CBC says it’s listening to concerns, but expounds on why it did the deal
By Ahmad Hathout
The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage will call the president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada to explain the public broadcaster’s decision to make its news products available on Amazon Prime Video as add-on subscriptions.
A motion, introduced by Bloc Quebecois MP Martin Champoux, to bring Marie-Philippe Bouchard before the committee was received favourably by the Liberals and Conservatives and passed at the end of the committee’s study session Tuesday on the state of journalism and media.
A date for Bouchard’s appearance will be determined later. The committee also plans to hold a separate session for critics of the deal.
Last week, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that its all-news channels, CBC News Network and ICI RDI, are available on Amazon Prime Video as $5-per-month add-on subscriptions. The public broadcaster is pushing the deal as a viewership reach play.
But Champoux said the service should have been put on Quebec services, including CBC’s own Tou.TV service, which has a free and premium $9-per-month version.
“This is something that really shocks people; it’s stunning,” Champoux said Tuesday. “I see that they want to reach as many people as possible – I understand that they want to be available – and we want to have discoverability of content; journalistic and cultural content – but in our view, it’s very difficult to justify offering this streaming on an American platform, on Prime Video, regardless of the strategic motives of the decision before it is offered on a platform that is owned in Canada.”
Conservative members of Parliament also expressed frustration that the taxpayer-funded broadcaster is charging for the service.
“This is a decision that has people with their jaws dropped right now because it doesn’t make sense,” Quebec Conservative MP Bernard Genereux said Tuesday.
In a statement to Cartt on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Radio-Canada told Cartt that the broadcaster is “listening to the concerns, opinions, and criticisms expressed following the announcement of the distribution agreement for the ICI RDI and CBC News Network streaming channels that we have reached with Prime Video,” but that there are some “clarifications” it would like to address.
For example, the spokesperson said, CBC/Radio-Canada is currently restricted from offering ICI RDI and CBC News Network on Tou.TV by agreements the broadcaster has with Canadian distributors, and the Prime Video deal “allows us to do what is not yet possible on our own platforms.”
“It is important to remember that ICI RDI and CBC News Network are specialty channels available by subscription only, as they have been since their inception and in accordance with CRTC regulations,” the statement continued. “This is why we have agreements with all Canadian cable and satellite providers for these ICI RDI and CBC News Network streaming channels, in addition to some distribution agreements with over-the-top (OTT) channel aggregators, including River TV, owned by Videotron.”
The spokesperson said the goal is to capture audiences that are cutting the cable. “CBC/Radio-Canada is not the only public broadcaster to partner with Prime Video to increase the discoverability and accessibility of its channels,” the statement goes on. “Several Canadian specialty channels offered by cable providers are also available on Prime Video (for example, Bell’s French-language channels, including RDS, Canal Vie, Canal D, Canal Z, Super Écran, and Noovo, as well as Global’s English-language channels, several independent English-language channels, and TVA Sports). Finally, France Télévisions and the BBC have distribution agreements with Prime Video in their respective markets.”
In a statement to Cartt, Quebecor President and CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau said: “CBC/Radio-Canada is once again losing sight of its core mission as a public broadcaster. Its deal with Amazon Prime Video speaks for itself — a public broadcaster that collects over one billion dollars in taxpayer funding is doubling down on advertising and subscription revenue. If the goal is truly to make RDI more accessible to Canadians, the answer is simple: make it free on CBC/Radio-Canada platforms that already exist. Instead, taxpayers are being asked to pay yet again for content they already fund. This is the same playbook we saw with TOU.TV EXTRA and CBC Gem Premium, and we have been sounding the alarm for some time. It is worth noting that the federal government itself, in a report published a year ago, called for an end to subscription fees on the public broadcaster’s digital services.”
A column in La Presse opined that the deal was “astonishing” and “shocking,” positioning it as a sort of deal with an American technology devil that has allegedly contributed to the misery of news businesses.
“This surprising partnership, along with other actions, leads us to believe that Radio-Canada is behaving entirely like a private company,” the column reads. “However, it seems to me that the primary objective of the public broadcaster is simple: to produce quality content with the public funding it receives. Period.”
“In short, if we follow the logic of this agreement with Prime Video, Radio-Canada will sell content (largely paid for by Canadian taxpayers) to an American giant which will in turn draw profits to better crush Canadian private media,” the column continues, adding it had already launched by the time of the announcement, so the minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Marc Miller, did not have an opportunity to review it.
Amazon is one of the major streaming services challenging at the Federal Court of Appeal the CRTC’s imposition of a five per cent base contribution to Canadian content funds.
Screenshot of Bloc Quebecois MP Martin Champoux
