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Catching up on MediaPolicy – Netflix is Rex – Miller is minister – CRTC vets Meta’s news ban

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December 7, 2025

This week’s blockbuster news is that Netflix edged out Paramount to buy Warner Brothers for $82 USD billion. The deal immediately depleted the supply of adjectives at the disposal of media analysts.

If the deal closes as scheduled in late 2026, Netflix buys up the world’s biggest movie archive and keeps it out of the hands of a major rival with the second biggest (Netflix is number three).

Netflix is paying a heavy price tag and arguably overpaid (you know who pays for inflated merger valuations, it’s subscribers and workers). Netflix goes from its status as the streaming industry’s 900-pound gorilla to, I dunno, T-Rex stature?

The public commentary on the deal is mostly doomsaying.

It speeds up the chiselling of the tombstone for the theatrical release industry.

In a press release, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said shareholder value would flow from adding HBO and the full Warner Brothers archive to the Netflix “best in class streaming service:” his pro forma commitment to theatre release was relegated to a subordinate sentence clause.

But if the merciless dispatch of theatrical-release seems inevitable, and just the law of the marketplace jungle, what is of long term concern is the anti-competitive effect on the pipeline of big-budget premium video entertainment. The Globe & Mail’s Barry Hertz has a good analysis here.

The Netflix deal is a prime candidate for anti-trust review by the Trump administration (especially as Netflix outbid Friend-of-Trump Paramount).

That review could go in any direction but things to watch for include (a) Trump reviving his threat to levy tariffs on foreign movies and the offshore shooting of Hollywood blockbusters, and/or (b) using the anti-trust hammer to get something that he personally wants, which could be commitments to US-based production or some vanity trophy we can’t imagine right now.

It’s not that Sarandos can’t see that coming. In his press release he said the acquisition would allow Netflix to expand its US based production, a gimme that doesn’t commit him to a rate of new releases equal to “Netflix plus Warner Brothers” but only “Netflix plus a dollar.”

Any Trump-driven re-shoring of studio production could hurt the two offshore leaders of Hollywood production, the UK and Canada (and hurt Hollywood too, but that’s a longer discussion).

Beyond that, the effect on Canadian-owned broadcasting could be massive. Netflix is buying Warner Brothers’ Home Box Office streaming service and catalogue which may or may not be integrated into the Netflix platform, once subscription pricing is figured out. The press release suggests HBO content will be on the Netflix platform, at least in the US.

Here in Canada, there is no HBO streaming service and Bell Media holds the exclusive license to distribute HBO on the only Canadian streaming service of consequence, Crave TV.

You would have to question whether Netflix has any interest in continuing that Canadian licensing arrangement when it expires and, in fact, Netflix has an excellent opportunity to severely wound its only Canadian-owned competitor.

Without that profitable HBO content, Bell’s ability to keep funding Canadian content takes a big hit.

***

Canada has a new Heritage minister, Marc Miller.

That’s the fallout from Steven Guilbeault’s cabinet resignation over Prime Minister Mark Carney scrapping the Trudeau/Guilbeault policies on oil production, emissions, pipelines, oil tankers and clean energy regulations.

Miller continues a long tradition of the Liberals appointing an MP from the island of Montréal to the Heritage portfolio.

But of course Miller is the first anglophone the Libs have picked for that job since Hamilton’s Shiela Copps —-who was born ready to butt heads with the US on cultural sovereignty. She did the job from 1996 to 2003 under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

The feisty Miller is prone to speaking with candour, as a rule. That’s already got him into a spat with CAQ premier François Legault who didn’t like Miller insisting on making a distinction between “the decline” and “fragility” of the French language in Canada and Québec. The Bloc dutifully piled on.

Guilbeault was the federal champion of Canadian and French language content in Québec and as the new Heritage minister no less will be expected of Miller. His life will get very interesting in about six months when CUSMA negotiations begin.

Will Miller become the political reincarnation of Shiela Copps? It’s up to Mark Carney, just as it was up to Jean Chrétien.

***

It looks like the CRTC’s investigation into whether Meta is selectively enforcing its made-in-Canada ban on news content has come an end. The CRTC’s brief discharge letter to Meta was published last week.

You can still find news items on Facebook and Instagram in Canada, despite Meta’s avowal that it banned news to take itself outside of the scope of the compulsory licensing of “news content” in the Online News Act.

Meta must have satisfied the Commission staff that it is sticking to its ban by taking down news items posted by Canadian users and by deleting user screenshots of articles. If you want to know how the Commission reached its conclusion, you won’t find it in the letter.

What remains unresolved, or perhaps resolved only to the Commission’s private satisfaction, is Meta permitting posts from news outlets like Narcity and The Peak who successfully applied to Meta for what they describe as “exemptions” from the news content ban.

Without more transparency, one can only guess if Meta’s exemption of hand picked news outlets violates the statutory prohibition against digital platforms discriminating for or against selected news outlets.

In the case of Narcity, its publisher claimed that Meta granted an exemption because Narcity was refused certification for federal journalism labour tax credits on the grounds that it doesn’t publish enough original news on current affairs.

But certification for federal subsidies program doesn’t mean that a news outlet isn’t producing some news content, or pieces of news content, as defined by the Online News Act, which Meta says its banning to avoid paying for it.

The Peak also recently announced that Meta gave it “an exemption” and I invite you to have a look at the news articles it’s allowed to post on Facebook and Instagram.

If you go looking, keep in mind that the “news content” that Meta is supposed to be banning in order to escape the gravitational pull of the Act includes “any portion” of news content.

The Commission’s original inquiry into the news ban appears to have been its own idea, so the fact that it hasn’t published its reasons at any length is not a total surprise. No Canadian news organization has filed a complaint.

