OTTAWA – It was billed as the first time Canada’s key broadcasting leaders would debate the “critical issues at the heart” of the current review of the federal Broadcasting and Telecommunications acts.
However, the “Beyond Disruption: Crafting a Framework for the Future of the Industry” panel at last week’s Canadian Media Producers Association Prime Time annual national conference in Ottawa was more about how a key global streaming giant is messing up the existing framework of the Canadian broadcasting system.
Bad luck for him or prescient planning by organizers situated Stéphane Cardin, Netflix’s director of public policy for Canada, in the middle of a pack of senior executives from the country’s major public and private broadcasters. While they each took time to outline how their respective networks are tailoring programming to reach new audiences and keep existing ones (focusing on children and youth for the CBC; CTV’s new primetime series, The Transplant, focused on a Syrian refugee who returns to his career in emergency medicine, as two examples) their most energized input was directed toward confronting and challenging the man representing an online streaming giant that is perhaps the greatest threat to domestic broadcasters.
Most of the media attention was drawn to CBC/Radio Canada president and CEO Catherine Tait’s explosive comments, which drew some groans from the audience, in which she compared an era when “cultural colonialism [from the British and French empires] was absolutely accepted” with the current “beginning of a new empire,” and warned about the “damage that can do to local communities.”
“Let us be mindful of how it is we as Canadians respond to global companies coming into our country,” said Tait, who earlier emphasized the importance of diversity of ownership and voice.
Cardin pointed out that Netflix has commissioned its first French-language film written and directed by Quebec filmmaker Patrice Laliberté that will feature a Quebecois cast and will be shot in Quebec [starting this month, according to Playback].
“To us, there is a bit of incoherence.” – Stéphane Cardin, Netflix
Since Netflix is financing the production, however, “it doesn’t count as Canadian content,” said Cardin. “To us, there is a bit of incoherence.”
Does Netflix streaming Trailer Park Boys strip the series of its Canadian content, Cardin wondered? “One of the things that we can do, perhaps quite well, is to bring those Canadian stories to the world,” he said, noting the popularity of Schitt’s Creek and Kim’s Convenience on the online platform.
However, CBC’s Tait questioned whether Netflix is committed to “nurturing” emerging talent since it is “in the business of bringing big stories and small stories to a global audience.
“We are uniquely focused on this marketplace, discovering the talent, nurturing the talent, wherever it rises up,” she said, adding that CBC has a presence in 60 Canadian communities compared to Netflix, which is represented in Canada by Cardin alone so far.
Meanwhile Mike Cosentino, president of content and programming at Bell Media, said “we are the cultural champion of our country” and “the voice of a nation” through news – “the opportunity we have to capitalize on, in particular, in a market that has penetration from global entities that may not share that kind of strategic vision and that may not be as important as it is to us.”
His remarks drew a reaction from Janet Yale, the former Telus executive and former president and CEO of the Canadian Cable Television Association who chairs the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review panel and moderated the CMPA panel. “It’s very interesting for the review panel to think about the creation, the production and the discoverability of Canadian content,” she said. “The government, in its terms of reference to us, made it clear that that is an important element of cultural sovereignty, and we are very seized of that issue. The question is not just what but how we do that in a digital economy with so many foreign providers.”
“We get up every morning and we think about how do we serve Canadians, tell their stories, report on the news from a Canadian point of view. This is our unique position. No one else from outside Canada will have that instinct.” – Catherine Tait, CBC
Tait also weighed in, highlighting “the role of all the Canadian players – the producers, the public broadcaster, the private broadcasters – with the exception of you,” she said, gesturing to Cardin. “We get up every morning and we think about how do we serve Canadians, tell their stories, report on the news from a Canadian point of view. This is our unique position. No one else from outside Canada will have that instinct.”
The challenge, according to Tait, is in responding to such international players as Netflix, Apple or Google, “whose primary instinct is to monetize over a global audience,” while she also acknowledged that those digital platforms have in fact invested in Canada’s cultural sector.
There is a distinction between “prescriptive spending” and “market-driven spending,” added Doug Murphy, president and CEO of Corus Entertainment. “We are fully committed to investing in Canadian production and Canadian artistic and creative talent.”
He added Canadian broadcasters need to pursue on-demand programming. “Why should we let Netflix own the binge-viewing world?” he asked.
Murphy’s vision, which he called “Fortress Canada,” involves optimizing the “economic interests” of both broadcasters and producers of content to compete with “unregulated interlopers who are taking audiences and ad dollars.”
However, Cardin said that Netflix is investing in Canadian production, and will spend “significantly more” than the $500 million over five years it committed to last year.
“There is no market failure in terms of how online services are engaging in production in this country,” he said. “Foreign online services have increased their contributions through market demand five-fold over the last five years. We are now at 22% of financing of English-language Canadian [TV] fiction…because we believe in the strength of the Canadian creative community, the quality of the crews here, the locations [and] the infrastructures.”
“Canada is, year over year, either our second or third production centre worldwide. So from that perspective, we are significantly punching above our weight.”
Bell Media’s Cosentino countered that he had not heard “a single thing” from Cardin’s comments “that would be a reason not to contribute” to the Canada Media Fund or to collect sales tax.
“There is no cost to us” regarding a sales tax, replied Cardin. “If we are asked to collect and remit sales tax, we do. We have done so in Quebec and Saskatchewan. If B.C. or Manitoba that do not have a harmonized [sales] tax ask us to do so, we will do so. If the federal government asks us to do so, we will do so.”
