ALTHOUGH WE NOW LIVE in a vast internet landscape with immense amounts of content, the diversity and quality of the news media we consume continues to be a concern. Large sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google should not be trusted to solve these problems.
Internet news platforms have contributed to the closure of traditional news outlets that are the source of much of the quality news consumed online. The internet has facilitated the rise to dominance of…
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VANCOUVER – Heritage Minister Melanie Joly is seeking participants for Canada’s first creative industries trade mission to China.
Speaking Thursday at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Joly said that she will lead the trade mission, scheduled for April 2018, and is seeking representatives from the film/audio-visual (including animation and visual effects); video games and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR); digital content for public/creative spaces/museums; and performing arts sectors looking to further new partnerships and build business-to-business relationships in China.
"Our government is committed to helping Canadian creators and creative entrepreneurs seize opportunities in key global markets, including China, where there is a…
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WHEN HERITAGE MINISTER Mélanie Joly delivered her Creative Canada vision statement last Thursday in Ottawa I was extremely pleased on behalf of Canadian screenwriters — at last, a vision for Canada that puts creators at the centre.
While “creator” can mean many things, when it comes to screen-based entertainment, it means the showrunners and screenwriters that the Writers Guild of Canada represents. However, I wasn’t only pleased for WGC members because I also felt genuine hope — for the first time in a long time (remember the long, Canadian-arts-and-culture-dry years of the Harper government?) — for Canada. The direction of…
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Looks like Netflix is chilling with Ottawa
OTTAWA – The Canadian TV biz held a three-hour, industry-wide affair in Ottawa on Wednesday evening, where the Canada Media Fund showcased internationally competitive primetime broadcast TV series to local bureaucrats and politicians (and juuust before Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly outlined her vision to change a bunch of things.)
Netflix and other foreign Internet players, and their impact on local producers and broadcasters, loomed large at the National Press Center event and Joly only sent along her Parliamentary Secretary, Sean Casey, to address the industry gathering and praise Canadian TV producers.
In stage-side comments to…
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RECENT MOVES BY GLOBAL MEDIA PLAYERS to go over-the-top (OTT) and direct-to-consumer (D2C) mark a tipping point for the media industry and could have profound, long-term implications for the Canadian media landscape, says a Bay St. analyst.
A research report by BMO Capital Markets telecom/media/cable financial analyst Tim Casey notes that Canada’s traditional television broadcasters, (whose business models rely on “reselling” content from Hollywood), are at a greater risk than television distributors (BDUs) who offer broadband service, which he describes as “a natural business hedge against changing viewing habits”.
“Television distribution is a lower-margin business compared with broadband given roughly half the revenue…
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OTTAWA – Canada has no plans to levy a new tax on Internet service providers, despite a recommendation from a House of Commons Heritage Committee report suggesting that such a tax could help to fund Canadian journalism.
Heritage Minister Joly and the Prime Minister made that clear after Thursday’s release of Disruption: Change and Churning in Canada's Media Landscape. The report is the result of year-long study on access to local and regional media and the impact of media consolidation and digitalization.
It offers 20 recommendations, including the creation of “a new government funding model that is platform agnostic and…
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THE ANNUAL CANADIAN MEDIA LEADERS panel at the 2017 Banff World Media Festival pivoted from the future of production, development, and broadcast screen-based content to the onslaught of streaming opportunities commanding the increased attention of domestic advertisers and viewers.
Those leaders included: Rick Brace, president of Rogers Media; Randy Lennox, president, Bell Media; John Brunton, chair and CEO of Insight Productions; Sally Catto, general manager, programming, CBC; and Barbara Williams, EVP and COO, Corus Entertainment.
Running throughout the discussion was a strong sentiment that non-Canadian OTT services should be paying their fair share of domestic taxes and other tithings for the…
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BANFF – Canada’s Indigenous screen-based sector received a boost Monday with the announcement of a dedicated Indigenous Screen Office tasked with supporting the development, production and marketing of Indigenous content.
Speaking at the Banff World Media Festival, Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly said that the move is the result of collaboration between the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada (CBC/SRC), the Canada Media Fund (CMF), Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Associated partners include Bell Media, the Harold Greenberg Fund and Vice Studio Canada.
“Too often, Indigenous creators have…
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MONTREAL – An impressive billing of Canadian film directors and producers are banding together to oppose a move that would merge Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Media Fund and other unnamed crown corporations to form a "super agency”.
In a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau and Heritage Minister Joly, heavyweights including Denys Arcand, David Cronenberg, Xavier Dolan, Atom Egoyan, Paul Gross and Sarah Polley say that such a proposal, yet to be made public, would “deal a devastating blow to Canadian cinema”, and urged that Telefilm Canada remain as a standalone funding agency.
The letter, dated April 19, 2017, credits Telefilm as the “keystone”…
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OTTAWA – CBC executives will be called on the carpet at some point soon to explain “mistakes” some say it made in its recent show The Story of Us to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
Since this group of politicians have apparently little else better to do than quibble publicly about artistic, editorial decisions made by writers and directors, CBC leaders will be called to appear, soon. The series raised some complaints from certain quarters by people who were offended by portions of the docu-drama which was never intended to be a literal, factual, historical…
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