***

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Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Ranting about CanCon – Danish news subsidies – Meta lobbies Feds on age verification – the NFB’s gripping sailing documentary

November 29, 2025

I’ve fallen behind on catching you up on media policy news because I felt compelled to write a series of three posts commenting on the CRTC’s ruling on Canadian content. The last one, the rant I promised, was published this week in Cartt.ca.

While I was ranting, one of the things I let slide was telling you about a new report out of Denmark proposing to refashion its policy design for government aid to news journalism.

The Danes are serious about news subsidies: they spend 540 million krone ($120M CDN) every year on private media in nation of six million people (Canada spends about $200 million in country of 42 million).

According to the Reuters Oxford Digital News Report, Denmark’s “public trust in media” score is 56% and it ranks sixth out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index at 86.93. By comparison, Canada’s trust score is 39% with a press freedom index of 78.5, 21st in the world.

The Danes also have something we don’t: a 2018 Media Liability law that established an independent national press council and conferred the force of law on editorial independence from ownership.

The Danish subsidy report was commissioned by government and written by a committee led by Rasmus Nielsen, the former chief of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Despite the ocean separating us, there are strong parallels between the Danish system of news subsidy and Canada’s jigsaw of federal programs: we have the QCJO subsidy of journalist salaries, the Local Journalism Initiative that funds 700 full time reporters in under-serviced regions across the country, and the Canadian Periodical Fund which supports editorial expenditures by community weeklies.

The untranslated 144-page Danish report covers a lot of ground, but Nielsen’s own English language summary of it captures the essence: a weighted emphasis on supporting news outlets that are regional, local or “independent” (owners of single-titles) rather than mere incumbency as a news organization.

***

The Senate deliberations of Senatrice Julie Miville-Dechêne’s Bill S-209, that would require age verification for online pornography is on hold until February while the Senate justice committee deals with other matters.

During the pause, the Canadian Press reports that Meta has joined the fray by lobbying the federal Liberals to step in with their own bill that would shift the age verification responsibility from pornography websites and social media platforms to app stores.

Meta obviously doesn’t run an App Store, as do Google and Apple, and the latter two Big Tech companies are cheesed about what Meta is up to.

Meanwhile, Canadian children continue to be exposed to online pornography featuring choking and slapping. The CP story is well done and informative.

Meta is having a good month of course. It won the anti-trust trial brought by the US Justice Department that claimed Meta was running a monopoly in personal social networking. In the interim five year period between filing and judgment, TikTok greatly improved its market share.

Matt Stoller has a very good analysis of the lawsuit, the trial, the judge, and why he thinks Big Tech will never be slowed down by anti-trust litigation: he says it takes public policy and legislatures to change things.

A test of his theory may happen soon: the trial judge in the Google Ad Tech case will be handing down her decision on whether to dismantle that illegal monopoly in the new year.

Meanwhile a consortium of US school boards just filed a new lawsuit against Meta and several other Tech companies.

Their allegation against Meta in particular is that company documents reveal CEO Mark Zuckerberg squelched evidence of harm to teenage girls while Meta designed lax safety features, including ineffective measures to expel sex traffickers from the platform. Of course, the allegations must be proven in court, probably over several years.

This does raise the question of whether Americans (and Canadians) should count on US courts to adjudicate Big Tech’s excesses by giving full due process and demanding conclusive evidence of the allegations, or whether governments should just cut to the chase, stop litigating whether the harms to kids persist, and legislate a solution.

In related stories, Australia’s social media ban on under 16s comes into force in December. The EU Parliament just passed a non-binding resolution to do the same.

***

The National Film Board’s website is recommending “Ghosts of the Sea,” a riveting documentary about the ill-fated Norwegian father-and-son sailors, Peter and Thomas Tangvald.

The filmmaker is Thomas’ half sister Virginia, who settled in her mother’s hometown of Montreal. The father Peter was married seven times and two of his wives died at sea.

I’ll say this: the film offers a visceral take on “intergenerational trauma.”

I think you will enjoy the one hour and 37 minute film and I absolutely guarantee you’ll have strong opinions afterwards.

***

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

The CRTC’s ruling on television copyright: for a branch-plant CanCon economy

November 27, 2025

In October 2022 Netflix was appearing at the Senate committee reviewing the proposed Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, when the Conservative senator Fabian Manning pitched a softball question: what was the Hollywood giant’s “main priority” in amending a bill it didn’t welcome?

The Canadian spokesperson for the streamer was succinct in his answer: “If I had to choose just one, it would be the issue of copyright ownership.”

Last week, Netflix got what it wanted.

Continue reading at Cartt.ca…

What did the CRTC just do to CanCon?

November 22, 2025

Earlier this week the CRTC released a major ruling on Canadian content. MediaPolicy provided a quick bottom line reaction but you could do just as well with any of the many media reports.

More depth of analysis is called for but I’m going to do that over two posts.

Today I was going to go on a rant. But I will save that for the next post, because I think those interested in policy supporting Canadian television drama often find themselves in a situation not unlike a novice driver raising the hood of a car engine to gape at a maze of parts. An explainer might help, so here goes, with the opinionating to follow.

The important thing to get about the CanCon engine is that the interconnected parts include Canadian broadcasters, government agencies, Hollywood streamers and independent Canadian filmmakers who collectively follow CRTC regulations that put Canadian television dramas on a screen to be enjoyed by a Canadian audience whose dollars rarely cover the costs of those shows.

As a general rule CanCon is unprofitable in our modestly populated country. If we had a population of 340 million, we wouldn’t need a CanCon policy.

