Can Canadian TV as we know it survive?
 
That’s the provocative question behind a very long and exhaustive new study put up on the CRTC website Thursday. And the answer seems to be only a qualified maybe.
 
The study, which took me almost an hour to read in its entirety, is by Peter Miller, a lawyer who has worked for both the CAB and CHUM, among other broadcast reps. His major concern is with the still relatively new streaming services in the U.S., which he claims are tying up international rights that always used to be sold to Canadian TV stations.
 
Now, he fears, it’s becoming harder and more expensive for the CTVs and the Globals to acquire rights to hit U.S. shows in this country, while American giants keep those exclusive rights to themselves in a bid to attract your wallets and your eyeballs.  
 
“The issue of whether a separate Canadian television program rights market can continue to exist, and a Canadian broadcasting system as we have come to know it exist along with it, is now very much in question,” he writes.
 
He argues the problem isn’t one of economics but government policy, with the feds having already thrown in the towel against this new competition. “…there are indications that public policy makers have started to assume the game is over – that a separate Canadian program rights market and a Canadian owned and controlled predominantly private for-profit broadcasting system will, or at least may, not continue to exist for much longer.”
 
He cites the odious (my words, not his) Bill C-11 as evidence and claims we are racing the clock to keep the Canadian TV industry alive.
 
“Left unchecked, this new trend is significant enough that it could effectively lead to the disabling of the Canadian broadcasting system as we know it, in a matter of single digit years… As one interviewee put it, like a watering hole in a desert in Africa, with Netflix, Amazon and other big elephants sucking up all the water, access to content is drying up.”
 
He believes there are 3 main threats:

• Rights traditionally acquired by Canadian broadcasters drying up, and available rights becoming narrower and more expensive;
• For the first time, evidence of foreign OTT (Over The Top, i.e. Streaming) providers even outbidding conventional TV broadcasters for primetime rights; and
• Foreign OTT players seeking to commission domestic original programming from the markets they operate in that will resonate globally – in the short term, helping contribute to record high levels of foreign service production in Canada, but also threatening to take away a truly sustainable competitive edge of the Canadian owned and controlled broadcasting system –original Canadian programming.

 
And he claims another unseen threat is YouTube, which is taking Canadian eyeballs southward in ever increasing numbers.
 
He warns the TV river is already drying up north of the border, and cites an unnamed “popular U.S. TV show” being bid on by an equally unnamed Canadian network. But he claims the Amazon Prime streaming service deliberately overpaid for it, so they could keep the rights exclusively to themselves, thus keeping it off of free or cable TV in Canada. So if you wanted to see it, you had to subscribe to them, because it wouldn’t be available anywhere else.
 
I’m not arguing his conclusions per se. Anyone can see that what he talks about is already happening and has been for some time. You want Ted Lasso? You won’t find it anywhere else but on Apple+.
 
But when he says more government interference (what he calls legislation) is needed, he loses me. We almost certainly have quite enough of it already, and sadly, more is on the way with Bill C-11.
 
The sad truth to me is that technology changes. Canadian TV needs to find a way to change with it. The dinosaurs apparently didn’t learn that lesson in the prehistoric age. Let’s hope the people behind the various national networks here have learned from that mistake. Before the streaming meteor hits even harder. 
 
You can read the entire lengthy but fascinating study here.