Brad Danks | CEO, OUTtv Media Global
Part 6 – CARTT Series: Beyond the Walled Garden
Read – Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Moving toward global distribution doesn’t make the domestic market irrelevant. In fact, the opposite is true: countries that export the most media usually have the strongest homegrown broadcasting institutions. Export success isn’t just supported by a solid domestic base, it depends on it.
Domestic strength isn’t about protectionism. It’s the industrial backbone that allows us to achieve both cultural goals and export ambitions.
The International Evidence
This pattern appears in countries of all sizes. Denmark, for example, built export success on a strong local institution: shows like Forbrydelsen and Borgen thrived at home before winning global audiences. Spain became an export hub by becoming a distribution powerhouse by co-producing across borders, protecting IP, and selling internationally. Money Heist is a prime example of local storytelling with global reach. South Korea’s Hallyu strategy united government, producers, and distributors to treat media as global soft power, maintaining IP and brand control through smart partnerships. The lesson: export is a system, not a lucky by-product. For Canada, the UK offers a useful model.
The BBC and Domestic Scale
The UK shows this logic at scale. BBC Studios finances, distributes, and licenses content around the world – but all of that rests on its role as a domestic public service first. The BBC’s universal reach at home isn’t a limit on its international power, it’s the very foundation that makes the global operation possible.
Channel 4’s publisher-broadcaster model – commissioning all programming from independents – created the supplier base that helped the UK’s independent production industry go global. BritBox now reaches over thirty markets, turning domestic catalogue strength into international distribution. You don’t need a single merged institution for export infrastructure; you need a shared understanding that the catalogue is more valuable as the backbone of direct international relationships than as something to license away.
The UK has taken this logic further still. Freeview and its successor Freely – a broadband-delivered IPTV service launched in 2024 – are jointly owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 through a shared entity called Everyone TV. The platform itself is British-owned infrastructure, built into smart TVs at the manufacturing stage and designed to carry British content to British audiences without routing control through foreign platforms. Canada has no equivalent. The question worth asking is whether Canada needs to build one, or find another way to achieve the same result.
The Canadian Paradox
The BritBox example brings up a big question for Canada. Here, we’d face structural realities the UK sidestepped. The BBC and Channel 4 are public-interest institutions, not vertically integrated like Canada’s biggest broadcasters. Any Canadian version would likely be built around those major carriers, whose incentives often lean toward using such a platform defensively to keep subscribers, rather than opening up as a true global export platform.
Canada has always approached broadcasting differently. Instead of seeing services as long-term brands with commissioning power, we’ve treated them mainly as regulatory tools to direct production spending. The CRTC even says its group licensing approach “focuses on expenditures on Canadian programming rather than on the broadcast of such programming.” In other words, we steer by financial rules and compliance, not by building lasting, healthy service brands.
The sector’s financial data makes this clear. Discretionary and on-demand services still generate significant subscription revenue – but profits plummeted between 2020 and 2024, with pre-tax income collapsing and margins shrinking. Production spending remains high, but the underlying services are weakening. If a system funds content but lets the institutions that commission, package, and distribute it deteriorate, it’s not protecting creativity – it’s eroding the very infrastructure creative work needs.
The same logic goes for funding itself. The CMF’s broadcaster-trigger system – channelling a large proportion of public money through the largest old-school broadcasters based on their past audience share – is under the same pressure as BDU carriage. As the biggest broadcasters shift their main businesses more toward connectivity and away from media, the domestic infrastructure that the CMF was built to support weakens from both ends at once.
Canada’s Broadcasting Act actually gets the logic right. It calls for “an environment that encourages the development and export of Canadian programs globally,” and says the system should make sure that “Canadian independent broadcasting undertakings continue to be able to play a vital role.” The problem is the gap between what the law says and what the regulatory toolkit actually rewards.
OUTtv Media Global and Domestic Foundations
OUTtv Media Global shows both the potential and the fragility of this dynamic. The service has built an international distribution stack – SVOD and FAST channels across 16 countries on 5 continents, with platform partnerships on Amazon Prime Video Channels, Apple, Roku, Samsung TV, and others. Structurally, it’s exactly what Canadian policy says it wants: Canadian IP reaching global audiences, reflecting Canadian perspectives and talent. And that international reach was built on a domestic foundation: Canadian carriage revenue provided the commissioning capacity and rights retention that enabled the export layer.
The CRTC has explicitly recognized this connection. In its 2022 licence renewal decision (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2022-338), it granted OUTtv must-offer status in English-language markets “in recognition of the important role that the service plays in the broadcasting system and its contributions to diversity in programming.” In a 2025 decision on a related distribution matter (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2025-68), it again acknowledged “the importance of independent services” and the structural difficulty independents face in concluding distribution agreements with large BDUs.
The regulator understands the connection between domestic distribution and the viability of services that deliver on the system’s cultural objectives. What the system has not yet done is translate that understanding into an environment that prevents large distributors from undermining it. When dominant BDUs use their market position to suppress the carriage and packaging of an independent service – thereby reducing the subscriber base that finances commissioning and rights retention – they are not engaging in a routine commercial dispute. It is degrading the domestic infrastructure on which Canada’s cultural policies and export ambitions depend. The CRTC’s reasoning acknowledges this. The results do not.
Infrastructure, Not Protectionism
Framing domestic viability as protectionism has always been a mistake. Protectionism shields incumbents from competition; infrastructure creates the conditions for competition and growth. For independent Canadian services, domestic carriage and revenue stability provide the capital needed to support Canadian programming, IP ownership and exports. A policy that secures contributions and discoverability but lets the services themselves disappear is clearly misaligned.
Ensuring that Canadian programming services remain economically viable at home is therefore not separate from the system’s cultural and economic objectives. It is one of the primary mechanisms for achieving those objectives. The countries that export the most creative work are those with the strongest domestic commissioning institutions. Canada has both the policy mandate and examples to guide it.
In Brief
The countries that export the most media have the strongest domestic institutions. Export success doesn’t replace a solid home base – it depends on one. Canada’s largest broadcasters are increasingly telecommunications companies first, and the domestic infrastructure the system was built to support is weakening from both ends. Ensuring independent Canadian services remain viable at home isn’t protectionism – it’s the mechanism through which Canada’s cultural and export ambitions get funded.
Brad Danks is CEO of OUTtv Media Global and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Victoria. He is a frequent writer and speaker on the evolving media landscape. He represents OUTtv’s interests as a member of industry groups, including Beyond Mainstream – a global alliance of independent streaming companies advancing innovation and competition in digital media, and Streaming for Australia. Brad also sits on Numeris’ Board and is a faculty advisor at the Center for Digital Media in Vancouver.
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