That’s why as a matter of Canadian cultural policy we offer production subsidies bankrolled by Canadian cable companies as well as federal and provincial governments. It’s the feds and the provinces that put up most of the money.

At the heart of the CanCon engine are the “independent” Canadian TV and filmmakers—by law, independently-owned at arms length from Canadian broadcasters— who make Canadian drama and comedy and sell it to broadcasters and, coming soon, to Hollywood streamers too.

As a matter of Canadian cultural policy it’s the Canadian producers, and only them, who get the subsidies that make up half of filming budgets (though eligible for these subsidies, the broadcasters rarely make their own dramas in-house). Federal policy aptly describes the independents as the vital cog in the broadcasting machine.

Living hand to mouth in relative anonymity, these modestly capitalized enterprises have been the creative force behind CanCon for decades, at least as important as the big broadcasters whom the public knows better. As far as television drama is concerned, the broadcasting engine runs on the content the independents make.

Until now, we haven’t had a Hollywood-style system for making Canadian television dramas. No wannabe studio giants here. The Canadian independents are many and mostly small, moving from project to project, slowly building a sustainable business, locked into frenemy relationships with the Canadian broadcasters who buy their stuff.

But those Canadian broadcasters, big and small, are on their way down, if not out (watch this space).

Netflix and the streamers are increasingly on top. The federal Liberals’ Online Streaming Act, Bill C-11, was the engine overhaul necessary if the ascendant streamers are to be recruited to finance and distribute Canadian drama, filling the growing void for that programming that results from Canadian broadcasters steadily losing cable subscribers and advertising revenue.

The streamers are not willing conscripts to the cause. Just ask them. They despise the mandatory cash contributions to Canadian media funds that subsidize television dramas and local news.

But making their own Canadian content might be something the streamers could live with. This recent CRTC ruling was about setting the conditions for that.

From their point of view, the streamers would like total freedom of action to make Canadian content on their own terms. Those terms include hiring the creative talent they want and dictating commercial terms to the independent Canadian production houses they engage to make the content. The CRTC is trying to bend to the streamers’ desires without the regulatory engine seizing up.

On hiring the top creative talent that drive a production, the CRTC has long sponsored the famous ten-point headcount that certifies dramas as CanCon, a certification that the broadcasters need in order to meet the CRTC’s quotas for CanCon spending.

Until this week, that headcount system was straightforward enough. The idea is that in the long run Canadian talent will make Canadian content, without a need for a state-arbitrated test of “what is Canadian.”

The ten points recognize up to eight talent roles: Director (2 points), Screenwriter (2 points), first and second lead actors, cinematographer, art director, music composer and picture editor.

If a production house hires enough Canadians to rack up at least six points, the CRTC certifies their program. In addition to the six-point talent, the CRTC requires the producer —the quarterback of the entire production who does the hiring and approves the scripts— to be a Canadian and demonstrably in charge of the creative team without interference from investors. As well, 75% of the set production and post-production payroll must be paid to Canadian workers.

There are equally compelling cultural arguments to leave this system alone, or to change it up. Last week, the CRTC changed it up, although much of it might seem mundane at first glance.

There’s a new category of Showrunner (2 points), a recognition of the Hollywood practice of a putting a hybrid writer/producer in charge of a production. The screenwriter’s guild ain’t thrilled, but the CRTC is just adapting to reality.

There’s an ecumenical nod towards giving points for hiring a Canadian behind-the-screen team of hair, make-up and costume designers. Collectively, a Canadian team can earn one point.

Ditto, the CRTC is now adding the special effects director to its approved list.

In a move towards critics who believe that certification of Canadian content ought to be less about the nationality of talent and more about the Canadian narrative, look and feel of the story, the Commission is giving points for visibly Canadian locales, landscapes, and characters.

It’s also giving credit for dramas based on Canadian novels as well as soundtracks featuring a majority of previously recorded Canadian songs.

All of this Canadianography earns “bonus” points, shorthand for saying that a more effusively Canadian drama can be certified as CanCon with less Canadian talent.

This was an unexpected development, as the Commission’s preliminary view published last year was that it wasn’t going to do this. However the Commission cites the feedback from a public opinion poll it commissioned and interprets as supporting a popular desire for more classically Canadian stories.

With a longer list of roles into which Canadian hires are credited towards CanCon certification, the Commission expanded the 10 point test to as much as a 14 point test, but made it scaleable (smaller productions might combine roles) up or down: so long as 60% of the roles are filled by Canadians, the spirit of the old six out of ten test is met.

But crucially the importance of Canadian directors, writers and actors has been diluted. This will please the Hollywood streamers who can be expected to tell the Canadian independent producers that if they want the commission they will hire more of the streamers’ key Hollywood people.

There are however more seismic changes afoot and let me draw the connection between those big moves and the incremental amendments to the point system.

First, the all-powerful producer who pilots the production, approves the script, and hires the six-point creative team might not have to be Canadian after all.

In this newest CRTC ruling, when Netflix commissions a CanCon project and insists upon taking a majority copyright position in the production, which it will do routinely, the lead producer can be an American so long as two of the three junior producers are Canadian.

That brings us to the second big change: the Canadian ownership of copyright and intellectual property in a drama production.

This is a bit of long winded explanation but stick with me and follow the money.

Until now the Commission has never bothered with any rules regulating ownership of copyright in a production.

In the past the Commission didn’t need to impose Canadian ownership on the control of copyright in a CanCon program because all the financing partners were Canadian: the independent producer selling the show, the broadcaster commissioning the show, the federal and provincial governments providing the first layers of subsidy for the show and the public-private Canada Media Fund providing the second layer.

