On today the shortest day of the year it seems that nature is in pathos with the times: what a dark time and chaotic mess we are in.
I refer to the obvious, obviously. Our national politics are in turmoil. An economic terrorist to the south mocks our elected Prime Minister, our country and half-seriously threatens to annex us at economic gunpoint.
But this too shall pass, just as the days will get longer. Besides, it’s the weekend.
The more troubling thing that is not going to pass is the tectonic change in news media, particularly the frayed success of serious news outlets reaching the mass audience.
What I have in mind is how the November election in the United States illustrated a tipping point in the movement of the audience from doting on mainstream news outlets that mostly reside on traditional media to the massive but fragmented universe of YouTubers, Rumble channels, podcasters, Substackers, influencers and video shock jocks who can monetize outrage in echo-chamber audiences with relative ease.
Those media actors are —-prematurely—— crowing victory over mainstream media, captured by Elon Musk’s chortle “You are the Media now.“
Whether this perception of chaos in news journalism is just some kind of passing zeitgeist, well let’s check in again this time next year.
On that note, I was pleased to see that CBC is pleased to see that its YouTube pivot is bringing in the numbers hoped for.
CBC’s audience development guy Paul McGrath posted on LinkedIn that the CBC YouTube channel hit a billion views in 2024 (it’s unclear if he means all CBC digital or just English-language news):
I’m proud of this one. Together, we got 1 billion views on our YouTube channels this year. It’s the first time we’ve ever surpassed a billion views in a single calendar year. A new all-time record.
It actually happened on Nov. 11, but no one noticed because we don’t usually track views. We tend to focus on watch time and other metrics. Our goal is reaching and engaging new audiences and growing our channels. We’re getting better at that, and along the way we picked up a billion views.
What’s driving this?
YouTube Shorts is a big part of it, obviously. But it’s also because we made a big strategic bet on YouTube, we all got behind it and it’s paying off. YouTube is the biggest video viewing platform on the planet, and we’re prioritizing reaching and engaging new audiences there.
So far this year we’ve published over 30,000 videos, including over 500 full episodes of full season shows (we’ve taken a similar approach to the ITV deal that was announced this week).
So yeah, we focused on growing our channels and reaching and engaging new audiences. We got tactical about the nuts and bolts. And along the way we picked up a billion views.
Fishing where the fish are, or at least the younger fish that don’t watch CBC television, it’s a matter of survival for the CBC to attract the younger audience before the older audience ages out (McGrath has another post on this).
And YouTube is a good place to do it. By contrast, TikTok’s short-video format and slavish devotion to engagement metrics is more suitable for breaking news and partisan rants, not reflective commentary or explainers.
Here’s some insight into the opportunities for news journalism succeeding on YouTube. This chart from Press Gazette (unfortunately the data is a year old, before CBC made its big push) tells me two things: CBC ain’t doing bad when you look at the US and UK news organizations ahead of it and the Canadian news outlets behind it. And secondly, look at who is hitting it out of the park:
The chart-toppingVoxdoes not do breaking news. Arguably, this is what should be a lower priority for CBC in a world in which there are plenty of Canadian and global media companies happy to compete for that audience.
Instead, Vox excels at explainers and reflective journalism on issues that don’t break so much as they emerge and cook.
Sounds like public broadcasting to me.
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I hope that you caught the MediaPolicy post last week of an interview with Peter Menzies on the state of the CBC.
As I describe in the introduction to the interview, Menzies is neither defunder nor defender of the CBC and his criticism is blunt. It’s something both defunders and defenders need to hear, agree or not.
His comments elicited a Letter to the Editor response from Chris Waddell, who also contributed to this MediaPolicy series of posts on the CBC.
I’m working on one more interview to complete the series.
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Last week the Labor government in Australia announced it would pass legislation taxing Big Tech platforms to pay for news, even if they block news on their platforms.
The voluntary licensing agreements reached in 2021 between Meta and Google and Australian news outlets were reputedly worth about $190M annually. The value of the new tax, which will cover all large tech platforms, has not been set.
This week the government followed up with an announcementof direct government funding for news outlets worth $33M annually. That number is proportional (based on national population) to Canada’s QCJO subsidy to journalist salaries.
Detailed reporting on the Australian program has been sparse, so stay tuned.
A national election in Australia is expected in May 2025.
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The futures of premium video – Graphic from Doug Shapiro
Let me shift gears and look at entertainment television programming.
Doug Shapiro’s chained-tweet narrative that I have been reposting on X might be summed up as this: the long term growth in video entertainment is being captured by YouTubers, TikTokers and the rest of the “creator economy.”
Faced with this trend, Hollywood’s gold-plated business of long-form premium video is in a torpor that it hasn’t shaken off, and we’ll all be watching closely to see if it does (hint: the go-to salvation for big media companies is typically mergers and corporate consolidation).
That raises the question of the impact of industry trends on the Canadian ecosystem of independent television producers who make Canadian content and, as a profitable side-gig, make shows for Hollywood.
The Canadian Media Producers Association just released its annual Profile report for 2023/24 that includes all sorts of metrics of industry health. The data runs up to March 31, 2024 and therefore captures the expected downturn after an atypical spike in the 22/23 report.
The way I look at the new 23/24 numbers, unfortunately the long-term flat-lining in Canadian content production has been restored (once inflation is taken into account).
This is relevant to the debate over the Online Streaming Act C-11 where opponents such as Michael Geist have suggested that things have never been better for Canadian producers and the production of Canadian content and therefore it is unnecessary to compel Netflix and the foreign streamers to contribute to Canadian content.
The other way of looking at it (available in my gift-friendly book about C-11, Canada v California) is that the post-2017 downturn in Canadian broadcasting revenues has shrunk the media funds and licensing fees available to finance Canadian programs, hence the stagnation.
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I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukah. It’s so cool they fall on the same day this year. We’ll be honouring tradition by going out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve.
And thinking about the hostages.
Chag Urim Sameach.
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I enjoyed reading Peter Menzies’ comments (A Very Different CBC, December 16) – thanks for adding them to your continuing valiant efforts to generate a debate about the CBC’s future.
While I agree with much of what he suggests for the CBC (although I do believe it makes a difference if the international news Canadians read, see and listen to comes from US, British or French wire services rather than Canadian journalists) I do take issue on three specific grounds with his comments about journalism programs and his suggestion that journalists do not need university degrees.
