Tag: CRTC

June 3, 2026

Brad Danks is the CEO of OUTtv Media Global, based in Vancouver. Most Canadians know OUTtv as the Canadian LGBTQ television channel. I interviewed Danks back in 2022 when the parliamentary debate over the Online Streaming Act was cooking on high heat.

He’s a bit of a unicorn: a broadcaster who is perfectly comfortable talking policy. With his eye cast on the future of Canadian broadcasting, Danks just wrote a 60,000 word, seven-part series Beyond the Walled Garden published in Cartt.ca last month. It’s time we caught up.

MediaPolicy: Brad, instead of a very long introductory paragraph to set up this Q&A, I’m just going to give you my undergrad-level synopsis of your Cartt.ca series. I promise I didn’t use AI. So here goes, this is me channelling you:

We’ve been trying to renovate the current CRTC regulatory model using the tools granted by the Online Streaming Act Bill C-11, but that is just “optimizing for managed decline.” It’s triage. A policy model that is singularly devoted to production financing for a domestic market runs counter to competing in the global supply of content. The regulatory framework must be to make it possible for Canadian content producers to monetize content on a global scale.

And increasingly, it is Canada’s small and medium-sized content producers, not the big three broadcasting companies, Bell, Rogers, and Québecor, that represent Canada’s best hope. That’s because OUTtv and our fellow SME Canadian services can succeed in creating specialized, authentic content that is both relatable and popular with foreign audiences who find affinity with it. It’s effectively the YouTuber creator strategy, scaled up. This distribution strategy is what the CRTC and our funding institutions need to spend more time and resources on supporting. And that means incentivizing and rewarding broadcasters that make and distribute their own proprietary content, don’t partner away their IP for a quick buck, don’t blow the budget on American shows, and grow their businesses by finding audiences around the world.

A crucial part of doing that is AI. The integration of AI tools is the key to success for SMEs seeking loyal audiences scattered across the in-between spaces in foreign markets. But our funding institutions that are CRTC-adjacent, like the Canada Media Fund, take no notice of AI development as worthy of subsidy or support. We need to encourage and reward the sharing of digital and AI infrastructure for Canadian SMEs through regulatory incentives and support. The data-collector Numeris is a salutary example.

At the same time, we can’t neglect SMEs succeeding in the Canadian domestic market. Unfortunately, the CMF’s and CRTC’s performances on this have been awful. The cable companies get away with clogging proper access for SMEs to reach cable audiences and monetize their content.

How did I do?

Danks – Good. The key point is that the system was designed for a different era. In that era, Canada had a technologically walled garden. Foreign content arrived through Canadian services, and in exchange for the licensed right to broadcast that content — at significant profit — the broadcasters were obligated to subsidize Canadian production. It was a cross-subsidy, and it worked. The problem is that the wall is coming down. Gradually at first because of streaming, and now faster because of AI. We have been propping up a structural problem without a long-term plan to replace it. The deeper problem is that we kept funding production without funding the infrastructure that connects that content to audiences. It’s like building cars without roads. The cars get made, but they have nowhere to go.

MediaPolicy – You’ve been writing for years that Canadian broadcasting regulation has been overinvested in the so-called national champions — the big and vertically integrated broadcasters Bell, Rogers and Québecor and at one time Shaw as well— who are supposed to save Canadian content. Do you still think that?

Danks – Yes, the Big 3 were supposed to be exactly that — the CRTC said as much in the Let’s Talk TV decision in 2015. Here’s the quote:

“The Commission expects that vertically integrated companies … will continue to have the opportunity to leverage their resources and audience reach … Their critical mass provides these companies with the financial capital required to succeed both domestically and internationally.”

And later in paragraphs 42 and following: “Canadian programming must seek out and develop international audiences.” That is the Commission acknowledging that domestic demand alone is no longer sufficient and that Canadian programming must increasingly compete in global markets. On paper, the Commission was telling the Big 3 they already had the scale to compete internationally. The bargain was giving them flexibility on where to spend their CanCon dollars.

MP: I think you’re about to tell me the Big 3 have not lived up to that bargain over the last ten years.

Danks – I’ve joked for years about a “MapleBox,” a Canadian BritBox we never built. The Big 3 didn’t step up. But a different group of companies has, Canadian-controlled programming services. I’m calling them the CSPs. They are the small and medium-sized operators that own libraries and reach audiences through their own SVOD, FAST, broadcast, and platform partnerships — OUTtv, Blue Ant, Gusto, Stingray, Anthem, and others. They are not production companies, nor are they cable or online distributors. They are building the MapleBox, one deal at a time. My view is simple. They should be supported by the system, and they are not.