The Media Fund and Canadian governments that control the CanCon subsidies want to support the capitalization and long term viability of the independents. They insist that the independent producer —not its broadcast partner— must own 100% of the copyright and intellectual property flowing from the production.

The Media Fund supercharges that by green-lighting its subsidy only if hiring of Canadians on a production is a full ten points out of ten. Since the Media Fund subsidy is crucial to CanCon financing, ten points becomes the norm even if the CRTC and federal subsidies only require six.

But since the CRTC has never been in charge of subsidies and is only concerned with getting Canadian content to broadcasting screens, its thinking was that one Canadian media business is as good as another, be it an independent producer or broadcaster.

Then we decided to regulate the US streamers. Oops, now the CRTC needs a copyright rule.

The new reality is that if the CRTC is going to require the streamers to spend money making CanCon, the streamers are going to want as much control of the return on their investment across Canada and a global audience as they can get. That return comes from domestic release, global release, long term residency in the Netflix library, control of spin-offs and sequels, trademark revenue, etc.

That means three things are important: copyright, copyright and copyright.

When Netflix appeared before Parliamentary committees considering Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, its Canadian policy director bluntly stated that the amendment Netflix wanted the most was copyright ownership of the CanCon it would be required to commission.

He then disarmingly claimed that the streamer wouldn’t necessarily want majority ownership of every CanCon production it commissioned ——even though it does exactly that when commissioning US shows that are shot in Canada.

The Commission knew it had to find a balance between Netflix’s commercial interests and the viability of Canadian independents, the standard bearers for cultural production. The question was, where to strike the compromise?

Last week it struck that compromise by offering the streamers one of three options: 100% Canadian ownership of copyright, minority American ownership, and majority American ownership (to a maximum of 80%).

The first bucket of 100% Canadian ownership is status quo, allowing for the tweaks to the six-point rule.

The minority US ownership bucket means that Netflix can choose a non-Canadian lead producer although technically the Canadian production house retains an equal share of creative control.

The majority US ownership bucket obviously means that Netflix effectively owns the show and the lion’s share of its success. The only price it must pay is to move up from six to eight points (or 80%) on hiring Canadians with the aid of Canadianography points, hairstylists, make up artists, etc.

Chart from Canadian Media Producers Association, circulated to its members

Nevertheless it’s important to mark this mental footnote: the new CRTC copyright rule does not apply to subsidies controlled by Canadian governments and the Canada Media Fund, at least for now. As mentioned above, those rules currently guarantee that the Canadian independent owns the copyright, in fact for 25 years. But the streamers can ignore those federal copyright rules if they forego the subsidies.

What does the CRTC copyright rule mean when it comes to making money on a show?

“Copyright” is just the price of admission to commercial negotiations over profit sharing that is supposed to match investment to the return on that investment. Still, whomever controls the majority of copyright holds the hammer in negotiations over splitting profits and return on investment, often described as the long term commercial exploitation of intellectual property.

It’s perhaps unknowable how much extra muscle that gives the deep pocketed Netflix than it currently flexes as an equity investor in the occasional CanCon production (for example, CBC/APTN’s North of North).

But copyright is an undeniably important part of leverage in commercial negotiation, which is why Netflix tried so hard but unsuccessfully to persuade Parliamentarians to guarantee streamer copyright interests in Bill C-11.

Conversely, the Canadian independents wanted Parliament to guarantee full Canadian ownership. The final text of the bill genuflected support for the independents’ interests, but provided no guarantees, handing the difficult task of balancing interests to the CRTC.

Now that the CRTC has opened the door to the streamers’ majority ownership of copyright —expect them to rush through it at pace— the question is whether the CRTC will allow Netflix and Hollywood to dictate commercial terms to Canadian independents, treating them in effect as employees on wages set by the studios.

The Commission is hardly unaware of the problem, addressing it in this crucial paragraph:

The Commission adopts the following guiding principles in negotiations among production partners:

Fair compensation and exploitation: Ensure that remuneration, rights, and revenues are allocated in a way that fairly reflects the financial and human contributions to the production, while ensuring Canadian producers retain significant, equitable control and benefit from long-term exploitation.

Good-faith negotiation: Production partners negotiate in good faith.

The Commission may assess the effectiveness of these non-binding principles in the future. (emphasis added).

In other words, Netflix be nice.

CRTC shakes up CanCon rules

November 18, 2025

The CRTC has released the first of a hugely consequential two-part ruling on video streaming and television.

The famous “10 point” headcount of key Canadian creative talent that is required before the CRTC will recognize a “Canadian program” as fulfilling a broadcaster’s CanCon budget gets a make-over.

The most significant changes are:

The “minimum six points” rule that requires Canadian directors and/or screenwriters and lead actors remains intact. But other key Canadian talent can be displaced for up to half of those six points if the screenplay is based on a Canadian fictional or non-fiction written work; the screenplay features Canadian characters or locations; or the soundtrack features previously recorded Canadian songs.

Netflix and the foreign streamers have been cleared to own majority copyright in a Canadian program acquired from a Canadian producer for distribution on their services. The ruling essentially allows streamers to buy that copyright by hiring Canadians in both Director and Screenwriter roles, either worth two points, to reach a minimum of eight instead of six points overall.

The CRTC did not previously have a Canadian copyright rule because it did not regulate non-Canadian broadcasters or streamers until now.

Nevertheless the CRTC’s new copyright rule is significant because it leaves a gap between CRTC policy governing a streamer’s CanCon expenditures and, on the other hand, federal government and media fund rules that gate keep supplemental subsidies for making CanCon.

Those subsidy rules, administered by Heritage Canada and the Canada Media Fund, maintain 100% Canadian copyright to support long-term economic opportunity for independent Canadian producers who typically make Canadian programs and sell them to broadcasters and streamers.