First, the demographics of students in journalism schools has changed dramatically over the last 15 years so the student body is representative of today’s Canadian society with a strong presence of Asian, Muslim, Black and students of a much broader range of ethnic backgrounds than decades ago. To a significant degree these are the children of immigrants who came to Canada in the 1990s and early 2000s and in many cases are the first in their families to attend university, just like those like in many other university degree programs in 2024. It is far from a preserve of those from upper middle class suburbs.
That means their socioeconomic backgrounds, interests and expectations are very different than journalism students of 25 years ago. As they have graduated in recent years and populated newsrooms, they have brought with them to their employers their different perspectives on issues such as what is a story, how to cover it etc. Some of that has led to newsroom philosophical turmoil of recent years, valuably questioning and in some cases leading to long overdue changes in trdaitional newsroom practices and perspectives.
Second, a significant component of journalism education today involves technical training – recording and editing audio, recording and editing video, shooting photos, knowing how to post material on websites etc. Journalism employers are simply unwilling to pay for that training for their employees. They expect those they hire to walk into newsrooms with all these skills including an ability to present information in audio form, in front of a camera and in a multimedia environment as well as writing. If you don’t have these skills, when you apply you won’t get a job and your employer won’t pay the training costs to give them to you. Today’s journalism doesn’t use typewriters any more, and many more teenagers than one might think are not very tech-savvy.
Third, many of the issues journalists are expected to cover these days are complicated, complex and not easy to understand whether it is climate change, health care, the needs of an aging population, defence procurement, business, the economy, social or justice policy. A university journalism education is part journalism but also includes studies in elective fields that can enhance a student’s general and specific knowledge of the world around them. If they are interested in journalism employment after graduation, many are smart enough to take courses related to the type of journalism they want to practice. That makes them smarter and more aware of the issues in the subjects they want to cover resulting in better journalism. This is particularly true when there seems a viable future for specialized journalism but much less promising opportunities in news organizations that are still trying to cover everything for everyone. Subject matter education obtained as part of a journalism degree enhances a graduate’s job prospects significantly.
In the end I find it hard to imagine how someone could produce better journalism with less education.
Professor Emeritus, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University
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He is in fact prolific. And a great deal of his analysis and opinion work is in Canadian media policy. That befits a life spent in news journalism but also a lengthy stint serving on the CRTC (rising to Vice-Chair for Telecommunications). He writes a weekly Substack column.
I discovered his writing because over the last several years of Liberal government in Ottawa I noticed that he and I disagreed on seemingly everything. But I also noted that his was usually the perspective I had to grapple with in order to formulate my own.
As for the CBC and its future, Menzies is neither defender nor defunder. He is a critic and he is blunt in his criticism.
One thing that he and I agree upon is that the CBC must be the centrepiece of any cogent public policy for Canadian news journalism. That comes across in an essay he wrote with former CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein in 2023, And Now the News (to which Ivor Shapiro and I responded, here).
Here, Menzies answered my questions about the CBC:
Q. Let’s get right to the point. If something needs fixing at the CBC, what is it?
Too many Canadians, often for ideological but also for regional/cultural reasons simply don’t see their realties reflected in the broadcasts or in the online copy. That needs to be addressed and I’m not sure that’s possible at this stage. Its biggest problem is not that – at least for the English part – so many Conservatives want to kill it, it’s that a large number of people just don’t care if it lives or dies.
And we are moving into a post-Woke, post cancel culture time in which people have tired of reading and watching what they interpret as sermons disguised as news copy. There’s a growing backlash against moral instruction and a deep desire on the part of consumers to have news delivered to them in a fashion that trusts the reader to draw conclusions. There’s work to be done across the industry on that.
Q. It seems to me that the CBC is mired in the classic Canadian paradigm of metropolis and hinterland. Outside of central Canada, it’s viewed as a central Canadian institution with a central Canadian institutional culture. It seems to drive the politics about the CBC. How do you get at changing that?
You probably have to physically relocate. I remember, for instance, when CBC News Network started the day being anchored in Halifax, then moved with the sun to Toronto, then West to an anchor in Calgary and finally in Vancouver. If I had my way – just kidding, sort of – I’d put their head office in Baker Lake, which is the community closest to the nation’s geographical centre but Winnipeg would do.
It needs to have multiple homes spread across the country. The physical infrastructure is there; the mentality is not. Nothing against Toronto but its culture and interests are very unique.
Q. You’ve been writing frequently about a different CBC for several years now, and one constant message has been getting the CBC out of the advertising market in television and digital. You frame it as part of a holistic Canadian media policy, because it would be good for private media too.
Yes, Richard Stursberg said once at a CRTC hearing that the CBC is not a public broadcaster – it is a publicly-funded commercial broadcaster and that has stuck in my mind ever since. Corporately, it shape-shifts so that when it needs government money, it can play the public broadcaster violin but when it sees a commercial advantage, like online news advertising, it can put on its CNN of the North cape and play private sector media. This sort of dualistic life is eating its soul because advertisers want strong GTA numbers which over time impacts how people in a Toronto office measure success and works against the CBC fulfilling its mandate as a truly national institution.
It also undermines efforts by legacy private sector media to transition to digital only by competing there for advertising, which lowers rates and opportunities.
Q. But what about the audience benefits in going ad-free for CBC programming?
CBC Radio One is a leader in almost every major radio market in the country because it is ad free. Private radio broadcasters are generally okay with that because they don’t have to compete with them for advertising revenue.
It’s also popular locally because it’s locally produced and informs people about what’s going on in their community and is important to people. It’s less political – big P and little p – less preachy and people can relate to local on-air personalities. But then it switches to day time programming out of Toronto and, with apologies to folks there, the world according to Toronto doesn’t sell all that well in Antigonish, Thomson or Grande Prairie.
Q. Back to the holistic policy for Canadian journalism: you’ve endorsed the idea of CBC providing its news content to other news outlets for free, like a no-fee syndication service. A creative commons. How would you implement that?
Yes. CBC should be a sister or brother to other media within the national media ecosystem, not a competitor. So long as the content is produced through subsidy, it should be of benefit to everyone – domestically – through something similar to a creative commons license. This could be of significant assistance in so-called news deserts and would need to have reasonable limits but I really think that if we are going to have a publicly-funded broadcaster, the benefits that come from that need to flow through to private media as well. That’s much preferred to the direct subsidies we’ve got going now that destroy trust in media.
