TORONTO – Over-the-top video providers like Netflix offer many benefits to countries outside the United States, but they are also a threat to film and TV makers, a digital media conference has been told.
“If we don't do something about bringing the OTTs into the domestic regulatory sphere, the disparity in treatment between domestic and international services will grow” in countries that have local content or spending rules, warned Stuart Cunningham, a professor of media and communications at Queensland University of Technology in Australia.
At the same time, he added, the pressure from local content creators to eliminate those minimum rules in order to compete with the OTT players will only increase – and if those so-called exhibition rules drop too low, that in turn weakens the cultural justification for having them.
Cunningham was speaking Saturday during a panel on the challenges posed by OTT services to Canadian content creators at the annual Digital Media at the Crossroads (DM@X) conference held at the University of Toronto.
Cunningham, who is researching the impact streaming services have on local production in a number of countries, said OTT firms like Netflix and Amazon Prime – and even domestic streaming companies – create a lot of benefits in the countries they operate in.
These include buying and producing programs locally, forming partnerships with domestic public broadcasters (a-la CBC and Netflix), sparking innovation and drawing in younger audiences. In Australia, online drama production is growing faster than spending on children's programming.
One Australian streaming service has branded itself around Australian content where 9.5% of its library is domestic, many times more than Netflix, Cunningham noted.
However, he added, since the debut in his country of video-on-demand services, the overall number of Australian-based shows available has dropped from 2.5% to 1.6%, mostly because of growth in Netflix's catalogue. "Basically Hollywood content dominates,” he said.
Cunningham wasn't the panelist to see OTT providers as good news-bad news.
Neal McDougall, director of policy for the Writer’s Guild of Canada, said screenwriters here laud Netflix's attitude, which is to say to writers: 'We're investing in your vision.' Private broadcasters aren't so encouraging and open, he said.
And Netflix's agreement with Ottawa to spend $500 million over five years on production is “fantastic,” added McDougall.
On the other hand, that money averages only $100 million a year, he said. By comparison, Netflix spends $160 million a year alone on the successful British TV series about Queen Victoria, The Crown, and reportedly spent US$13 billion on content in 2018 alone.
The Guild argues OTT providers should have to produce a certain amount of Canadian content. McDougall added that the new broadcast/telecom legislation now under review by a federal panel should talk about the importance of content produced here having a “Canadian authorial voice.” It’s not enough to tell regulators a program has a Canadian broadcaster and distributor, he said.
“A system that doesn’t have a Canadian authorial voice in addition to the other pieces will be missing something.” – Neal McDougall, WGC
“A system that doesn’t have a Canadian authorial voice in addition to the other pieces will be missing something.”
Emily Harris, senior vice-president for business and legal affairs at film/TV/music production company Entertainment One, also has mixed feelings about OTT providers. They can be both partners and competitors to her firm, she noted, which wants to create content both for Canadian and international audiences.
However, “when we look at heft of international OTT players here, it's harder to compete with the stuff we’re making ourselves. How do we make sure that we’re continuing to build a Canadian ecosystem and not just shifting funds to players who are not putting development monies into Canadian broadcasting,” she asked?
“We proudly finance Canadian productions,” she said (eOne makes Cardinal, for example), but doing deals that are a “buy-out of your rights with no opportunity to see any revenue streams down the line” makes it hard to understand how the current investment structure is workable.
"Let's open the [Canadian content] points scheme," Harris urged, to incent Canadian companies, creators, writers and others to be part of a project early on, so it is developed before going to distributors for production funding.
Gave Lindo, executive director of OTT programming at the CBC (he’s in charge of Gem), is another one of those in the middle. While he proudly pointed to the amount of Canadian content the public broadcaster produces on its own, CBC is also a Netflix partner – for example, in the Anne with an E series.
The CBC used to think private broadcasters and others were its competition. Now it sees competition – and collaboration – with OTT players.
"Is the average person going to subscribe to seven, eight, nine OTT services?" – Gave Lindo, CBC
But, he warned, the number of competitors is increasing. NBC Universal, Warner Media and Disney will have streaming channels here either later this year or in 2020. “There isn’t more time available” for Canadian producers – or Ottawa – to come up with a strategy to account for all this change, Lindo said.
He added there remains the question of how many of these OTT channels will viewers support. "Is the average person going to subscribe to seven, eight, nine OTT services?" CBC's advantage, he added, is its emphasis on Canadian production. He also cautioned that while Netflix likes to talk about productions it’s involved in here, often all it does is finance shows others have already created.
Several speakers worried that without government direction, Canadian-themed shows with OTT partners will fall away in favour or generic shows to service many countries will be made instead.
Netflix is looking for content with a strong author voice, Cunningham said, but it also wants shows that will carry an audience internationally.
You don't become successful by creating generic content, countered McDougall, you compete by giving the world something unique, which in our case is Canadian content.
“There are no five year plans. We need to be nimble.” – Charles Falzon, Ryerson
"What’s clear is the ability to spend years and years thinking about [promoting Canadian content, competing with big producers] is history," said moderator Charles Falzon, dean of the faculty of communications and design at Ryerson University. "We don’t have the time for two or three years of committees, or business strategies that pivot over five years. There are no five year plans. We need to be nimble.”
"I hope we have a government and industry and talent base that can keep up with the audiences" because "OTT is both an opportunity and a threat."
Pictured from left to right are: Neal McDougall, Gave Lindo, Charles Falzon, Emily Harris and Stuart Cunningham.
Photo by Howard Solomon