The Commission has stated that it expects the streamers to treat Canadian producers fairly when negotiating the economic opportunity flowing from shared copyright but has not stated if or how it will enforce that.

The second part of the Commission’s ruling, to be released “in the near future,” will “focus on the funding and support for Canadian programming, including funding for news and at-risk programming.”

That’s a reference to overall “Canadian programming expenditures” expected of the streamers, in addition to the 5% cash contributions already levied in favour of independent Canadian Media funds, as well as potential funding for public service media and local news.

More to come.

***

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

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – The BBC lies the truth – Australia dips its toes into C-11 waters – Cohere fails to stop AI lawsuit

November 15, 2025

“I lie the truth,” American film director Oliver Stone once said of his controversial 1991 epic “JFK,” packed as it was with apocrypha and might-have-been speculation.

So did the BBC in its 2024 documentary on America’s insurrection day, January 6th, 2021, “Trump: A Second Chance?”

By now, most have heard about the BBC’s splicing of video clips that juxtaposed Donald Trump urging the crowd to march on the US Capitol with his later suggestion that they “fight like hell” against the Congressional confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory. He made the “fight” comment 20 times during the speech, but the two comments in the edited clip were spoken 50 minutes apart.

Omitted in the report was Trump’s suggestion they protest peacefully.

Also omitted was Trump telling the crowd that his Vice President Mike Pence must be stopped from certifying the election results, “We’re just not going to let that happen.”

As the crowd became a mob and surged violently into the Capitol building, some avowing to find Pence and murder him before he could certify, the outgoing President held back for two hours before making a public request to end the violent occupation.

The BBC rightly apologized to Trump for the video editing —-after a leaked document and public pressure made it impossible to do otherwise. The Beeb qualified its mea culpa by suggesting the President had not made a “direct call for violent action.”

The broadcaster denied defamation but Trump is filing a lawsuit.

It didn’t take long for Canadian commentators to apply the moral of the story to our own public broadcaster, the CBC.

The Hub’s Full Press podcast offers an intelligent review.

Globe & Mail columnist Konrad Yakabuski did the same, writing about recent events in which CBC management’s handling of an ugly anti-Semitic on-air report from a Radio-Canada foreign correspondent remains in blow-over mode.

The fates of the suspended reporter and the unsuspended news host who ignored the remarks are still unclear.

CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard told a Parliamentary committee that the public broadcaster’s response ends at its full and immediate public apology, not an investigation into how deep such anti-Semitic views do or don’t run in the newsroom.

Best guess: the spotlight will return to this issue when the CBC Ombud makes a report.

In the interest of equal time, let’s chalk another stroke on the wall to mark Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre’s most recent swipe at the CBC when asked a question he would rather not answer (“aren’t you with the CBC?”). If we’re going to hold the CBC responsible for its public reputation, we should hold everyone accountable.

***

For and CBC doubters and defunders, here’s an insightful and engaging Front Burner podcast featuring the public broadcaster’s three on-the-ground Washington correspondents, Canadians explaining to Canadians what Americans are doing to Canadians.

That’s what you lose without a CBC.

***

There’s a lot of media policy cooking in Australia lately.

A report in The Guardian says that the Labor government is going to move forward with incentives —-i.e. monetary penalties—- to lever Meta into reinstating news content on Facebook and Instagram and return to the bargaining table with news publishers to reinstate mandatory news licensing payments, regardless of Meta’s news ban.

The idea is to set the fine for Meta’s non-compliance at a level just above the dollar value of its expired agreements with news publishers, something that The Guardian cites as 1.5% of Meta’s annual Australian revenues. The Labor legislation is targeted for 2026.

If the Australians are baring more teeth than Canada has on our own Meta news ban, they are showing a little less on their new legislation that parallels Canada’s Netflix bill, the Online Streaming Act.

As MediaPolicy noted last week, the new legislation would set a spending quota for Netflix and the major streamers to make “AustralianCon” at either 10% of their local content budget or else 7.5% of their Australian revenues.

The 10% figure replicates the AuzCon spending that Australian-owned broadcasters obey for television dramas. By comparison, Canada requires our major domestic broadcasters spend 30% of revenues on Canadian content, including a 5% envelope for drama.

Another interesting piece of Australian context is that the streamers’ voluntary spending on AuzCon is over $200 million annually, slightly in excess of the Labor government’s estimates of mandatory spending under the new bill.

A government backgrounder keeps reiterating that the mandatory spending it has in mind would be a “guaranteed” spending. The concern is that Netflix and other global streamers might scale back their Australian spending in response to Hollywood’s contraction of content spending.

As an unregulated English-language market, Australia would be a logical place to start cutting. Better to lock in current levels of streamer spending.

Meanwhile, CRTC watchers in Canada will be interested to learn that the Commission is releasing its ruling on video streaming this coming week.

The decision may order Netflix and the foreign streamers to spend more on Canadian programming. It may also change regulatory rules for Canadian broadcasters who have asked for fewer CanCon responsibilities.

New obligations for the streamers will be closely tied into what the CRTC has to say about the ownership of copyright and intellectual property in Canadian dramas that the streamers will have to buy to fulfill a quota for local content.

The Commission must decide whether to mirror federal rules for CanCon financing that make the payment of crucial television subsidies conditional upon a Canadian producer owning the long term copyright in a show.

The global streamers want the option to demand Canadian producers sell them the copyright if the streamers are going to be compelled by the Commission to spend on CanCon.

Another wild card in the deck is the yet to be released ruling from the Federal Court of Appeal on the Commission’s June 2024 down payment of regulatory obligations for the streamers.

