By Etan Vlessing
OTTAWA – As Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and other U.S. streamers compete in Canada alongside local digital rivals Crave and CBC Gem, Bell Media president Randy Lennox and CBC president and CEO Catherine Tait on Thursday offered competing visions on how best to potentially structure TV deals with American streamers promising bigger budgets and global reach, while still protecting and fully exploiting their Canadian-nurtured IP.
During a Prime Time panel entitled “Canadian Broadcasting Beyond 2020,” Lennox and Tait talked of grappling with production financing tools and strategies dramatically morphing in the streaming era as American digital partners increasingly operate in Canada and begin to invest in local content to draw eyeballs to their platforms.
As a proven blueprint for financing Canadian content in the digital age eludes industry players and policy makers alike (and was oft-debated in Ottawa amid just-in-time publication of the Broadcast and Telecom Legislative Review report Wednesday) Tait offered the metaphor of a wall to protect local content creators exploiting their IP domestically, while Lennox talked instead about a field of dreams strategy, where you build it and they will come, here in Canada and abroad.
“If you’re restricted to your domestic marketplace, and a foreign partner comes in and has interest in the creative, and can offer all sorts of advantages, money being one of them, but also talent and reach, if we can’t put some kind of wall around the domestic piece, the value of our licenses will decline. That’s a struggle we all have and that’s where Randy and I and others in the system are struggling,” Tait argued.
The CBC will continue to do business with streaming players, she added, but needed to do so more on its own terms.
“It’s not we don’t want to be in business with foreign streamers. It’s that we need to protect the Canadian window for our own exploitation.” – Catherine Tait, CBC
“It’s not we don’t want to be in business with foreign streamers. It’s that we need to protect the Canadian window for our own exploitation, but also to the benefit of producers so Canadian owned content has a chance to be fully exploited in this country,” Tait insisted.
The CBC boss recounted the CBC-originated comedy Schitt’s Creek, which developed a cult following after landing on Netflix. “Of course, they amplified that particular property, but they didn’t nurture it,” Tait argued.
This is worrisome, she added. “You wonder, we’re in our last season of Schitt’s Creek. It’s a ground-breaking show, and we’re very proud. But will the next Schitt’s Creek come to us, or go straight to Netflix, or Amazon. That’s the challenge for all the producers in this room,” Tait warned.
What confounds the CBC head is Schitt’s Creek was no overnight success, but instead a classic slow-burn from its first seasons on the CBC, then to a U.S. home on Pop TV via a deal with network head Brad Schwartz, a native Canadian.
Given the long audience gestation for the comedy before it become a critical and commercial success for Netflix, Tait insisted today’s landscape – where U.S. streamers increasingly make Canada their home away from Hollywood to exploit local tax breaks and production crews – means keeping star content creators in the fold of Canadian broadcasters will only become more of a challenge.
Here, Tait and Lennox’s fireside chat at Prime Time was very much informed by the BTLR Report, which made a slew of recommendations on how to answer the competitive challenge of American digital players operating in the Canadian market.
While talking about the CBC’s mandate to reflect Canada nationally and culturally, Tait also looked to the federal government to order the large U.S. streamers to put more money into Canadian content production.
“There’s no reason why a truly authentic story, well told, can’t reach an audience, regardless of budget. Having said that, $50 billion would be extremely nice and we’re counting on the Yale Report to help us get there,” she said as she contrasted the CBC’s tiny TV development budget when set against the impressive war chests being tapped by Netflix and other U.S. streaming giants (Tait explained where the $50 billion figure came from here).
However, as Bell Media also adapts to a fast-changing entertainment landscape, where content distributors increasingly go online and direct to consumers, Lennox argued Canadian creators need to be more optimistic and less protectionist than talking about erecting a wall – which Tait was quick to admit did sound “antiquated.”
“We need to make hits at home and it’s a field of dreams. You build it and they will come, and then you have to figure what’s the juxtaposition of ownership and credits and IP for all of those things. That’s the market we’re operating in,” Lennox said.
“You have to live in that field,” he then told Tait directly.
The Bell Media boss repeated the concern Canadian talent will not remain in the domestic ecosystem, renewing and enriching it with new ideas and voices, and instead may bolt to American streamers requiring evermore original content for their own platforms.
“The next Schitt’s Creek or Jann Arden, we may not hear about it until we watch it – and that may be a real shame for all of us,” Lennox conceded was a streaming-era risk, but one worth taking to create the next wave of hit Canadian series and star creators if, for example, the Canadian content spending requirements on homegrown content was raised.
“We need to make big hits here and do that and take it to the rest of the world. You build an audience in Canada and then an artist becomes a global sensation.” – Randy Lennox, Bell Media
The Bell Media boss also recalled his days running Universal Music Canada, where Napster and other digital technologies upended the Canadian music industry, even as star homegrown talent like Justin Bieber, The Weeknd and Drake emerged as world-beaters.
“We need to make big hits here and do that and take it to the rest of the world. You build an audience in Canada and then an artist becomes a global sensation,” Lennox explained.
Expanding on his baseball-themed field of dreams analogy, Lennox argued indie producers didn’t need to wait until a series popped with Canadian audiences to then land a Netflix or Amazon Prime deal. “It’s not a hit on third base. It’s a hit on first and running to second, with a trajectory that will get all the way round to home base,” he argued.
A case in point is CTV’s Jann comedy, starring Jann Arden, which was three episodes in before Bell Media fielded interest from two American platforms.
“They could see the trajectory of our viewership, and we’re now going to close a deal for Jann with one of those two,” Lennox said, hinting at an imminent American deal.
“They didn’t wait for it (Jann) to be a hit, they waited for it to look like one, and it’s our job to explain that eventually will come true, which is exactly what happened with Schitt’s Creek,” he added.
Photo courtesy CMPA.
