C-11 needs to incentivize a new era of foreign-domestic partnerships: Bell

BCE Inc. wants the government to incentivize foreign-domestic partnerships through its Online Streaming Act, Bill C-11, arguing that the entire Canadian broadcasting ecosystem is funded by profits generated from foreign content, which domestic broadcasters have less access to. “Bill C-11 almost completely ignores what domestic broadcasters require to succeed,” Karine Moses, Bell’s vice-chair of Quebec and senior vice-president of Content Development and News, told the House of Commons’ Canadian Heritage committee Wednesday as it continued its study on Bill C-11. Moses, and Bell’s vice-president of regulatory law Jonathan Daniels, told the committee that as it stands, Bill C-11 does not “explicitly incentivize” foreign content providers to work in partnership with Canadian broadcasters. “Everything we are able to achieve as a Canadian broadcaster is directly related to the profits we made by accessing foreign content. Without it we simply don't have a business. We have achieved that access through the regulatory regime that enables it,” Moses said. Daniels told committee members that historic licensing rules under the current Broadcasting Act require partnerships between foreign and Canadian broadcasters creating "success stories" as Discovery Canada, a partnership between Bell Media and Discovery. The CRTC’s simultaneous substitution rules also ensured that broadcasters could monetize all the Canadian viewership and generated revenues that could be funneled back into news and Canadian shows. He said these rules no longer work because foreign streamers are bidding up the costs of programming acquisition. “But even more concerning is that major U.S. studios have either cut out domestic broadcasters altogether or are about to do so,” he said. According to Daniels, Walt Disney Co.’s Disney Plus and ViacomCBS’s Paramount Plus are already using their own streaming platforms to reach Canadians directly. HBO has launched its own over-the-top (OTT) platform in the U.S. and may choose to do so in Canada. “With the ability to go directly to Canadians on an OTT basis, we're starting to see these platforms refuse to sell us their content altogether,” he said. Conservative MP Kevin Waugh told the Bell executives that he finds it “astonishing that for 30 plus years made millions of dollars off U.S. production,” yet they were claiming in committee that “others now are holding back the U.S. production.” Daniels said that all Canadian broadcasters, not just Bell, are at risk of being cut out of the system by foreign broadcasters. “The business model is that we pay a lot for American programming, and then we take that and we have regulatory requirements to put it into Canadian content, including news. So I think when you look at what we do, it is all about the collection of the two together – we are able to monetize our American content by partnering with them in a way that's profitable both for us and Americans. But now they're seeing an opportunity to cut us out,” he said. Waugh then called out Bell for “flipping the switch” on TSN Radio to a generic comedy channel at night, which he said is disrespectful to listeners and caused huge job loss. He also called out the company for having “very little” Canadian content on CTV during the prime time hours from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Moses responded that Bell is investing $1 billion every year in Canadian content and currently has more than 150 Canadian projects on the way with 75 Canadian independent producers. – Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

C-11 needs to incentivize a new era of foreign-domestic partnerships: Bell

Broadcast | June 2, 2022

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C-11 needs to incentivize a new era of foreign-domestic partnerships: Bell

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