Q. To create a real CBC creative commons of local news, CBC might have to invest more in local?
They should do that anyway. Only what is local is real to most people. All media know that but these days almost all of them just offer lip service and centralize everything. CTV and Global used to have General Managers in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, St. John’s, etc. Now their breakfast and other shows get produced out of Toronto. Headlines in the Star Phoenix are written in Hamilton. It’s suicidal short termisim but it helps executives meet their numbers and get their bonuses. Bit of a rant there but the CBC mandate demands local. But they’ve wandered from that. Their mandate and their CRTC licence conditions are all a charade if no one ever has their performance measured against them.
Q. In an article you wrote for The Line in 2020 —with some hilarious commentary I might add— you suggested the CBC is obsessed with US current events and should stop. Care to elaborate?
Because they are centred in Montreal and Toronto, there is a gravitational pull within the CBC culture that influences their news curation and programming decisions and as I earlier mentioned the advertising incentive exaggerates that. They seem to want to compete with CNN, MSNBC, etc. rather than just serving Canadians. So every Monday morning the national news on radio tends to lead with USA USA USA because Toronto is very USA facing. Of course USA news is important but the entire reason the CBC exists – frig, the entire reason the Broadcasting Act exists – is to ensure that Canada doesn’t just become the 51st state, if not geographically then culturally. I just want them to do their job.
Q. As a follow up to that, some experts on the CBC like Waddell and Stursberg have endorsed a news curation strategy that involves reinvesting in global reporting as a way of “explaining the world to Canadians.” What do you think of that as a programming priority?
Sure, in an ideal world that might be nice but I wouldn’t do it at the risk of local. In an online world, there are multiple sources of international news that aren’t American that people can go to so I don’t see the same imperative there as I do for who’s covering school boards in Moncton because right now no one is doing that although I’m sure someone in Moncton will correct me. But you get the drift.
Q. Back to news curation, what do you think of CBC’s overall editorial performance?
Journalism in Canada these days is occasionally brilliant, too often disappointing and regularly just bad. There is a general malaise that has come from somewhere – I’m assuming the j-schools are teaching it – that abandons the aspiration to produce news as objectively as possible – the way consumers want it delivered.
I think it is absolutely killing the business. Plus, you now have to have a degree to get a job. Why? It’s not a profession, it’s a trade and a noble one at that. Whatever happened to the blue collar men and women holding the powerful to account? Now you have to have tens of thousands of dollars to go to university for four, five or six years which means chances are your reporters are from upper middle class suburban backgrounds. And why? The basics can be taught in four or five courses over eight or nine months followed by an apprenticeship. If you can’t get the basics down in six months, you won’t get them in six years. Which is a long-winded way of saying the CBC should stop – right now – insisting on university degrees. They misunderstand the business.
And because of that, they misunderstand Canadians.
Q. One thing you hear whenever the topic of reinvigorating the CBC comes up is a recommendation that it pick some priorities and make some hard decisions about programming and services, whether that’s to cut costs or redirect budgets. Do you have any thoughts about how to do that?
I think it’s worth asking whether we need CBC TV daytime programming at all or more than one radio network in each language and what the heck did we do turning Radio Canada International into a domestic multicultural broadcaster? Like, either do the job or don’t but don’t run that scam.
I think it has way too much water in its wine, tries to do too many things and take up too much space in the ecosphere. So I’d be fine with – in English anyway – trimming it down to a single 24-hour news channel with maybe four to six hours of prime time, 100% Canadian, entertainment content. In other words, merge CBC News Network – with mandated stories from coast to coast – and CBC.
Do the same with radio. A single English language radio network with local morning and afternoon drive shows, national programming evening only and move the music into the daytime slots – for instance and dump the national day time programs. I’m not saying this definitively but provocatively to prompt some “why not” thinking to clear out dead wood not only in programming but administratively and bureaucratically. Right now. Because if they don’t, someone’s going to do it for them.
Q. If Pierre Poilievre gets elected sometime in 2025, CBC English services might be walking the plank. In January there will be a new CEO with a new mandate. What would you do if you were in her shoes?
Well the new mandate already is a few weeks behind when we were expecting it but I’m sure Madam Bouchard has a pretty good idea where it’s going. She doesn’t have much time. She needs to move quickly and decisively, unrolling an action – not an aspirational – plan within 60 days and begin implementing it within 30 more days. It’s that simple.
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The closer we get to a federal election, the more the debate about the CBC heats up.
It’s televised too. Check out the Parliamentary video channels ParlVu and SenVu. Both the Commons Heritage committee (CHPC) and the Senate Transportation and Communications committee (TRCM) are conducting ongoing hearings where Parliamentarians question invited witnesses.
Unfortunately the CHPC is often a gong show as MPs posture for the cameras, so the policy content is low. On the other hand, the unelected Senators on TRCM continuously engage in a serious investigation. Geraldo or the Dick Cavett Show, your choice.
This week the Senate invited former CBC journalist (and union president) Kim Trynacity as well as Richard Stursberg, the former CBC Vice President who recently provided a guest column for MediaPolicy. Both witnesses emphasized that CBC television’s best bet to recover its audience ratings is to double down on local and regional news.
Trynacity made the point that we just can’t wish it so: funding shortfalls were taken out of local television years ago, money would have to be put back.
Stursberg suggested there are unexplored synergies between CBC radio news coverage and cbcnews.ca and that perhaps there are localities where resources from the inherently expensive television news operations could be diverted to sister platforms.
That’s a pragmatic idea if the gap between ratings and funding can’t be narrowed, but maybe not so enticing to audiences wedded to local news on that medium.
That’s just a taste of an illuminating policy dialogue.
On another policy topic I’ve video clipped three minutes of Stursberg’s time on the witness stand where he commented on accusations of journalistic “bias” against the CBC, the rallying cry that fuels Conservative fund raising to “defund the CBC.”
Stursberg reminded Senators of an external study on CBC editorial performance that he commissioned in 2010. The well publicized results suggested that CBC was being unfairly criticized for partisan bias.
The advice Stursberg gives now is that the CBC ought to subject itself to this kind of public accountability every year.
