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Canadian Stories At Risk In TV Shift
A editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press, of all places, worries that the increasing popularity of streaming is coming at the expense of Canadian shows. The writer or writers indicates that as more turn to Netflix and Disney+, fewer will watch conventional TV and its CRTC mandated Canadian shows.
That will lead to fewer eyeballs and and fewer reasons to justify producing those shows. (It doesn't appear they've fully taken into account Bill C-11, which is designed to force the U.S. streamers to produce Canadian shows, although they do make reference to it.)
I like the last paragraph the best.
"The shift toward streaming creates a delicate conundrum for the CRTC, as it seeks to arrive at a regulatory environment that supports Canada’s cultural industries while coming to grips with the reality that ordinary Canadians are more interested in watching what’s good, rather than in being spoon-fed what an arguably anachronistic bureaucratic entity decrees is good for them."
Canadian Stories At Risk In TV Shift
- paterson1
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Re: Canadian Stories At Risk In TV Shift
Kind of a nothing editorial IMO. All of the networks have been seeing dramatic decreases in viewership here and everywhere. Actually it has likely been more pronounced in the US for OTA networks than anywhere else. And we are already seeing the big four US networks running less scripted programming, fewer numbers of shows produced and an increase of cheaper programming like game shows.
But all of the OTA networks own streaming services, so the decrease in viewership on their OTA network hopefully is not as serious since streamers are more popular. The only problem is that there are too many channels available and nobody is making money. So we will see more and more interchanging of programming between the streamers, cable channels and the traditional networks here and elsewhere.
Will all of this effect Canadian production? Maybe, or maybe not much since there seems to be more production now than even ten years ago. And Canadian shows have had reasonable success getting picked up by streamers and networks outside of the country.