By Steve Faguy
IN CANADIAN BROADCASTING’S regulatory system, the industry is represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the broadcasters who always want less regulation, and the interest and artist groups who always want more. These are their demands.
Canadian content
In its commercial radio policy, which the CRTC is reviewing, and what much of this series has been about, the most famous content quota requires 35% of popular music broadcast on Canadian radio stations be Canadian.
Unsurprisingly, major broadcasters want a lower quota. They have taken aim at this particular bullseye before. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters proposes 25%. For special interest cases, which already have lower quotas, it proposes lowering them further — special interest music to 7% instead of 10, concert music to 15% instead of 25, jazz and blues to 10% instead of 20.
And it wants to push the definition of what is considered “oldies.” Originally set in 1998, that term was defined as songs released before 1981. Stations that broadcast at least 90% oldies songs could apply to have only a 30% CanCon requirement. Now the CAB wants oldies defined as any song more than 20 years old, meaning earlier songs from NSYNC, Christina Aguilera and Eminem would qualify.
“Today it is clearly two decades out of date,” the CAB says.
Music Canada, which represents the Canadian operations of major record labels Sony, Universal and Warner, doesn’t call for a higher basic CanCon quota, but does seek two new quotas on top of it, requiring that 10% of songs be from emerging artists and 10% of songs be from Indigenous, racialized or ethno-cultural artists.
Cancon, it says, “has proven to be an enduring threshold that creates meaningful play for creators and is a workable standard for broadcasters. ”
The Indigenous Music Alliance sought another quota of 5% Indigenous music, phased in over four years. Quebec’s music industry association, ADISQ, proposed its own incentive: allowing French-language stations to count Indigenous-language music toward its French music quota.
An alliance of music industry associations agreed with maintaining the 35% Cancon quota, and supported separate quotas on emerging and Indigenous artists. But it warned that any “bonus” system — giving broadcasters extra credit toward its quotas when playing those artists — would be abused.
MAPL
The points system that determines whether a song is Canadian needs reform, various parties argue. And for once, they seem to be in relative agreement, that we should give more weight to records by Canadian artists, and that the idea of “performance” needs to be changed to reflect the new reality of how records are produced.
“There are Shawn Mendes and Drake songs that don’t count as Cancon.” – Kevin Desjardins, CAB
“There are Shawn Mendes and Drake songs that don’t count as Cancon,” Canadian Association of Broadcasters president Kevin Desjardins tells Cartt.ca. “If there’s one thing that Canadians are good at, it’s identifying who’s Canadian, and the fact that the average Canadian listener is better at doing that than the Cancon system is at this point is the sort of thing that needs to be adjusted and fixed.”
The CAB proposes two simple modifications to the four-point MAPL system: Making the artist criterion count for two points, and changing the performance criterion to include “production by a Canadian.”
Music Canada proposes a broader reform, noting situations where “a recording may not qualify solely because one of the dozens of tracks incorporated into it was created on a laptop outside of Canada.”
Its proposal combines the music and lyrics criteria together into a songwriter one and gives up to three points depending on how much of the music and lyrics were written by Canadians. Performance by a Canadian artist would be worth two points, and the performance criterion is replaced by a new production one that gives one point each if half the “key production elements” are done in Canada and if the producer or audio engineer is a Canadian. Three points total would qualify a song as Canadian.
“The current definition of ‘P’ in MAPL is premised on recording occurring as a single event in a defined location. This no longer accords with today’s recording/production paradigm,” Music Canada writes.
It stresses that the new definition should not be retroactive and only apply to newly released records.
The Songwriters Association of Canada, meanwhile, is in favour of reform but only one that automatically qualifies a song written and composed entirely by a Canadian. Anything else would be “considered a threat to Canadian authors’ rights” and be vigorously opposed. “For many non-performing songwriters, this income source represents most, if not all potential revenue available,” it writes. “Songwriters have by far the most financial stake in any future iteration of the system.”
