BANFF – An 8 a.m. gathering of various hungover and/or jet lagged TV types in the thin mountain air of Banff had lots of potential.
However, when better to kvetch about the challenges and opportunities to Canadian content and culture in the digital age.
So, following a blurry but appreciated 10 minutes of mainlining coffee, we were into it.
The irrepressible Chris Knight, Major Domo at Gusto (recently parceled off to Bell), led off: "Hey look, from my first MIPCOM back in 1998, I've known that our TV product is as good as anybody's. What we have to do is keep all our rights. You know, half our business is running around with their hair on fire saying Canadian culture is dead and TV too. But then look at Singapore and everything they're doing there!"
Okay, I didn't completely get that last sentence in its profound entirety either – but what a kick off!
Knight went on to add that the Canada Media Fund has to change. “We're not in a cultural industry but in show business, and we need to sell that show business around the world and for multiple platforms,” he said.
In fact, Gusto is going for 100 hours of video in 2016/17 all aimed at millennials and book-ending 17 year old boys and 37 year old women — but differentiating niche markets along that spectrum. "This is made exclusively for multiple platforms; we're done with TV,” says Knight.
Things are definitely going to change, claims The Recipe King. “Within two years there will be 20% fewer TV channels and 20% fewer producers.”
Like others at Banff, he insists that we've always confronted change “from the corner video store once, to Netflix now.” As well, old TV can still be attractive to millennials if you do it correctly,” and the proof is that 38.5% of our Gusto audience is under the age of 40.”
Knight doesn't fear the digital competition, rather he embraces it as opportunity, "Hey, I'm selling my library in the Philippines to mobile – it's low margin but high volume.”
Plus, Netflix means more opportunities to tell Canadian stories for Knight: "One thing I've learned from travelling around the world is that all countries have two things in common, a postal system that loses money and parochial drama!"
(And, as a total aside, call me old school, but I do agree with Knight, “watching Braveheart on a phone is not a quality experience.”)
Claude Galipeau, Country Manager at Yahoo!, noticed that Minister Joly "didn't even speak about culture until the end of her talk yesterday.”
Joe Tedesco, SVP and GM with DHX Media, asserted that we "need to look at tax credits and CMF funding. Right now we need to have a broadcaster commitment… we need to open these things to digital platforms.”
Delightfully, Vice Media’s Dave Purdy challenged his peers with "we're awfully white and middle class here, it's like a club. But content is being produced by diverse, colourful people everywhere, and for audiences tuned into being online and mobility.”
According to Tedesco, yes the traditional TV system is being disrupted, but it still pays the bills – plus there's nothing wrong with using our domestic market to amortize a global business. For DHX, the market will continue to evolve, more consolidation will occur for both producers and distributors, and control over your intellectual property is “vital for success.”
Also, expect change within the mobile world itself. “Discoverability, especially for kids who look everywhere for content, is key. YouTube strategies are essential to create relevant content experiences… and consumption on mobile is where the growth is with phones out-performing tablets now".
In an exchange between Tedesco and Purdy, where the Vice exec suggested Dreamworld, for example, invest in DHX, Tedesco responded: "perhaps one day DreamWorks should have an equity position in DHX… that could be both a vote of confidence in our company and our access to global markets".
Purdy then gave Knight a run in the pithiness department. According to Purdy (who somehow brought his therapist into the discussion), any system that skews heavily to linear TV is doomed and has no future. “Cable news ads are targeted for their 58+ age demographic, that's why you see so many ads for bathtubs with side-doors,” he observed.
Canadian TV needs to "age down" and target millennials – because if you don't have a robust digital & mobile strategy "it's like the American Civil War… it was all over after Gettysburg, it just took the South a few years to figure that out.”
Moreover, in Purdy's view, Disney, for example, doesn't care about Corus or Bell. "If one of those digital players like Amazon can deliver a bigger cheque for the Canadian market, Disney will switch in a second… producing content for a region (like Canada) is just not sustainable.”
So forget besieged cable companies and seek out the telcos around the planet, offers Purdy, because "money flows like water for phone companies that want differentiation… they want short 5-6 minute stuff… it'd be great to have the equivalent of a new short form Sopranos around the world.”
Hard to argue with that, for certain, behemoth telco companies like Verizon are making major investments in mobile content.
In sum, for Vice it's a new 3M moniker: go multinational, millennial, and mobile – or pack up. However, all this lust for going global appears to downplay the telling of stories by Canadians, for Canadians.
That seems a bit odd to me.
Shows like Little Mosque, Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys, and Degrassi are so evidently birthed here, yet also mature quite nicely in international markets and *gasp* even on Netflix.
What's special about these Canuck titles is that they are not formula and they come from a very distinct place – here. Luckily, Canada is arguably the most culturally diverse country in the universe.
In my view, being creatively ourselves is a competitive advantage that no other rights market can match – we are the North, we are the globe. It could be a senseless, self-inflicted wound to slight the indigenous potential of that mosaic fact.
An earlier version of this story mistakenly attributed certain comments made by Mr. Purdy to Mr. Tedesco. That has been fixed. Cartt.ca regrets the error.