Heard by the court in June 2025, the appellant video and audio streamers are challenging the CRTC’s assessment of an annual cash contribution of $200 million to various media funds that channel the money to the financing of Canadian programming and music.

***

There is an update in the Globe & Mail reporting on the US lawsuit against Cohere that alleges the Canadian owned AI company is ripping off copyrighted content, even behind paywalls, from major North American media companies including the Toronto Star.

A New York judge rejected Cohere’s preliminary argument that the plaintiffs’ news reporting is so puréed in the AI summary that there is no “copy” being made. The case will proceed to trial.

In Germany, a lower court ruled in favour of music companies who sued OpenAI on the grounds that its ChatGPT application violated copyright by scraping lyrics content.

***

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

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – European digital regulation in the crosshairs – performative press freedoms – ominous TV earnings

August 31, 2025

If you track news reports about President Donald Trump’s tariffs, you may recall that he struck a one-sided framework agreement with the European Union on July 28th. The headline was 15% American tariffs on imported goods arriving from the EU. On the flip side, the US gained tariff-free access to the EU market.

Initially the deal seemed more of an armistice than a fully fledged agreement, since nothing was signed off until a one-page Framework was published three weeks later. Notably there was no repeal of the EU’s digital services taxes on American companies (like the one that Canada scrapped on June 29th).

At the time, the White House made a point of describing EU DSTs as unfinished business while the EU news release stated that the agreement “fully respects the EU’s regulatory sovereignty.”

Now for round two.

Deal or no deal, this week Trump threatened to retaliate against 15 EU nations that maintain DSTs and also denounced as discriminatory the full gamut of EU tech regulation under its Digital Services Act (online harm and safety) and Digital Markets Act (anti-competitive practices). The threats include new tariffs, presumably in excess of the 15% “deal.” Trump also threatened export bans or taxes on American AI micro processing chips.

The European response was defiant: “it is the sovereign right of the EU and its member states to regulate economic activities on our territory, which are consistent with our democratic values.”

As for Trump’s new trade cudgel of export taxes, last month he reversed a Biden-era export-ban on Nvidia’s AI chips destined for China after meeting with CEO Jensen Huang. The New York Times published an illuminating feature story on why.

***

I have some updates on recent MediaPolicy posts.

Earlier this month I wrote about the US State Department claiming that press freedoms are threatened in Canada. As I said at the time, the State Department’s Report was performative, written for the benefit of a majority-Republican Congress. If you found that post interesting, you’ll find Hugh Stephens’ bluntly worded post to your taste.

I’ll just add one more citation to my own post about North American press freedoms: this past week President Trump again invited his appointee as FCC chair to de-license ABC and NBC local news stations on the grounds that “they give me 97% bad news stories” and act as “an arm of the Democratic Party.”

MediaPolicy also posted an interview with Senatrice Julie Miville-Dechêne, the sponsor of Bill S-209 that will impede kids from accessing online porn by implementing age verification technology, an increasingly common public policy in the US and the UK.

In the interview, Miville-Dechêne expressed doubts about the wisdom of extending age verification technology to social media apps. The state of Mississippi is not so doubtful and implemented a parental consent requirement for minors under age 18 with age verification of adult users as enforcement.

Last week the news sharing app Bluesky, a progressive alternative to the X app, responded by exiting that deepest of red states, Mississippi. A Bluesky statement described age verification regulation as too big a hassle for too small a company.

Perhaps the size of the “Mississippi progressive” market was a factor too.

***

As the fortunes of broadcasting businesses rise and fall, certain bellwether events stand out among the steady drumbeat of quarterly and annual reports.

Here’s two you may not have noticed.

Québecor took the occasion of announcing its fall television programming line-up for its TVA network to make another plea for regulatory relief from the CRTC.

What popped out in CEO P-K Pélédeau’s press release was that the combined revenue of TVA’s specialty and conventional television businesses has crossed the profitability line into negative territory. “In absolute terms, TVA and its specialty channels have lost $34.9 million in television advertising revenue over the past three years.”

The MTM numbers from 2023 indicate that Québecor’s revenue situation is typical: as a group, Canadian broadcasters boasted a mere 1.6% net profit on total broadcaster revenues. The new CRTC chart (2023-24) below suggests it has become a net loss.

That calls into question the “regulatory bargain” cited by the Commission in 2016 that committed the major networks to paying for money-losing news programming out of the robust profits earned in specialty television, thanks to the majors holding Canadian distribution rights to high-margin American programming.

The other ominous development for conventional broadcasting was the announcement by Wildbrain that it is exiting broadcast television and is removing the restriction on its non-Canadian shareholder voting that is required by broadcasting regulations. Wildbrain is (was) the only independent Canadian children’s programmer that operated Canadian children’s channels (Family Channel and WildbrainTV) until the CRTC blessed the decisions by Rogers and Bell cable to drop them. Steve Faguy’s blog has more.

[Update and correction: the original publication of this post inaccurately stated that Wildbrain was “selling its growing online business to American interests.”)

The prevailing financial and audience trends in Canadian broadcasting were updated in the CRTC’s new annual report (with now year-old data).

Here’s the Report:

cmr_broadcasting_2025-en Download

***

I was very much saddened to read an obituary for Hudson Janisch who is well known to those in the telco community. He taught me Public Law in first year law school and made quite an impression. A great teacher and a mensch.

***

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

The CRTC maps out its Netflix plan

The Netflix Plan, c.2015

November 20, 2024

Until Parliament passed the Online Streaming Act in 2023, Canada did not have a Netflix Plan. Instead, Netflix had a Canada plan (note the witty meme, above). You could write a book about it.

Last Friday the CRTC announced a fresh round of hearings to implement the regulatory framework for foreign video streamers and Canadian television broadcasters.

