Cable / Telecom News

ANALYSIS: Why vertical integration was a bad idea – and what can be done about it now (part four)


FOR MANY DECADES, THE Canadian TV market had the luxury of being a walled garden protected by the limits of technology. We even carved out a national production industry and nurtured significant cultural achievements next door to the world’s largest content market.Now, however, digitalized content has climbed over the garden’s walls and caused content markets to globalize and flatten.We responded to this change with the defensive strategy of vertical integration. We tried to create barriers, concentrating our domestic market, but the problem was this just deepened our dependence on our domestic market and made us less competitive globally. We’ve lost...