MP: Not supported, in what ways?

Danks – The failure runs in four directions.

The first is the structural disadvantage of independent services in the cable television system. Since the 2011 vertical integration policy and the packaging changes from Let’s Talk TV in 2015, independent specialty services have been progressively marginalized on cable platforms. The large vertically integrated companies control both the pipes and many of the channels that travel through them. They have every commercial incentive to promote their own services and every available tactic to constrain competitors. The upcoming Market Dynamics decision is specifically about whether the Commission will finally address that imbalance.

The second is regulatory speed, and I’ll say more about that in a moment. We have active files before the Commission, so I’ll keep this brief. We have been materially harmed by delays. We have filed urgent applications, with the financial consequences documented and fully understood by Commission staff, and been told decisions may take not just months but years. The delay itself is the injury.

The third is the Canada Media Fund which provides very crucial programming subsidies. The CMF’s primary financing mechanism, the Broadcaster Envelope, allocates funding based on a broadcaster’s track record of supporting Canadian programming, measured primarily against domestic cable viewership. 

For a service like OUTtv, which has been deliberately building international distribution while domestic cable subscribers decline,  because that is the right long-term strategy, the CMF treats the right strategic choice as underperformance. Our envelope allocation shrinks as our international reach grows, because the system measures what we are moving away from, not what we are building toward.

The fourth is the complete absence of export support. The CMF measures Canadian audience and domestic production output. It does not measure export revenue, international subscriber growth, or the audience relationships being built in foreign markets. A service that invests resources in building global distribution, which the Broadcasting Act itself identifies as a policy objective, is invisible to the performance metrics that determine how much public support it receives. The system rewards businesses focused entirely on the domestic market, which is the market contracting fastest.

The common thread is that the system measures what it was designed to measure in 1985, and those measurements no longer align with the outcomes Canadian content policy is supposed to produce.

MP: You mentioned regulatory speed, or lack thereof. Give me an example.

Danks – The clearest one is the OneSoccer channel. Its owner Timeless complained to the CRTC in 2022 that Rogers was refusing to carry it. The Commission found in OneSoccer’s favour in 2023. Rogers challenged their Canadian ownership. The CRTC rejected that. Rogers appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal, and in May 2026 the court dismissed the appeal. It ruled that Rogers had raised a “forest of issues,” every one of them “without merit.” Four years, wins at every level, and the channel still isn’t on Rogers cable. They’re only now headed into arbitration over terms, just before Canada co-hosts the World Cup. The delay itself was the outcome, regardless of the merits. In a market that moves quarterly, a regulatory cycle measured in years isn’t just inconvenient. It works exactly like a tax. It raises the cost of capital, reduces what companies can reinvest, and pushes them toward lower-risk options. A system that rewards the use of delay is not one that works for independents.

MP: So what does Bill C-11 do, at least hypothetically, for Canadian SMEs like you?

Danks – So far, very little. C-11 gave the CRTC the tools. It didn’t determine how they’d be used. The open question is whether those tools get used to build the CSP layer, the Canadian-controlled services that retain IP and reach audiences directly. Or are the tools used just slow the decline of the existing model with new money from foreign streamers? The second part of the Market Dynamics decision is rumoured to be released in July. It will be the first real test of which way it goes.

MP: What are you hoping to see in that Market Dynamics decision?

Danks – Three things. The first is CSP access to distribution platforms. Canadians should be able to access Canadian services through the online distributors they actually use — Amazon, Apple TV, Roku, smart TV platforms — just as carriage rules ensured access on cable.

Second, prominence. It’s not enough to be available if no one can find you. A separate Canadian shelf that nobody visits is not the answer.

Third, the protections that already exist for independents on the cable side, like the standstill rule, the wholesale framework, a dispute process that resolves things, they all need to be improved and extended into the online world, not dismantled. This is the decision that determines whether there is a domestic foundation left to build on. WildBrain shut down four Canadian children’s channels after disputes with the large distributors. If this decision doesn’t fix access and the dispute process, we’ll keep losing the very companies the system should be building.

MP: You’ve introduced the term “Canadian-controlled programming services” (CSPs). What are they, and why aren’t they just producers?

