through the ten MPs who sit on this Parliamentary committee, five Liberals, four Conservatives and the lone member from the Bloc Québécois.

It’s useful to parse the committee transcripts for clues on the government’s legislative intentions, as well as what mayhem to expect from Opposition MPs.

First, a report on the mayhem. The Conservatives began their dependable tormenting of the CBC. They also pushed successfully (over Liberal objections) to send three of the committee’s Reports from the last session of Parliament to the House of Commons. Those reports (on Big Tech meddling in Canadian politics, toxic content on social media, and the state of Canadian news media) are now filed in the Commons, with Conservative dissents, so the government owes a written response. More grist for the mill.

Going one Report further, the Conservatives won a new committee investigation into the state of news media, with subject matter, witnesses and committee dates to be determined.

As for the government agenda, Minister Steve Guilbeault appeared at the committee and promised something newsworthy about CBC’s plans for local news would emerge soon.

He was grilled by the Conservatives and the Bloc about where the rumoured Liberal budget cuts to his department’s programs might fall. He deferred to the Finance Minister’s budget on November 4th, but hinted about consolidating the administration of the Canada Media Fund for television, Telefilm, and another program (my guess, the National Film Board). It seems unlikely he can cut 15% of spending over three years without paring back program spending.

The Minister also gave an unparsable answer to a question about retabling Bill C-63, the complex online harms bill that included mandatory safety codes for social media platforms, a revived individual right of complaint against hate speech, and stronger criminal penalties for online hate. While the latter subject matter is arguably covered by Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s Bill C-9, Guilbeault left us guessing about bringing back the safety code proposal.

One last point, I was surprised that the Minister was willing to take the Conservative bait to pass judgment on ex-CBC host Travis Dhanraj, who claims he was mistreated and prevented from inviting conservative guests onto his show by CBC management.

Travis Dhanraj with co-host Karman Wong and guest Kevin O’Leary

The Minister’s comments in French —“d’abord, je tiens à déplorer ce qui est arrivé à cet employé”—- were officially translated as “I condemn,” but were closer to “I lament.” He says he wasn’t briefed on the controversy by CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard, so his willingness to express regret stands out. Later in the transcript he qualifies his concern by saying “it’s possible that it went very badly for this individual, I’m sorry about that.”

The Committee is currently engaged in a review of AI impact on media and cultural industries to which MediaPolicy will return.

***

The Hollywood news outlet Deadline is speculating about the rumoured Paramount purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery. Warner assets include studio production, the premier streaming platform HBO Max, and cable properties CNN, TNT Sports, and various nature and lifestyle channels.

Netflix might submit a competing bid, but Deadline immediately dashed that speculation by observing that Netflix wouldn’t want the cable assets (indeed, ask yourself why they would want anything other than the library of titles).

What’s not speculated upon is the knock-on effect on Canada, specifically Bell Media which is hanging on to exclusive Canadian distribution rights to HBO content as the ballast for Crave. Bell’s current deal for HBO still runs for an unknown number of years, probably until 2027 or 2028, and keeping access to premium US television dramas will always be job one.

The unanswered question is whether a Paramount-owned HBO would be more or less willing to renew Bell’s deal for Crave or instead go direct to Canadian consumers like Netflix and Disney Plus.

***

Go Jays.

I thought I was too old for birthday presents, but thanks to @27vladdyjr and @davidortiz for this:

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – The AI Death Star – the Ellison media empire

AI Image

October 5, 2025

There is a good analysis piece by Gretel Kahn that reviews the distribution of the $100 million Bill C-18 Google payments to Canadian news outlets and the Meta ban on Canadian news.

The criticisms from various publishers and commentators on where the Google money landed are fairly predictable. Mainstream media, especially the US-controlled Postmedia chain, come in for a bashing and the most vivid quote comes from Christopher Curtis, the online publisher of local news outlet The Rover, who opines that “this whole thing has been a huge gift for foreign-owned legacy media and a spit in the face of small outlets like ours and Indigenous-owned outlets.”

Got it.

The fresh stuff that Kahn digs out is how news outlets are adapting to the Meta ban on Canadian news. One publisher points out that Meta’ s traffic referrals to news sites were falling well before Mark Zuckerberg responded to the Online News Act Bill C-18 by banishing most news organizations from his platform.

Many of these publishers are figuring out work arounds on Meta applications, buying Facebook ads to promote their hyperlinked news or posting unlinked news items on Instagram. Others are leaning more heavily on YouTube and TikTok distribution. As one publisher comments in the story, it’s “better not to build on rented land,” a nod to heavier reliance on their own e-mail and subscription distribution instead of Search and Social platforms.

But all of that may be yesterday’s problem. The new disruptors of journalism are the Internet-scraping AI companies, including the same Big Tech platforms that make news available through hyperlinked news snippets.

Canada’s Online News Act C-18 doesn’t regulate AI ingestion of Canadian news content. So far, the AI companies have got away with being the dog that eats your book, barfs it, and claims the ingestion was okay because it’s no longer a book.

If the Liberal government has any concern about that, or any interest in amending copyright law to get at the problem more quickly, it has yet to show such interest.

In the meantime, the referrals of audience traffic from AI-enhanced search engines to news sites are way down. Yet a news report suggests that the few AI companies deigning to make licensing agreements with a handful of news agencies are sending more traffic to these chosen outlets. In these early days, the AI horizon facing news organizations appears to range from catastrophic to not-so-catastrophic scenarios and the question of which news sites get licensing deals may be determinative. If this sounds like the problem of oligopoly in content distribution that lead to Bill C-18, it should.

Federal AI Minister Evan Solomon just announced the advisory panel for his federal AI Strategy Task Force. The list of strategic priorities does not include news media. The panel is dominated by experts on AI development and economic opportunities. The only member appointed to the 23-person panel who is focussed on the downside harms to the media ecosystem is McGill University’s Taylor Owen.

Whatever is coming from AI, so far the Liberal government does not seem interested in riding to the rescue of the media or creative industries. The Parliamentary Heritage committee is scheduling hearings beginning October 6th and 8th that may put the issue into the public policy spotlight.

***

The Bari Weiss deal is done now. The iconoclastic publisher of The Free Press has sold her publication to the newly consolidated Paramount, owned by David Ellison.

Weiss becomes the editor-in-chief of CBS News and, given her MAGA affinities, the editorial curation of the mainstream broadcaster could change.

Paramount joins Fox, Warner Brothers Discovery (CNN, TBS), Disney (ABC, ESPN) and Comcast (NBC) as a media superpower in both news and sports & entertainment. But Ellison has a special edge and the potential to dominate global media to the extent that he works in cooperation with his father Larry Ellison, the second richest man in the world. Ellison pater is expected to become a significant minority owner of the US-operations of TikTok once that deal with Chinese-owned ByteDance is consummated.

The Washington Post has a good story on the Ellisons, their businesses, and their relationships with the White House.

***

I have two recommendations for weekend listening.

For those of you who read my review of David Cayley’s new book on the CBC, you may enjoy (a) reading the book, or (b) listening to Tara Henley’s excellent podcast interview of the author.

And if you want to listen to an interview full of unexpected personal insights, I recommend the engrossing New York Times podcast interview of the actor, artist and activist Sean Penn. The interview was recorded in two parts, divided chronologically by the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

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