The review would be even more persuasive if expanded beyond partisan reporting (fair or not to political parties) to the hot button issues that routinely feed the culture war of impugning mainstream media.
On that point, check out this 3-minute video recorded in 2015 by former CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge who vehemently denies partisan motivations lurking within the CBC. But he posits a “Toronto-centric” mindset of the Front Street journalist corps leaking into its journalist culture and news coverage.
While we are talking about bias and the CBC, this is the opportunity to revisit Pollara’s survey results from last July that I posted about at the time.
First, here’s the headline number on how much Canadians trust CBC News in comparison to other outlets:
Then there’s the question of “nobody’s watching the CBC:”
The latter chart is obviously a polling of audiences on all platforms, not just television.
Now here’s a clue to some of the CBC-bashing:
These trust gaps are clearly driven by party allegiance, a proxy for a diversity of world view and perhaps a visceral cynicism about media (only 25% of Conservative supporters trust the National Post).
Regardless, the exaggerated trust gap for the CBC is a concern, no matter how you look at it.
On the other hand, if the concern is that polarized opinion on CBC “bias” is dividing the country regionally, consider this outtake from the 2024 Sparks poll that compares opinions in Alberta to those in Québec:
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The Liberals’ Online Harms bill has been plucked out of the Parliamentary wilderness. “Pre-study” hearings at the Commons Justice committee resume Monday.
Given the election calendar, don’t expect much progress. Also expect the Conservatives to filibuster in committee. The CPC has its own harms bill it wants to advance: ironically, it’s a crime bill (although directed only at harms against children).
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Ontario Premier Doug Ford annoys me so much that I often wish I could vote twice, once for a different Premier and once for a different mayor (oops, he’s not really Mayor of Toronto, he just governs as if he was).
But today I thank my Premier for zipping it to Donald Trump after la grande orangequipped about Canada becoming the 51st American state. I suppose we shouldn’t take offence: after all Trump only wants to annex us, not insult us.
Globe editorialist Tony Keller has the story of Doug’s retort here, with a bucket of Canadian trash talk for Trump.
AI-generated photo of Donald Trump viewing the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps
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Let me recommend a gripping start-to-finish episode of Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast —-only 80 minutes long!— acknowledging that it may be of more interest to my fellow progressives.
Klein interviews Faiz Shakir, a senior staffer from the Bernie Sanders camp, on whether Democrats are overdue to embrace “Bernieism.”
Shakir believes Democrats can win with economic populism, a brand and policy platform that is based on what he describes as the majoritarian sentiment in the United States that capitalism is rigged and an authentic politician with bulldozer appeal can deliver change “for you.”
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The devil makes work for idle hands and lately MPs from the filibuster-becalmed House of Commons amuse themselves by summoning CBC Presidents before the Heritage Committee. Once in the dock, prosecutorial MPs flay the witness and then video clip for their social media posts.
Some MPs had trouble with their facts. Not without justification, MP Kevin Waugh cited the public broadcaster for raking in $400 million in advertising revenue that could otherwise be available to private media. The true dollar figure is $270 million; Google and Facebook have the rest.
MP Jamil Javani claimed that CBC English language television has a 2.1% share of viewing audience. The CBC’s percentage for prime time viewing in television, excluding its all-news and documentary channels, is more than twice that at 5.2 %. By comparison, Canadian private broadcasters collectively take 26%, a wide array of specialty channels are at 53% and US networks are at 13%.
Conservative MPs dwelled upon the bonus payout for senior CBC executives. Bouchard defused the situation by agreeing to review the payments, make her review transparent, and gently reminded MPs that the correct term is “variable pay” (the at-risk performance pay that is part of every senior manager’s compensation package in the modern world).
MP Niki Ashton from northern Manitoba assailed the CBC for its retreat from local television news. She’s not imagining that: in response to the deep Liberal budget cuts during the 1990s, the public broadcaster closed stations and reduced coverage across Canada. The coverage-killing budget cuts didn’t stop there: between 2013 and 2023, the CBC responded to Parliament’s austerity by reducing its spending on television programming in English Canada by 40% in real dollars as it shifted resources to online news.
Bouchard’s reply to MPs was noteworthy: local news will be a “big focus” as the incoming CEO. Last month the CBC announced it was spending its $7 million of “Google money” on hiring 25 journalists in underserved markets.
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In a previous post I did the CRTC an injustice by accusing Commission staff of “twiddling around” in its investigation of whether Meta is offside by selectively waving some news items through its block of Canadian news content.
I said that because the Commission appeared to be too patient in allowing Meta lawyers to rag the puck in response to the CRTC’s demand for the details on the porous news block, details which the regulator intends to make public in the course of its inquiry.
Last Monday the Commission fired off another letter to Meta and, if you read for nuance, you will conclude that the CRTC has lost patience with Mr. Zuckerberg’s demands to keep his explanation a secret and is ready to post Meta’s unredacted explanation of its news block.
Meta has until tomorrow to play ball or else. Else what, we shall see. Once Meta’s statement of defence is public, the next step will be a decision from the CRTC on whether to investigate further.
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There may never have been a busier week for Big Tech lawyers responding to legislation and lawsuits around the world.
Here’s a quick run down:
Australia passed a law banning kids under 16 years old from having their own social media accounts (WhatsApp and YouTube excepted). The ban takes effect a year from now —-an eternity in political time—- as the thorny issue of age verification gets sorted out. The debate over the legislation was the occasion for Elon Musk to tweet accusations of censorship, a rebuke from the CEO of the Australian public broadcaster Kim Williams and then Musk responding by unleashing a troll storm against Williams.
The Australian government dropped its version of our Bill C-63, the Online Safety Act. Its “misinformation bill” was destined to fail in the Australian upper chamber where the government does not enjoy a majority.
The Canadian Competition Bureau has filed suit against Google for allegedly abusing its market power in digital advertising. Having cleared Google of this very charge in 2013, it seems likely the Bureau has more evidence in hand as a result of the ongoing anti-trust trial against Google in the US.
Canadian news outlets have filed a copyright lawsuit against the Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its ChatGPT app —-in the wake of a similar lawsuit by the New York Times—- for ingesting millions of the outlets’ online news articles. There’s already an AI-ingestion lawsuit proceeding in Canada between two smaller players as recounted by the University of Calgary’s Hugh Stephens in a blog post.
