COMMENTARY: Canadian broadcasters are on the road to extinction if they don’t adapt

By Maureen Parker

MONDAY, IT WAS ANNOUNCED CBS All Access, the over-the-top VOD service from the American television network, would launch in Canada next year. Leslie Moonves, chairman and CEO, CBS Corporation, was quoted as saying, “By going direct-to-consumer around the world, we will facilitate new connections between the global audience and our industry-leading premium content.”So where does this leave Canada’s private broadcasters?Canadian private, English-language broadcasters have had a long and profitable run being middlemen for American content producers. For decades, their core business strategy was to purchase popular foreign programming, primarily from U.S. networks, and resell it into the Canadian marketplace, using...