Canadians want more money for CBC, don’t trust OTTs to support CanCon: Poll

Almost 60 per cent of Canadians have “low trust and confidence” in Netflix Inc. to “protect Canadian culture and identity on television”; half of Canadians don't trust cable companies to do the same; and 56 per cent of Canadians trust the CRTC to step up to fill that void. Those are among the findings of a Nanos Research poll, commissioned by the Friends for Canadian Broadcasting, released Monday. The poll’s findings come as the October federal election looms and the communications law review panel decides how to update the acts that govern telecommunications and broadcasting in Canada. The poll also found that a plurality of Canadians support increasing funding for CBC/Radio-Canada. Forty-six per cent of respondents said they would ask their MP to vote to increase funding for the broadcaster, while 33 per cent said they would advocate the same level of funding, and 17 per cent said they would advise their MP to vote for decreased funding. The poll surveyed 1,000 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between April 16 and 21, 2019, via landline, cellphone and online methods. It is accurate plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. At a Saturday panel discussion at the Policy 3.0 conference, hosted by the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting’s executive director Daniel Bernhard rejected the idea that the CBC might be better following the decentralized, consortium-based approach of the U.S.’s National Public Radio, which is funded by a mixture of listener donations, large philanthropy, and a small amount of government funding. “The conversation when it comes to donors or any other type of transactional fundraising model, suggests if I don’t use it, then someone else should pay for it,” Bernhard said. “One of the benefits we have in Canada is a view of public service, and of public services that are not strictly transactional.” Bernhard’s organization is seeking to make an election issue of CBC funding, echoing calls from the Canadian Media Guild to substantially increase funding for the public broadcaster. In its own submission to the government’s review panel, the CBC asked the government to make Netflix, and other over-the-top services, pay “a small fixed percentage” of revenue into a fund for Canadian content. Last week, the auditor general’s office reported that the government has lost an estimated $169 million in GST on services like Netflix.

Canadians want more money for CBC, don’t trust OTTs to support CanCon: Poll

Brief | May 13, 2019

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Canadians want more money for CBC, don’t trust OTTs to support CanCon: Poll

Brief | May 13, 2019

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