Is Canadian TV "Fundamentally Broken"?

[mvcg66b3r]

Two big new items both affecting the future of Canadian TV clashed this week for our attention.

First up the president of Bell Kevin Crull told a TV audience in Ottawa that the current model for traditional broadcasters is "fundamentally broken" and "unsustainable."

And in Toronto the CBC our venerable public broadcaster unveiled a tattered schedule for fall 2015 that is barely a schedule at all.

I'm suggesting both events are closely intertwined and both demonstrate how dangerously close to collapse the whole Canadian broadcasting system has become.

http://jamesbawden.blogspot.ca/2015/03/is-canadian-tv-fundamentally-broken.html

 

[Robnoxious]

The problem with Canadian television is and has been that's it's solely a racket to secure rights for U.S. programming onto their airwaves. Very little original programming comes from in house because why bother? Everyone seemingly wants to watch the bigger budget shows coming from The States. CanCon rules were made to put the Little Dutch Boy to work and keep the dyke from bursting wide open and keep the coffers at Shaw and Global and Bell and Rogers content and able to lean back, smoke cigars lit with hundies and rake in a profit using little and no effort all at the expense of the citizens in Canada.

Keep CanCon or drop Cancon it really doesn't matter anymore. That ship has long since sailed, had her hull breached and has sunk into the murky depths of relevancy. Simsubbing is/has been a joke and is fooling no one. East Side Marios (Badda Boom Bada Bing!), Timmy Hos and Canadian Tire ads aren't keeping CTV and Global afloat, the content from the States and their billable delivery structure via cable is.

It should come to no surprise that cable proliferation is as close to 100% in the Great White North. That's exactly what the cable and telcos want to happen. With every Canadian OTA signal that goes dark is just another cash register ding for Shaw and Bell and others to make more easy money by providing nothing more than a content conduit. All the while offering very little to zero original content. Just lean back and count the money as the sheep eat it all up. You really only have yourselves to blame for this, Canada. It didn't have to happen this way but it's well past too little, too late.

For an opposing viewpoint on how to do it right take the States' neighbor to the South; Mexico. The Spanish content providers there bust their asses and their wallets to keep eyeballs from drifting by providing unique original content so as not to lose them to US network counterparts like Univision and Telemundo among others. Canada broadcasters on the other hand have zero fight nor drive and are nothing more than lazy content poachers.

 

[BMR]

Ouch. Strong stuff. I guess it was always going to be hard resisting the American invasion* in Canada, given the long land border, same time zone and broadly similar culture?

The UK is doing better, so far, but it will be interesting to see where we are in 20 years.

* I'm NOT suggesting there is anything wrong with American TV. I watch quite a bit of it. Just that I think it is healthy for a country to have its own arts and entertainment scene, whilst still having access to the best TV from other English speaking countries.

 

[Oscar Madison]

Seems like the difference between Canada and the UK is the UK is focused on creating programming; Canada on keeping out US shows. What's especially strange is how so many so-called US shows are produced in Canada. Clearly, Canada has what's needed to produce great shows but only the physical facilities stay put. People go to the US to pursue their crafts. Canada needs to focus on what keeps its production industry from producing great shows. Maybe part of the problem is Canada broadcasting's founding purpose was promoting Canadian national identify (from the US). Canada is protectionist, not competitive. It's been a long time since Canada sold any shows to the US market.

 

[Robnoxious]

It's been a long time since Canada sold any shows to the US market.

Flashpoint is really the only recently ran Canadian show we have in syndication in the States but they only show up on cheapo independent stations looking for time to fill that aren't infomercials.
If Forensic Files is a Canada product, that dumb show runs ad nauseum-dead horseum on CNN Headline News when Nancy Grace quits flapping her gaping maw.

I guess Degrassi still shows up too but I've far outlived that demographic.

