BANFF – Inside the picturesque Banff Springs Hotel much is being said about monetization strategies for content development and distribution.
And in that context it's fun to recall that titles like Hell On Wheels, Passchendaele, The Revenant, Brokeback Mountain, Fargo, and The Bourne Legacy have all been shot in this fast-changing province of Alberta.
So what better venue?
For Julie Tremblay, president and CEO of Quebecor Media, the key is partnerships, vertically integrated companies, perhaps even more industry consolidation, and direct co-development and co-production with independent creators.
While those may be fighting words for some independent producers, she also admits to two constants: What the customer wants along their consumer journey is still good content, and everything from automobiles to TV faces an accelerating attack on current business models.
Heather Conway, EVP of CBC English Services, states bluntly that "Canada can't fund the level of failure that the U.S. can to achieve excellence, so subsidy will continue to play a big role".
Her next nugget was "get the right rights" because you rarely need all of them.
The CBC, Conway contends, is Canada's number one digital media company because it started down that path 20 years ago and that's led to risk taking and experimentation – such as employing the traditional TV schedule to drive viewers to CBC online services and vice versa.
Conway is also looking to more partnerships with other public broadcasters to float The Mother Ship.
Doug Murphy, Corus Entertainment’s president and CEO, argued that the system is not broken. "We have 50 or so treaties, but we need to figure out scale. That's essential. What happened at the L.A. Screenings was a game changer… new players are gunning for us!"
“That tells me that we have about two years to figure this out.” – Doug Murphy, Corus Entertainment
However, Murphy shared that Canadian broadcasters go to L.A. as "rational economic" business people while Netflix, which trades on stock markets at 150 times future earnings, still manages to out bid Canadian media for our own domestic market: "That tells me that we have about two years to figure this out", says he added.
Murphy also has thoughts about Minister Joly's siren call to embrace more risk. "Corus has $2.3 billion in bank debt, I'd call that risk."
While linear TV continues to be the workhorse of the business at Corus, there is little doubt that owning production houses along the lines of ITV (U.K.) "is certainly a possible road map". Overall the Corus message focuses on achieving scale and cutting costs”
"With 45 channels and one owner, consolidation can only be a benefit for Canadian content, because size really matters", he says.
And on the costs side, “It's been 10 weeks and two days since the consolidation, now our big challenge for the next months is delayering, deciding who is going to be part of this merged company's future – and help us keep our pledges to Bay Street.”
Mary Ann Turcke, Bell Media’s president and CEO, added that Canada's "technological infrastructure must be the best in the world, especially if we're going to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Cancon for export.” Plus, we need to better manage the import of non-Canadian content such Netflix, she asserts.
Refreshingly, she also calls for “more voices in news and local affairs – look there's only 3 of us on this panel (excluding Quebecor).”
However, she is alarmed that the Federal government released $1.9 billion into the sector "before the Minister's consultation results are in and new models are in place.”
Turcke echoes that there may be less licensing of content in the near future and more ownership of content at her shop including "having our own studio production and co-ownership with producers… bigger is better, we can't be afraid of scale".
What it all boils down to is that next May the L.A. Screenings could be one of those critical pivot points and the future will require some fast thinking but also some patience in an ever more complex world. Content production is a risky and potentially fatal margin crusher today.
As well, it will not be easy for every Canadian media company to make the thought process shift from licensing/producing content for an audience of 35 million to potentially co-creating and co-controlling content for 7.4 billion.
Experimentation will abound and Canada's media investment portfolio will increasingly run the gamut of stackable online bits to huge bites of quality dramatic series.
Lastly, thank goodness for Peter Sussman, consultant with Aver Media. For him, with over 30 years in the sector, our content business has never been better. And what could possibly be so bad about a content company with broadcasting tools?
Perhaps we're about to find out.
