I’VE NEVER BEEN ONE to fear large corporations. I don’t think big oil is out to get anyone. I don’t think fast food chains want to kill their customers with fat. I don’t think chemical companies sell lawn fertilizer that will blind the neighbour’s cat.
And I don’t think big media companies are out to tell the world what to think. With the level of competition we have, that’s impossible anyway.
I do think that by their very nature, however, big companies, especially publicly traded ones, can be selfish. They can be cutthroat, to be sure, but also a little lazy – and are innately selfish because they have to be, just like any business. To continue to live, thrive and grow, all companies have to look out for themselves and do what’s right by them.
And that’s going to tick people off sometimes, especially since it often appears that publicly traded companies do what’s cheapest and best for their shareholders and not necessarily what’s good for their customers, employees or the public at large.
This is the fear many have of large Canadian media companies and it may or may not be correct. But I don’t think it is.
Let’s take Canwest for example. In 2007 it decided to let go about 200 people and consolidate much of its operations in four central hubs, using new technology that wasn’t available historically. It will be cheaper to run. Will it provide for better journalism? Hard to say right now because the process is still under way, but if it frees up more resources for reporting by lowering what is spent on production and traffic and the like, it should produce better newscasts and improved reportage.
Canwest would be absolutely foolish to hoard all that money saved for shareholders because media companies know one thing: People want original content and will flock to your front door to get it.
If your newspaper or TV station or web site regularly scoops the competition, viewers will watch, readers will read and revenue will come. But if you don’t spend enough on content, that food chain disintegrates completely.
That’s the reason as a consumer of news and entertainment, I don’t fear big media. At our current point in history, broad-based media organizations (especially ones that gather news), wherever they are, compete globally and to do that effectively, they need the resource level a large entity can provide. And to compete with global media outlets, Canadian media companies have to spend, covering what matters to Canadians, using the often confusing new technology in ways that sometimes haven’t been tried before.
CTV announced last week it’s using new technology to expand Canada AM to six hours, adding an anchor desk in Vancouver. This is a cool idea that couldn’t have been done even a couple of years ago, or by a smaller organization even today.
I have a neighbour who works for the Hamilton Spectator newspaper. Reporters there have been trained to shoot video for the paper’s web site, making it a growing competitor to the lone conventional TV station in town. Again, a cool idea that couldn’t have been tried until just the past couple of years.
But with so much change, comes so much uncertainty. There are dangers. Too much media ownership can be a bad thing and while I trust the existing media companies we enjoy in Canada primarily because they have good people in charge and hungry reporters on the front lines, allowing unfettered mergers among those large ones we have now certainly would have the potential for a negative outcome, especially when it comes to news.
Competition is at the core of it. Without enough media outlets to compete for news, to get it first, to do the best job, storytelling would suffer. If you’re allowed to own a TV station, the local paper and the radio stations, plus all the web presences of each entity, your competitive edge would surely be dull.
So, with all that said, I think the CRTC got its diversity of voices decision right this week. It recognized there can be large companies and we need large companies, but there will have to be journalistic standards met, there will be limits on cross media ownership, and that a plurality of voices is necessary for a free, functioning society.
"We applaud the CRTC for recognizing the value of maintaining the greatest possible diversity of television programming," said S-Vox CEO Bill Roberts. S-Vox operates VisionTV, One: the Body Mind & Spirit Channel and the Christian Channel. "The Commission has laid the groundwork for future measures that will ensure Canadians continue to enjoy real choice when they watch TV."
Canadian Association of Broadcasters president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell had a bit of a different take, though: “We are disappointed the Commission felt it necessary to adopt new rules. We have stated in our submission and maintain that there has never been as much diversity on voices as there is today. The regulatory framework already in place remains relevant and has generated the high level of diversity we have today.”
The unions, naturally, don’t like any decisions that let large corporations stay large or get bigger still. They’re kind of like the companies, really, having to do what’s right by them. The unions are about protecting their own members who are faced with job losses thanks to those mergers as well as the recent efficiencies created by all this new technology.
"While the CRTC decision seems to put up some kind of gate to stop the concentration of media ownership, it still allows big broadcasters such as CanWest or CTV to own even more media outlets," said Peter Murdoch, vice-president, media, of Canada’s largest media union, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.
"The CRTC is preserving the current unacceptable levels of concentration and is not even adopting meaningful measures to stop it from getting worse," added Lise Lareau, president of the Canadian Media Guild. "
What it means to existing companies, for example, is that Canwest or Quebecor couldn’t buy up radio stations in its markets. Rogers couldn’t buy up local newspapers in some of its markets. Not unreasonable limitations. Same goes for the ownership limits saying that one party can’t control more than 45% of the total television audience share as a result of a transaction.
To my mind, we have competition in Canada. We have ample choice. And, at the same time we need a few large media companies in order to have a healthy broadcast sector. We have that, too.
With this decision, I don’t fear the future of media in Canada.
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