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The Globe and Mail’s Cathal Kelly is a born-with-the-muse columnist who just happens to write about sports.
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A letter to MediaPolicy from the CEO of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network responds to remarks made by Richard Stursberg in his recent MediaPolicy post, “Welcome Mme.Bouchard, here’s some advice.“
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I am writing on behalf of APTN in response to Richard Stursberg’s recent column, “CBC: Welcome Mme. Bouchard, here’s some advice.” While we agree with several of Mr. Stursberg’s suggestions, we strongly disagree with his suggestion that CBC/Radio Canada should helm a documentary series on the Indigenous People’s History of Canada – similar to its successful Canada: A People’s History series.
For 25 years, APTN has been at the forefront of Indigenous media in Canada, dedicated to sharing our Peoples’ stories our way. As the first national Indigenous broadcaster in the world, APTN was created specifically to provide a platform for Indigenous voices, perspectives and languages —something no other network can claim as its primary mandate. Over the years, we have produced and aired countless groundbreaking series, documentaries and programs that authentically reflect the diversity and richness of Indigenous cultures, histories and contemporary realities.
The network’s involvement in series like 1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus, Treaty Road, Secret History, Future History, Red Earth Uncovered, Wild Archaeology and First Contact/Premier Contact – among many other titles, showcases APTN’s ability to handle complex and sensitive topics with the nuance and respect they deserve.
We have also co-commissioned some of the most important Indigenous cultural/historical documentaries, including Singing Back the Buffalo, Wilfred Buck, nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, Beautiful Scars of Tom Wilson and Coming Home. Such documentaries have been instrumental in educating the public and preserving Indigenous heritage.
The suggestion that only CBC can undertake this kind of storytelling undermines the work APTN has been doing with expertise and dedication for decades. It dismisses the contributions of Indigenous journalists, producers and creators who bring unmatched cultural understanding, lived experience and nuanced perspectives to the stories they tell. Furthermore, it perpetuates a harmful narrative that Indigenous voices require validation or mediation by non-Indigenous institutions to be heard or understood.
While no doubt well-intentioned, Mr. Stursberg’s recommendation overlooks APTN’s existence and its role in fostering and broadcasting Indigenous stories, and the need for strong and unwavering support of that role.
This week MediaPolicy published a report of the CRTC’s announcement on November 15th laying the groundwork for how Netflix and the other foreign video streamers will contribute to Canadian content under the Online Streaming Act.
Released on a Friday, the announcement flew quietly under the radar of the daily news cycle, possibly because there is no immediate price tag attached to Netflix’s future obligations to make or license Canadian shows.
Last June the CRTC imposed on the foreign streamers $140 million worth of annual contributions to Canadian television subsidy funds for news, drama and kid’s programming: last week’s much anticipated announcement might end up being worth five times as much in streamers’ programming budgets for Canadian content.
There are times when the impact of American public policy initiatives on Canadian media policy dwarves anything we might do north of the 49th.
As you may recall, the trial judge in an anti-trust suit begun by the Trump White House and several states against Google resulted in a legal ruling declaring Google an illegal monopoly in Search and search related advertising.
Following up, the collective of Attorneys Generals spearheaded by the federal DOJ have now tabled remedial requests to the trial judge.
Just for starters, they are requesting that Google divest its Chrome web browser and its Android mobile operating system. And there are important requests focussing directly on bootstrapping would-be competitors to Google in the Search market by giving them “catch-up” access to Google’s treasure trove of consumer data. Radical stuff for radical times.
There is a useful news summary from the New York Times. But if you can afford the time for a ten-minute read, I recommend Matt Stoller’s excellent explainer.
As I read Stoller’s piece, it easily came to mind how unlikely it is that Canadian news publishers would have successfully pursued the news licensing payments in the Online News Act if instead of Google’s monopoly on search referrals there was robust competition in the Search Engine market.
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More than a few times MediaPolicy has raised the question of how Meta is getting away with its selective ban on Canadians news content, its response to our Online News Act.
The Heritage Minister raised the same question publicly but she is constrained by the fact that it’s the CRTC’s jurisdiction to investigate it.
It’s possible that federal cabinet considered but dismissed the idea of sending the CRTC a policy directive asking the Commission to look into why Meta permits the sharing of some news items, but not others, and why it has flat-out restored news posting privileges to outlets such as Narcity.
The Commission is twiddling around on this one. In early October it asked Meta to explain the rhyme and reason for allowing some news content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms while banning the vast majority of news organizations.
Meta filed a letter in response and, according to a Canadian Press story, it appears that Menlo Park submitted something, but it’s not clear what. And beyond whatever details of its selective ban it provided, Meta has claimed confidentiality and opposes the public release of its answers to the Commission.
This minor legal drama will play out in the fifth dimension of regulatory time.
Meanwhile the public is still in the dark as to whether the Commission thinks there is a basis for playing hardball with Meta by, for instance, officially designating its platforms under the Online News Act so that banned news organizations can file an “undue preference” complaint and get equal treatment to Meta’s favoured news outlets.
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I’m pleased that so many followers of this blog liked Richard Stursberg’s guest column on the CBC, his advice for the incoming CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard. It’s now the most popular post in MediaPolicy’s short history.
Now there’s an interesting column from The Hub’s Managing Editor Harrison Lowman in which he identifies the “defund the CBC” problem as the public broadcaster’s news curation and journalism culture. His bottom line: fix it, don’t destroy an important Canadian institution and a vital provider of news journalism.
Lowman’s piece —-clearly not toeing the Conservative Party line—- was immediately disputed by The Hub’s Editor-At-Large and former Harper policy chief Sean Speer.
Speer’s says his support of defunding the CBC is not founded on an allegation of biased news reporting. Gosh no. It’s about the CBC’s declining audience share (him citing poor television viewership numbers, but ignoring strong digital and radio numbers). His colleague Lowman is just being “nostalgic” about the CBC.
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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 governmentand 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.
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 orderedthe 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.
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 practiceis 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 agothe 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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This week MediaPolicy hosted a guest column on the future of the CBC from Richard Stursberg, the author of The Tangled Garden: A Canadian Cultural Manifesto and the 2012 Tower of Babble, a memoir of running English language services at the CBC. The column welcomes the new President of CBC, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, with some advice.