While the Commission previously ordered Netflix and the Californian streamers to pay $140 million in annual contributions to Canadian media funds, this newest regulatory file is the most consequential thing that the CRTC will do for Canadian television and video streaming.

The hearing notice for March 31, 2025 tips the CRTC’s hat in terms of the regulatory changes it wants to make, although it’s not final and is subject to debate. The changes will become law in the summer or fall of 2025 unless interrupted by a federal election campaign (which seems more likely than not).

The “too long, don’t read” summary (and this is a long post) is this:

The headline is some minor tweaking of the definition of a “Canadian program,” the first step before assigning the foreign streamers a programming budget for Canadian shows.

A far more important proposal concerns who should own the long term copyright and commercial opportunities for a Canadian program that is made by a Canadian producer and then licensed and distributed by Netflix or the other US streamers.

A bold and controversial move by the Commission is a proposal to abolish programming minimums for Canadian television drama (“Programs of National Interest” in CRTC-lingo) which have been centrepiece of the Commission’s regulatory remit for decades.

The Commission wants to do something significant to support television news, presumably through subsidies, but unlike the other issues in its announcement it doesn’t appear to have any idea of how to do it.

What is Canadian?

The argument over what ought to be considered a Canadian program will never stop. It’s like criticism of the CBC: impeaching the cultural status quo is a Canadian parlour game.

We’ve always used the headcount method to define Canadian programs, allocating up to 10 points to a program that stars Canadians and puts Canadians in the key creative jobs of producer, director, writer and a few other talent slots that are deemed to contribute to the look, feel and vibe of a show.

The governing principle is that we can count upon Canadian artists to make Canadian art. Or as the Commission puts it with so little rhetorical flair, “having Canadians responsible for key creative decisions will enhance Canadian stories.”

Netflix and the other streamers aren’t crazy about the headcount test. If they are going to be required by the CRTC to make Canadiana, they want to use their own people. Their people are Hollywood actors, directors, writers and showrunners; the hand picks whom the streamers believe they can count upon to make hit shows with global appeal.

Some Canadians think that instead of the headcount method we should be qualifying programs as Canadian with a “cultural theme” appraisal of the plot, story, location, and —to use the CRTC’s language— cultural signifiers and symbols. The British do it that way in the UK. They use a panel of television executives to vet programs as British enough for subsidies.

In last week’s announcement, the Commission rejected the cultural theme test as too subjective. In a technical briefing provided to the media, Commission spokesperson Scott Shortliffe said that the cultural test was too difficult to administer because of irreconcilable views on “unifying” Canadian symbols and signifiers. (IMO the latter argument is unconvincing: Canadian culture is a mix of national symbols and diverse, locally authentic signifiers. Canadiana does not require classic cultural totems like Vimy Ridge or the Canadian Pacific Railway to call itself Canadian).

In its announcement, the Commission focussed on tweaking the headcount formula in a number of ways, introducing points for “showrunners” of Canadian TV series; giving credit for employment of Canadian costume designers and make-up leads as well as visual and special effects wizards. The Commission also relaxed the rule that all personnel sharing a point-eligible role (for example multiple writers of an episode) have to be Canadian: now one in five can be non-Canadian.

This is all nibbling around the edges of the current point system. In an incremental way it might allow Hollywood streamers to use more Hollywood talent on a Canadian show, but it’s no game changer.

Whose money is it anyway?

When Netflix was asked by Parliamentarians in 2022 what amendment to Bill C-11 it wanted the most, the one-word response was “copyright.” The amendment didn’t fly.

“Copyright” was short-hand for Netflix saying that if the Online Streaming Act compelled foreign streamers to sink millions into distinctly Canadian shows, it expected to own those programs lock, stock and barrel. “Copyright” meant not just the possession of first release in Canada and all global markets, but also ownership for the streamers’ permanent libraries of shows as well as the intellectual property of series spin-offs, branding, merchandise and any other long term commercial opportunities.

Unfortunately the streamers’ expectation that they own a show, rather than license it from Canadians, runs smack into Canadian regulatory rules that favour copyright and intellectual property residing with the independent Canadian television producers who make Canadian dramas and license them to broadcasters home and abroad.

The CRTC backs this up by requiring Canadian broadcasters to spend a fixed tranche of their programming budgets on “Programs of National Interest” (Canadian dramas and documentaries) and buying at least 75% of shows from independent Canadian producers.

Those Canadian producers retain the copyright and intellectual property in those shows because the government and media fund subsidies that finance these Canadian shows are conditional upon the producers retaining the commercial control and exploitation of their shows for 25 years. For producers, it’s seen as the difference between being an entrepreneur and a gig worker on their own shows.

The foreign streamers hate these rules, but they are operating in Canada and they are going to have to get used to them.

From the Canadian point of view, these are the regulatory rules that allowed us over decades to build a thriving film and television sector across multiple production clusters in Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal and increasingly in other provinces. It’s the reason why the Liberals amended Bill C-11 to make pro-Canadian copyright rules explicit. The amendment wasn’t airtight but reflected the reality that the financing of Canadian shows is a mix of Hollywood money, Canadian investment and public dollars.

CMPA Profile Report, 2023

But this is the real world and the streamers know they can make trouble for Canada by appealing to US Congress and the White House to take on their fight.

The CRTC is not oblivious to this realpolitik, so it is looking for a compromise solution. In the announcement, it invited proposals on how copyright and intellectual property might be shared between Canadian producers, broadcasters and foreign streamers. While the Commission did not elaborate on how, these sharing models could be targeted to specific genres of shows, markets or the size of their programming budgets. After all, the streamers are potentially bringing the big budgets that Canadian television producers might not otherwise obtain and are expanding access to global audiences beyond the usual foreign partners in cable television distribution.

