OTTAWA – Does bigger necessarily mean better? Corus Entertainment appears to think so, and asked the government to support vertical integration in the broadcast industry so that Canadian players can better compete globally.
Speaking Tuesday before the House of Commons Standing Committee of Canadian Heritage, EVP and General Counsel Gary Maavara said that the arrival of non-Canadian new media players like Apple and Google mean that companies like Corus compete in the world market, even at the local level.
“The notion of a ‘domestic market’ is rapidly changing. It is complex and the most powerful players are not Canadian”, Maavara said. “We can no longer shelter our domestic market. The barriers that we have built to protect Canadian media will become a confining trap if we are not mindful of this change.”
Maavara noted that Google and Apple are seven times larger than BCE, and that Netflix has a market cap of $9 billion, or the same as Corus, Astral and Quebecor combined. This “financial power” gives them the resource to innovate, buy content, and to even entice away Canadian talent.
“Corus is a significant player in the Canadian market, but on a global scale we are very small” he continued. “We need scale to maintain the R & D and to make the content that will help us to compete even here at home. To achieve this scale we will need to re-define our policy bias against vertical integration. We can use other policy tools to ensure diversity and access for many voices.”
