THE LEAD PARAGRAPH in your July 14th story on the success of Blue Ant in global markets begins:
“A CONSTANT REFRAIN from Canadian broadcasters is they do not have the heft to battle U.S.-originating streaming services, and so need protectionist relief from the feds to survive a post-cable, border-straddling future.”
I can’t say I have ever heard Canadian broadcasters say they need protectionist relief or else they can’t expand into global markets. In fact I expect Corus and Videotron would hotly deny that (while asking for less regulation) while Bell and Rogers would say the same thing, but perhaps in more diplomatic language.
On the other hand it would be true to say our domestic market doesn’t offer the audience scale to provide Canadian-only content without regulatory intervention including the Americans paying their fair share towards that home-market content. Which is what I think Canadian broadcasters are saying.
Howard Law
Former director of Unifor’s local media unions. He now blogs at mediapolicy.ca.