You see exposed now, my naked agenda: more talk about how to reinvent the CBC and present an alternative to Pierre Poilievre’s promise to defund it. I hope to keep this going with more discussion on this platform.
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Here’s one piece of my mind I offer about the CBC.
Pierre Poilievre has many political goals to be achieved by defunding the CBC, not the least of which is repaying donors so he can convince them his audacity is genuine.
The other purpose of “defund the CBC” is to effect a seismic shift in the media reporting universe. Silencing the CBC through defunding is the right-wing version of cancel-culture, something you might have heard is a bad thing. The reputed CBC “news bias” will be eliminated along with the work of 3000 unwanted journalists.
For a thought provoking video clip, here is CBC news host David Cochrane putting forth a plausible hypothetical in a Canada purged of the CBC:
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On November 15 the CRTC announced that it is commencing hearings on March 31, 2025 that will dive into the meatiest of remaining regulatory issues for video streamers under the Online Streaming Act Bill C-11. MediaPolicy will have more to say about that in mid-week.
Even though the federal cabinet gave the Commission until December 2025 to complete the regulatory “framework” for the bill, the Commission’s laborious pace is awkward given the Conservative election promise to repeal it.
On Friday the Commission made it clear that the best case scenario for completing its work including the specific requirements for online and traditional broadcasters is in 2026 and, as expected, it will pause this work the moment that the election writ is dropped.
That means voters in the a federal election to be held no later than October 2025 will be relying a great deal on what political parties say the legislation is about, rather than how it is actually implemented. We deserve better.
The campaign against C-11 continues uninterrupted.
As covered by MediaPolicy in these twoposts, the coalition representing Spotify and the Big Tech music streamers recently launched the public campaign “Scrap The Streaming Tax,” a reference to the CRTC’s CanCon levy authorized by C-11. The Washington D.C.-based Digital Media Association (DiMA) behind the campaign was fortunate to land Canadian rocker Bryan Adams as an ally and supporter of the campaign.
Now DiMA has sponsored —-paid for—- an opinion column from The Hub’s Sean Speer in which Stephen Harper’s former policy chief proposes the repeal of Bill C-11.
The column, illustrated with art from DiMA’s “Scrap the Tax” campaign, signs off “this article was made possible by the Digital Media Association and the generosity of readers like you.”
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The Parliamentary Heritage Committee has issued its final reporton hearings convened in reaction to the political campaigns and news throttles conducted in Canada by Meta and Google in 2022 and 2023. The modest title of the proceedings was: “Tech Giants’ Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Globally.”
Alas, the committee’s majority report (the Conservative MPs dissented) is anti-climatic. When the hearings commenced, MPs demanded that Meta and Google cough up e-mails that might reveal “astroturfing” alliances between the Big Tech giants and grassroots Canadian organizations opposing Internet legislation.
In the end, there is nothing in the report about those e-mails. It’s just as well. The Big Tech funding patrons and campaign alliances were openly acknowledged by those Canadian organizations.
The Committee made five recommendations for regulating Big Tech’s activities in Canada, four of which are addressed by the Liberals’ Online Safety Act C-63 that currently languishes in Parliament.
The fifth recommendation is a reprise of the Heritage Committee’s 2017 proposal to “Close the Loophole” in section 19.1 of the Income Tax Act that exempts online advertising from the tax presumption against placing Canadian advertisements in foreign media operating in Canada. The policy idea is to encourage Canadian advertisers to reach online Canadian audiences through Canadian media.
A footnote: the Conservative Party’s dissenting statement declares its intention (or that of its committee MPs) to repeal the Online News Act, C-18. While the Party and its leader have repeatedly opposed and criticized the Bill that delivers $100 million annually to Canadian news organizations, this is the first time I have seen them commit to repealing it.
The ability of Canadian governments to regulate Big Tech operations is always limited by the reality that we are a small country and the US is a big one that uses trade power to defend the interests of its corporations. Anything we want to do differently from the US in respect to Big Tech is difficult; anything the US Congress does on its own accord would be easier to mirror in Canada.
So the impact of the Trump and Republican victories in the recent election upon Big Tech is all important. The Washington Post published a summary of the live Tech regulatory issues in 2025 such as AI, child safety, and Elon Musk (he’s his own issue).
The Post speculated that the selection of the new majority leader of the Republican Senate might be crucial to tech issues and indeed the job was captured by South Dakota’s John Thune, despite Musk’s vigorous opposition to his appointment. Thune is sometimes identified as a traditional Republican and more likely to work constructively across the aisle with Democrats.
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When you’re right, you’re right. And if you were right a long time ago, you’re vindicated.
It’s possible that former CBC executive Richard Stursberg is feeling just that, 13 years after leaving the public broadcaster where he served as the head of English language services from 2005 to 2011.
At the CBC, Stursberg’s calling card was that “audiences matter.” His single minded mission was to capture for the public broadcaster, especially in English language television, an audience commensurate with its role as Canada’s leading cultural organization (and its billion dollar Parliamentary funding).
To outside observers, he seemed to be at odds with everyone and not really minding. First there was the lockout of CBC staff in 2005. Then he grabbed the rest of the organization by the scruff of the neck and piloted a revolution in the CBC’s entertainment programming, for example embracing audience-pleasing reality television (remember Battle of the Blades?).
With an all-Canadian line-up, in five years Stursberg moved the needle significantly in CBC’s share of the national television market, closing the gap with CTV and its prime time schedule of hit US shows. Then he fell out with his new boss, CBC President Hubert Lacroix. And so on: read all about it here in his memoir, The Tower of Babble, ranked by the Globe and Mail as one of the best books of 2012.
Along the way, he made some friends, allies and enemies. The enemies he cheekily dubbed “The Constituency,” an assortment of CBC traditionalists and media watchers who might also have been described as “those who rip Richard in public.”
After he left, the CBC lost NHL hockey rights to Rogers and with it a whole lot of eyeballs and connection with Canadian audiences. Netflix ate up market share for Canadian entertainment television. And then Google Search and Facebook devoured the digital ad market. Stursberg tells more of that story in another prize winner, his 2019 book, The Tangled Garden. The job of keeping CBC relevant today is twice as hard as it used to be.
These days Stursberg continues to have his fingers in different cultural pies. He is outspoken on his support for major reforms to the definition of Canadian content, favouring a “cultural theme” test of distinctive Canadian programming over the traditional headcount of Canadian talent.