Danks – A producer makes content. A CSP owns it, distributes it, and builds the audience relationship that compounds in value over time. OUTtv, Blue Ant, Gusto, Stingray, Anthem — these are the companies that actually built what the national champions were supposed to build. They are not production companies, nor are they cable or online distributors. They hold a different position in the value chain. The part that captures the long-term value. Right now, the system doesn’t recognize them as a category at all. That is the gap the Cartt.ca series pointed at.

MP: The independent producers might hear this as an attack on them and their copyright. Is this a zero-sum fight over CanCon IP?

Danks – It shouldn’t be heard that way, and it isn’t zero-sum. Producers are the creative engine. CSPs are the systems that deliver their work to a global audience and return value to them. They are different functions in the same value chain, and both have to be strong. 

But there is a deeper reason why Canadian producers are better off working with Canadian CSPs than with foreign platforms, and it has nothing to do with nationalism. The system can regulate us. The CRTC can attach conditions to our licences, require us to work with Canadian producers in ways that benefit both parties, mandate joint exploitation of IP across international windows, and enforce those conditions if we don’t meet them. It cannot do the same things to a major foreign platform, not in the same way, not with the same reach. When a foreign platform commissions a Canadian production, the producer gets paid and the platform gets the rights. What happens to those rights afterward is largely outside the regulatory system’s reach. When a Canadian CSP is the partner, we are inside the same regulatory structure as the producer. We have structural reasons to maintain relationships that work for both parties. Our licence depends on it. Our CMF access depends on it. Our standing in future proceedings depends on it. That accountability is not a constraint on us. It is exactly what makes us a better long-term partner. 

The major platforms face no equivalent structural incentive to make those relationships work. That is the difference.

MP: Can you elaborate on why retaining IP by Canadian services matters?

Danks – Two reasons. First, all rights and all monetization flow from IP. 

Second, in an AI world, creating derivative versions in different languages, formats, and genres becomes far cheaper, which raises the value of owning the underlying IP. But the real issue is not creation, it’s retention. The current system requires Canadian ownership at the production stage and then lets that ownership leak downstream through financing structures that assign international rights to whoever puts up the money. You can satisfy every ownership rule on paper and still hand the long-term value to a foreign platform. Owning IP on paper is not the same as keeping it, and keeping it is what the system doesn’t protect.

MP: Should the federal government be realigning its support — through the CMF, Telefilm, or the production tax credit — to better support CSPs?

Danks – Yes, and urgently. The CMF was built in 1985 to measure what mattered which was domestic linear audience and production hours. That is not what matters now. A CSP investing in global distribution, building audience relationships in fourteen countries, retaining IP across multiple revenue windows — that is exactly the outcome the system should be rewarding. Instead, that service is penalized because the metrics don’t capture what it’s doing. Comparable support for export capability needs to become a priority. The instruments for these policies already exist. They just need to be redirected.

MP: Do you worry the Commission will never get a chance to address these issues? There’s been anxiety about how much of C-11 will survive CUSMA and trade retaliation.

Danks – Yes, I think we should all be worried about the scope of US retaliation and the trade-offs required. On the contribution obligation itself, the anxiety is mostly misplaced. European jurisdictions impose comparable or higher obligations, and the streamers continue to operate there. The precedent is clear. But here is what I want more people to hear. There is a whole set of policies that carry zero trade risk because they sit entirely outside CUSMA. Building Canadian-controlled services that own IP and reach audiences directly — we can do that regardless of where the trade talks land. The trade conversation has been crowding out the one policy direction that needs no permission from Washington.

MP: Okay, so what’s your elevator speech to the heritage minister?

Danks – Turn the policy lens toward what builds the Canadian system. Start at home. Canadian services, whether they ever export or not, need a fair foundation to operate from. That foundation is real access to audiences through the platforms Canadians use, prominence so they can be found, and a dispute process that resolves things in months rather than years. The Market Dynamics decision is the test of whether that foundation gets built. Without it, there is nothing to export.

For those services ready to grow beyond Canada, the Broadcasting Act already calls for an environment that encourages the development and export of Canadian programs globally. Export is not a by-product. It is a core objective and increasingly the only realistic path to replacing the distribution capacity we have lost to streaming over the past 15 years. The companies already doing this have built it without support. That must change.

The job now is to align the CRTC, the CMF, tax policy, and export development behind the same goal. That goal is to support Canadian services that serve Canadians well and can own and distribute what the system produces. No single decision does it alone. But every decision that fails to ask ‘does this build something durable?’ is a decision for managed decline, whether it calls itself that or not.

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This blog post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2026.