The Commission also mooted the possibility that Netflix could “buy” outright copyright by maxing out on the use of key Canadian talent, a proposal that might drive a wedge between Canadian producers and Canadian production guilds. The Canadian wing of the set workers’ union IATSE, based in Hollywood, has been explicit about this already.

This is going to be regulatory dog fight, you heard it here first.

Watering down rules on television drama

Canadian television regulation has always given special treatment to financing and promoting Canadian drama since at least 1979, when the CRTC ordered the CanCon-laggard CTV to produce 39 hours of original shows per year.

Because of the market dynamic of a small domestic audience for Canadian content in both Québec and the rest of Canada, television drama is —as the CRTC reminds us in its last announcement— “risky to produce and difficult to monetize.”

A fulsome production and subsidy ecosystem is built around government and industry subsidies plumping up programming budgets for Canadian dramas and documentaries made by independent Canadian television producers. The programs are dubbed with some grandiosity by the CRTC as “programs of national interest (PNI).”

Further regulations require major broadcasters to dedicate a large slice of their programming budgets to the PNI genre (ranging from 5% to 15% of revenues).

Yet another regulation completes the ecosystem by requiring those broadcasters to buy 75% of their PNI-qualifying programs from the aforementioned independent producers (and in practice broadcasters do almost no in-house production of dramas and buy 100% from these producers).

The broadcasters don’t mind buying from the independent producers; they do mind filling a quota of PNI spending. They have been seeking reductions in PNI for years.

They appear to have got their wish.

The Commission is now proposing to eliminate the broadcasters’ PNI programming obligations.

It’s reasoning seems to be:

The foreign streamers are in the business of television drama, so if they have to make Canadian content there will be more “PNI” dramas without having to specifically require it.

The Commission’s proposed changes to the definition of Canadian content will encourage the production of dramas (IMO, this is a stretch).

Canadian broadcasters want to make less risky and more profitable content (the elephant in the room is the debt-laden Corus Entertainment, which has sought to satisfy their CanCon obligations with more reality and lifestyle television and fewer dramas).

Without a PNI spending quota, the production of Canadian dramas can still be encouraged by giving streamers and broadcasters extra credit for making dramas (i.e. a reduced overall budget for Canadian entertainment content in proportion to spending on drama).

The Commission should reserve its most stringent regulatory efforts for encouraging news production.

Netflix’s 2020 Canadiana, *Jusqu’à declin*

Save the furniture

Canadian broadcasters have a legitimate list of woes. Cable subscriptions are steadily declining. The television advertising market is going out with the digital tide. Access to popular US programming for retailing to Canadian cable customers is getting more expensive and less available.

All of that jeopardizes their ability to produce local news, a money loser for 12 years running.

The Commission’s most recent announcement sends strong signals of its desire to save television news from further erosion.

If the Commission has anything in mind other than homilies about the value of local news, it’s keeping its cards close to the vest. Instead, industry participants have been invited to make proposals.

“Level the Playing Field”

The Commission’s announcement answers some of the questions about how foreign streamers will contribute “equitably,” measured against the efforts of Canadian broadcasters to finance and promote Canadian content.

The Commission has linked its expectations of streamer spending on Canadian programs to the “Canadian Programming Expenditure” (CPE) requirements for major broadcasters, pegged at 30% of Canadian revenues. This CPE is less than it could have been if the streamer obligations had been benchmarked to Canadian “specialty” broadcasters whose “CPE” minimum averages at about 29% of revenues but in practice is 48% of revenues.

The streamers’ CPE will be at least 30%, but probably much less in the end, for these reasons:

The streamers’ 30% will be reduced, perhaps more than dollar for dollar, by the 5% cash contributions the Commission already ordered streamers to make to Canadian media fund.
The Commission has already signalled in last week’s announcement that it might reduce overall CPE in proportion to money spent by streamers and broadcasters on making “risky and difficult to monetize” Canadian dramas; and
The Commission could end up pushing the 30% benchmark lower by granting the pleas of major broadcasters to reduce their CPE to 20% or 25%.

Notably, the Commission has folded the broadcasters’ regulatory relief requests into the file for the upcoming hearings.

Discoverability rediscovered

Ever since the Online Streaming Act received Royal Assent in May 2023, the Commission has been squirming in discomfort over how to implement the new statute’s “discoverability” mandate that streamers must recommend Canadian content on their platforms “by any means of control.” The Commission has repeatedly disavowed “regulating algorithms” to achieve discoverability outcomes, overstating the statutory prohibition that the Commission may not prescribe a “specific” algorithmic method.

In a briefing for media on last week’s announcement, the Commission stated that its approach to discoverability would be integrated into each regulatory proceeding rather than scheduling a special hearing on the topic. Its spokesperson made a point of mentioning the importance of discovering French language content on foreign streaming platforms, a hot issue in Québec.

Until we hear a more concrete proposal from the Commission, it may be safe to assume that the lip service to discoverability will continue.

Getting under the election wire

In the media briefing, the Commission suggested it wanted to conclude hearings and issue rulings on the regulatory actions raised in its announcement by summer or fall of 2025. (In case you are wondering, a year ago the federal cabinet allowed this much time by setting December 2025 as the deadline for the Commission to implement the “regulatory framework” for the Online Streaming Act).

However if the writ is dropped for a federal election (likely no later than August 2025) the Commission would observe political custom and put a hold on release of its rulings.

Barring a political miracle, the Poilievre Conservatives will form a majority government before the end of 2025 and they have repeatedly promised to “Kill Bill C-11.”

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