As a past reinventor of the public broadcaster, it’s his 2024 views on the reinventing the CBC that are worth soliciting in its hour of crisis. As conservative commentator Harrison Lowman recently projected, “CBC, your days are numbered.”
MediaPolicy asked Stursberg, what is to be done? This guest column, his advice to incoming CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard, is his response.
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Advice to the new President of the CBC, Marie-Philippe Bouchard
By Richard Stursberg
Welcome to the job.
Given your deep knowledge of public broadcasting you are ideally placed to do well, but you will have significant challenges. Here is some unsolicited advice on how you can succeed from one who also believes in the importance of the CBC/Radio-Canada.
The Structure of the Corporation
First, your most important challenge will be English television. It is the central problem, not because Pierre Poilievre wants to shut it down, but because it has fallen to its lowest audience share ever. Put bluntly, with the exception of the recent Olympic Games, almost nobody is watching it. There are very few viewers for any of its shows, including news. Your presidency will succeed or fail depending on whether you can solve the problem of English television.
Second, it is important to understand the CBC is not a normal corporation and lacks a normal Board. It cannot decide its own fate. The overall strategy of the corporation has to be approved by the CRTC; and it cannot raise capital without the agreement of the Treasury Board. It lacks many of the powers of a normal corporation. This makes change very difficult. To succeed you will have to have the Minister of Heritage and the Prime Minister on-side for whatever you plan to do.
Should English TV be Fixed?
The Environment
The TV landscape in English Canada is in serious difficulty. The big conventional networks — CTV and Global — the major private sources of local and national news, have been shedding staff for over ten years and losing money. Their ability to commission Canadian drama and comedy is compromised. They are spending less and — for financial reasons — what they are doing is increasingly American in look and feel.
The cable industry has been losing customers for many years and with them, the fees that they pay to specialty channels. As a result, they too are significantly cutting back their staff and ability to commission Canadian shows.
The groups that own the vast majority of the conventional and specialty broadcasters are in trouble. Corus, the parent of Global, is essentially insolvent. Bell Media, the parent of CTV recently wrote down its broadcast assets by just over $2 billion. It is not hard to imagine that in another five to ten years the English Canadian broadcasting industry will — with the possible exception of the sports channels — no longer exist.
Their loss will mean that CBC TV will be the only broadcaster still producing Canadian drama, news, comedy, public affairs and documentary shows. If we value hearing our own stories told in our own voices, there will likely be nowhere else to see them.
Social fragmentation
The emergence of algorithmically driven social media has encouraged polarization and social fragmentation. Canadians increasingly live inside filter bubbles that act as echo chambers. Disinformation, deep fakes and AI generated falsehoods have compounded the problem. The space of common ground and shared assumptions has grown ever narrower as distrust spreads like a stain across public discourse.
As divisions grow more fractious, it is increasingly important that there be places that can bind the country together and create shared understandings about who we are. They need to provide stories, ideas, news and art that allow Canadians to celebrate, explore, discuss and make sense of their country. And, they need to be true. Truth is an essential component of patriotism.
The CBC is the last great cultural institution in the country that is in a position to do this. It can only do so, however, if its programming is trusted and popular. Unless it reaches big audiences it cannot create the large scale shared space that will provide the counterweight to the endless fragmentation of social media.
One initiative that the CBC might take is to address the challenge of disinformation by creating a news and public affairs portal that hosts not just its content but also that of all the other media in the country that are governed by traditional journalistic standards of truth and fairness. This could include other broadcasters, newspapers, magazines, on-line information sources and bloggers that are committed to ensuring the accuracy of their reporting. The portal’s promise — its brand — would be truth.
The other thing it must do is provide galvanizing programming that speaks directly to Canadians to foster debate and conversation about who we are and want to be. It must take on large projects that transcend the current divisions — whether regional, ideological or social — and provide Canadians a place to laugh, argue and cry. This is very difficult to do.
Can English TV be Fixed?
It will be very difficult. Your most important source of revenue aside from the Parliamentary appropriation is advertising, which has collapsed. At the same time, you are facing brutal competition from the vastly rich, foreign owned, unregulated streamers — Netflix, Apple, Amazon, etc.– who bear none of the costly cultural and social burdens that you do.
Business as usual cannot succeed. To save English TV you will have to develop a radical new plan for its future. The plan needs to reinvent its news and entertainment properties and find significant new sources of revenue. The creation of such a plan will be challenging. Substantive change will be met with criticism from all sides.
How Should the Plan be Developed?
It is important to develop a set of principles to guide the creation of a plan. These might include the following.
1. Focus on what the private broadcasters cannot do. They do not need competition from a publicly supported CBC. They are in tough enough shape as it is.
The space that the privates can no longer occupy is very large. Delivering what they cannot will make you more distinct and give Canadians more reason to view your programming.
2. Focus on serving audiences. The measure of success must always be whether Canadians are watching your shows. They pay for the CBC and can reasonably expect to be offered programs that they will want to watch. There is no public broadcaster without a public.
3. Focus on developing new sources of revenue. Television advertising is dying. Google, Facebook and the other big digital companies have taken it all away. Make a virtue of necessity and get out of ads for your drama, comedy and documentary programming. This proved a very successful strategy for radio and would certainly make CBC TV much more distinctive and attractive to audiences.
You will need to develop a new revenue plan. It can be based on sponsorships, whether from corporations or foundations, charitable giving, levies on the streamers and/or internal reallocations.
4. Ensure that the money you are given by Parliament is allocated fairly and sensibly. The French service receives 44% of the government money. This means that French speakers get a per capita subsidy of $70 per person, while the rest of the country gets $23 per capita. Given your biggest challenge is on the English side, this is both unhelpful and unfair. Only a French President can change it.
5. Do not try to please everybody. You can’t. Instead, focus. Be bold. Take risks. Make big bets.
Some Facts About English Canada’s Media habits
Every week Canadians spend about 20 hours on the Internet and 30 hours watching TV, whether traditional TV or streaming services. These are their most important leisure activities.
CBC English radio continues to perform well. It takes a 16% share of all radio listening and is number one in most markets.
CBC English TV has collapsed over the last ten years. It now has a share of roughly 4% of all TV viewing. Its share is equivalent to that of a specialty channel.
