Bell is all-in on a digital broadcasting future

The CRTC is holding its fourth hearing on the Online Streaming Act and during the first day of presentations, Bell shared how it thinks online streamers should be regulated and its own approach to making Canadian shows.

The CRTC chairperson and CEO, Vicky Eatrides, said that the hearing is “about ensuring a sustainable system that is capable of adapting to change, fostering the discoverability of Canadian and Indigenous content, and [to] take on what the future holds for Canadian creators. It is also about encouraging and supporting healthy and fair business behaviours and relationships between those who produce, who distribute, and who broadcast content writ large.”

She continues to say that this hearing is a response to how imbalanced power has become among all the players in the broadcast sector. This means big Canadian players like Bell Media, but also huge foreign monopolies like YouTube and to a lesser extent, Spotify. While this story covers Bell’s proposition, keep your eyes on MobileSyrup to see what else large tech giants like Apple, Google and Spotify have to say about the potential regulations.

Bell’s presentation highlights

“In 2019, the number of Canadians subscribing to streaming platforms overtook the number of traditional broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDU) subscriptions, and that gap continues to grow,” said Steve Cummings, the VP of content distribution at Bell. While he specifically mentions BDUs because that’s the terminology being used at the CRTC hearing, it clearly illustrates that even large cable companies are worried about the future of offline broadcasting.

That said, Bell feels confident that it’s working through this broadcasting metamorphosis successfully. “A really specific point I want to make, we don’t have a bleak picture of the future of the broadcasting system in Canada. I think we said a month ago, we see this as a moment of possibility. And we are investing time, and creativity, and human energy in building for that future, but we need the regulatory framework to follow that same pattern…,” said Mark Graham, senior vice president of legal and regulatory affairs for the company.

To close out that comment, Bell’s staff mentioned that they don’t think the foreign giants should need to play to the same Canadian content requirements as actual Canadian companies. This is an interesting perspective to hear, suggesting perhaps Bell’s afraid that if Netflix, Prime Video and others need to invest as heavily in Canadian content as Bell does, it will lose access to talent and a successful niche it uses to differentiate itself.

Bell also argues that certain regulations should be lifted off Canadian broadcasters since they now have to compete with online companies that don’t have to abide by the same rules. The company argues that these regulations were practical when Canada was a closed media ecosystem before the internet. However, with major streamers playing without rules, it keeps Canadian companies at a disadvantage.

The crux of Bell’s argument is that if there are fewer regulations, all the companies can focus on making the most amount of money from their media empires and with more money, they can make more content to better serve their audience’s needs.

When asked by one of the commissioners if Bell was suggesting that the CRTC should simply trust the broadcasters to keep up with Canadian content obligations, Bell clarified by saying that it still wants to leave the CanCon regulations in place, but there should be more commercial focus on other parts of the broadcasting business such as wholesale reselling.

Digital-only future

Moving on, the commission and Bell discussed the possibility of a digital-only broadcasting future. Bell’s representative then mentions that the main problem it’s trying to solve is funding for the subset of networks that all Canadian broadcasters must carry. These are short-handed to ‘9.1(1)(h)’ in the hearing, but are channels you’ve heard of like APTN, CBC News, CPAC, Omni Regionals and a handful of others.

Bell’s proposition is for all media players to pay into a fund that will then be split up among the 9.1(1)(h) channels. Then, since the CRTC mandates they must be carried, the CRTC should make them free to carry online. The theory behind this is that all media players are paying for these channels through the potential fund, then if the regulations/cost for carrying these are waived, there’s no real reason why any broadcaster wouldn’t want to host these channels, since they are basically free and through the roundabout way of a fund, the broadcasters are actually paying to create that content anyways, so they have a small stake in displaying it.

To further this, Bell also thinks there should be some sort of regulation on the discoverability of Canadian-made services that are picked up by online streamers. While Bell has an audience that’s looking for Canadian content, and therefore a reason to promote it, it worries that larger companies might not prominently display CanCon as effectively, which won’t get it in front of the right Canadian eyeballs. Basically, Bell wants to make sure every streamer has a shelf in its UI dedicated to Canadian content.

Bell thinks this will also be a good solution for all the major streamers since it won’t force them to invest in Canadian content as heavily as a Canadian company would, but will require them to give visibility to the Canadian content, thus helping struggling Canadian studios get more views. The crux of this argument is that Canadian companies will pay for most of the Canadian content requirements, but we just need to make sure our visibility isn’t taken away as we move to an online-only model.

CTC vice-chairperson Adam Scott asked at the end of Bell’s question period if the company has a similar solution for independent broadcasters that might be struggling alongside the 9.1(1)(h) channels. Bell doesn’t have a clear-cut plan for this, but suggests the commission could mandate that online streamers need to carry a set number of Canadian independent media.

However, at the end of it, Bell concedes that it doesn’t have a plan, “not because [it doesn’t] want to be helpful, but just because [it thinks] the existing rules don’t have the same one‑to‑one support for an individual service the way 9.1(1)(h) does, and so it’s not as easy to map onto that sort of online world.”

Source: CRTC June 18th hearing transcript