 

[Sammi Brie]

For an opposing viewpoint on how to do it right take the States' neighbor to the South; Mexico. The Spanish content providers there bust their asses and their wallets to keep eyeballs from drifting by providing unique original content so as not to lose them to US network counterparts like Univision and Telemundo among others. Canada broadcasters on the other hand have zero fight nor drive and are nothing more than lazy content poachers.

There is a big difference with Mexico, which I will boil down to some key points:

#1. Televisa and Univisión have an agreement in which Televisa supplies almost all its programming to Univisión in exchange for 12 percent of the latter's audiovisual contents revenue. In 2014, that was a staggering $314 million. And that's only going up.

#2. Azteca crawled onto the US side years ago with Azteca América, in which the US license holders and stakeholders are rather silent. In fact it's just now known as "Azteca". Neither Canadian or US networks actually control broadcast assets on both sides of the border.

#3. More importantly, 90 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. Just 6 million of Mexico's 110 million, a scant 5.4%, live within the La Paz Agreement area, 100km of the US border. The border is less important on the whole.

#4. For Mexican broadcasters, the export market is much larger and includes all of Latin America plus the United States. Azteca owns a television channel in Guatemala (Azteca Guate) and used to operate in El Salvador. Televisa used to own América Televisión in Peru and still holds a programming relationship with them. There are other available export markets. (Likewise, other Latin American broadcasters have crossed markets; for instance, MundoFox is partly owned by RCN of Colombia.)

 

[KTN Corp]

The problem with Canadian television is and has been that's it's solely a racket to secure rights for U.S. programming onto their airwaves. Very little original programming comes from in house because why bother? Everyone seemingly wants to watch the bigger budget shows coming from The States. CanCon rules were made to put the Little Dutch Boy to work and keep the dyke from bursting wide open and keep the coffers at Shaw and Global and Bell and Rogers content and able to lean back, smoke cigars lit with hundies and rake in a profit using little and no effort all at the expense of the citizens in Canada.

Canada can't produce enough programming to support 4 networks. Even 2 is stretching it! It might have been better to allow CBS, NBC, ABC (and eventually FOX) to have o&os (with caps) and affiliates. The CBC would be the all-Canadian channel and hopefully available in The States, reciprocally. The American networks would be forced to include significant Canadian events in the nightly newscasts as if they were domestic stories.

It should come to no surprise that cable proliferation is as close to 100% in the Great White North. That's exactly what the cable and telcos want to happen. With every Canadian OTA signal that goes dark is just another cash register ding for Shaw and Bell and others to make more easy money by providing nothing more than a content conduit. All the while offering very little to zero original content. Just lean back and count the money as the sheep eat it all up. You really only have yourselves to blame for this, Canada. It didn't have to happen this way but it's well past too little, too late.

Mobile phone carriers and cable companies have quite a lot of things in common: high fees and hopefully high penetration to kill off substitutes (landlines/VOIP and OTA, respectively). And conspiring each other to give goodies, more spectrum for LTE and more subscribers after being forced off OTA TV. These are also true in the U.S., though the really rural areas might have to forego TV all together unless there is a WPA program to extend cable lines that far (mostly for the broadcast stations' sake).

It will be easier to define markets from selecting the headends, but also might drive a lot of conspiracy nuts (which the U.S. has a lot of and can be influential) to create trouble. "Censorship!", "Crony Capitalism/Corporatism!" they will cry. But by then the networks may be reclassified as cable-only to avoid the regulations in both countries.

 

[skippercollector]

heartland

Heartland is still being filmed in Alberta and shown in Canada. However, the only cable channel that aired it was Up, and Up discontinued its contract to show the series six weeks ago. I've never learned why Up decided to stop showing Heartland; neither the series producers' nor Up are saying. You can still see Heartland in the US if you live near the Canadian border and can pick up the CBC over-the-air.

 

[TheBigA]

The problem with Canadian television is and has been that's it's solely a racket to secure rights for U.S. programming onto their airwaves.

And yet many US series, as well as quite a few US-made movies, are shot in Canada.