Although CBC likes to brag about the reach of its digital service, it is very lightly consumed. Compared to radio and TV, it performs poorly. Canadians spend about 17 minutes per week on CBC.ca., which is a share of just over 1% of their time spent on the Internet.
What are the Key Elements of a Plan?
Local News
Much of local news has vanished; Canada has entered a local news desert. Most small town and community papers and supper hour newscasts have died. All market research indicates that local news is the most important form of news, since it is about the events that directly affect people’s lives. Where local news dies, electoral participation falls and local corruption increases.
Consistent with the principle of doing what the private sector cannot, CBC should expand its local news presence. Recently (November 12, 2024), it announced a significant expansion of its local news presence.
To strengthen its local news further, it would be wise to leverage its strength in radio and have radio promote to and complement the CBC’s local news sites. This has proven a successful strategy in some very small towns in western Canada and Ontario.
Strengthening local news would also help your national news. There is a powerful correlation between local shows on radio and Canadians’ propensity to listen to the national ones as well.
National and International News
The National needs to be refocussed. Some evenings it draws less than 200,000 viewers at 10:00. CTV typically draws two to three times as many viewers for its late night news at 11:00, although in fairness The National gets many more viewers on Youtube and CBC Gem.
Aside from the Globe and Mail, almost nobody except the CBC has any foreign bureaus or investigative capacity. The National — and the News Network — could be dramatically strengthened by using these resources to shift the focus of their journalism. Instead of “telling” Canadians the news, they should give priority to making sense of it by providing background and context.
By way of example, the recent coverage of the US election focused on it as a horse race. There was much discussion of polls, performance at rallies, the Electoral College, more polls, swing states, etc., all accompanied by hand wringing and pearl clutching. Through it all, there was little or no discussion of what a Trump victory might mean for Canada. What will we do when he starts to deport “illegal” migrants when they appear at our border looking for sanctuary? How will we respond to his demand that we turn on the “tap” and divert our water to the parched southwestern states? How do we respond when he withdraws from NATO? The point of foreign bureaus is to make sense of what is happening in other countries for Canada.
In a similar vein, the coverage of the health care crisis focuses on Canadians’ lack of family doctors, overcrowded emergency rooms, and long waits for elective surgery. It does not explore how Canada might fix its broken system by looking at what other countries get right. Why are France, Sweden, Denmark and Norway doing better than we are?
A promise to answer these kinds of questions and embrace Solutions Journalism would go a long way to restoring the relevance of The National and The News Network.
Entertainment and Documentaries
Like the news, the entertainment and documentary shows are doing poorly, particularly the newest ones. The older shows are holding up better: Heartland (season 18), Murdoch Mysteries (season 18), This Hour Has 22 Minutes (season 45?). The newer shows like Crime Scene Kitchen and My Mum Your Dad (a dating show) draw hardly any viewers.
The problem with the new shows is that they are not unique; they do not fill any unmet need. Similar offerings can be found on lots of specialty channels. They are also not particularly Canadian.
A new strategy must be based on commissioning shows that Canadians cannot get anywhere else. They need to be big, daring, appointment pieces that speak to our unique history, dreams, fears and sense of humour. They need to be about us, our neighbours, fellow citizens and friends. To be relevant, they must be distinctly Canadian and squarely rooted in Canada. The private broadcasters will never do this.
By way of example, one of the CBC’s most successful series was Canada: A People’s History. It drew tremendous interest and precipitated great controversy. For years, it was used in schools and with immigrants to help explain who we are. Surely the time is right for an Indigenous People’s History of Canada. To achieve reconciliation, it is essential that people understand the truth of what happened from the point-of-view of Canada’s original inhabitants. Like its predecessor, it would be a multi-part series that starts with first contact and comes up to the present day. Inevitably, it would be expensive, controversial and — if done properly — galvanizing. Nobody else in Canada has the resources or the expertise to make it.
As for fiction, one can imagine a show about our relationship to the US. The premise is simple. The southwestern states have run out of water (which they have). Canada has more fresh water than any country in the world. The Americans face an existential challenge: they must save Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California. They must have the “tap” turned on even if it means war. Again, no private broadcaster would make this; they could never sell it in the States.
Radio-Canada has been very good at producing extremely popular shows that reflect Quebec in all of its remarkable diversity and energy. Every Sunday night “Tout le monde en parle” (Everybody Is Talking About It) provides a funny, charming and thoughtful window into the cultural, social, political, athletic, musical, business and religious life of Quebec. It is the most successful talk show in Canadian history. It is must see viewing. Why is there no English equivalent?
To do these kinds of things, you may have to restore the financial balance within the English network. Over the last ten years roughly $200 million has been stripped from English TV and radio to finance digital, the worst performing service.
Conclusion
English TV can and should be saved, but it will require difficult and bold restructuring. It will need a plan that is based on making great shows that speak to English Canadians’ desire to see themselves and explore their country in ways that are exciting, beautiful and moving. Whether news, documentaries or entertainment shows, table stakes for programs are — in the current intensely competitive environment — quality, originality and relevance. Nothing less will do.
The plan must also ensure that the necessary resources are in place to make it happen. This is likely to involve very controversial decisions about the reallocation of money across the corporation and within English services. It will also require the development of new sources of funds (the major banks could easily sponsor an Indigenous People’s History of Canada).
Although you have a deep understanding of public broadcasting, I understand that your experience is principally on the French side of the corporation. The English and French markets are very different, both in terms of their levels of competitive intensity and the kinds of conventions that underpin successful TV. It might be a good idea for you to move to English Canada for a few months. Watch all the shows and newscasts, both those that are working and those that are not. Talk to everybody: the employees of the CBC, the heads of the big English media companies, the audience measurement experts, the independent producers, everyone.
Use all that you learn to make a real plan, one with teeth and targets, recognizing that it will take two to three years to bear results. Then, find yourself a media executive who agrees with you and has the skills, contacts, experience and daring to execute it.
Once the plan is ready, make it public. It is essential that Canadians understand and support what you are trying to achieve. Let them see that you understand what they need and want, and that you are daring enough to try and deliver it. Let them hold you accountable for the spending of their money.
Building a public constituency for your plan will provide a powerful counterweight to the forces that will resist change. You will need all the friends you can find.
The plan may also be a good answer for Mr. Poilievre – if elected – and his Heritage minister. You will also need them.
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