French music
CRTC regulations require French-language stations to devote 65% of their songs over the broadcast week, and 55% during peak hours, to French-language music. The Commission had planned to review the quota in 2015, but faced with a lack of French-speaking commissioners, it delayed the process and is only getting to it now.
In a joint submission, Cogeco Media, Bell Media, Arsenal Media, RNC Media, as well as the Association des radios francophones régionales, representing 79 of Canada’s 97 French-language commercial radio stations, argue a more global re-evaluation of the regulatory system needs to happen as the Broadcasting Act is replaced, to put traditional radio and new media music broadcasters on the same level. They say that until then they are in favour of maintaining the current quota. (This differs from their stance in the 2015 proceeding, when they pushed for a reduction to 35%.)
However, they argue for a series of incentives that would de facto reduce these quotas for stations playing certain kinds of music:
- allow a song from an emerging francophone artist or a francophone artist living in a minority-language community to count at 150% toward these quotas
- allow stations to use 10 of their 65% quota for Quebec artists singing in languages other than French (about a quarter of albums by Quebec artists sold in Quebec are in English)
- a reduction of five points on the quota for stations that play songs more than 10 years old
The broadcasters also argue that the broadcast day should be extended by an hour on both sides, to 5 a.m. and 1 a.m. This would allow them to push more French-language songs to the extremes of the broadcast day when fewer people are listening.
In a separate submission, Leclerc Communication, which owns two French music stations in Quebec City and a third in Montreal, argues the quota should be a fixed number of French songs per week rather than a percentage, to make reporting easier. It also suggests the Commission compile a list of bilingual songs so broadcasters don’t have to analyze each one to determine if they have enough French lyrics to qualify.
Many popular Canadian English songs have been re-recorded with just enough French lyrics to qualify as a French song to get airplay on French stations. As well, francophone artists’ increasing use of English words can cause problems. The problem is even worse with hip-hop and rap songs, Leclerc says, because artists jump between languages not just between sections of a song but even within the same phrase.
As much as they want to support the industry, the broadcasters argue — with plenty of supporting statistics — the public is not listening. In an analysis of the top 1,000 songs streamed by Canadians on online music services, only one — L’Amérique pleure by Cowboys Fringants — was in French. Asked about their ideal ratio, francophones on average said about 33 to 38% of radio stations’ playlists should be in French.
ADISQ, Quebec’s music industry association, is amenable to lower quotas, particularly in off-peak hours, but propose a series of new regulations, including that half of French-language music played by new songs or songs by emerging artists, and that 5% of English music played on French stations in Quebec be music by Quebec artists.
Montages
Pushing French music to the late evening isn’t the only trick francophone broadcasters use to get around their French-language music quota. A popular trick is to compile hit English-language music into long montages and count them as one song under the CRTC’s rules.
The Commission, which recognized as early as the 1990s that montages could be used to get around music quotas, ruled in 2011 that montages could fill no more than 10% of the broadcast week.
“In bilingual markets where our hit music station is prohibited from playing hit music, up against Spotify and Apple Music, how does that make sense?” – Julie Adam, Rogers Sports & Media
For a more elegant solution, it is proposing to count song excerpts of a montage individually toward the music quota.
In its submission, ADISQ analyzed the broadcasts of big-market stations and found that if you count it that way, only 50% — 15 points below the 65% quota — of songs broadcast are in French.
The French stations had similar statistics but argued they need those levels to compete and if the CRTC changes its counting method, it should reduce the French-language quota accordingly.
Of course, counting montage excerpts individually could create an incentive to operate in the opposite way, cutting French songs into short montages to quickly rack up quota points. To counter this, ADISQ says French-language songs would only count if they are broadcast in their entirety.
Hit music
A relic of the AM vs FM battles, a quota allowing a maximum of 50% hit songs is still in place for English-language stations in the bilingual markets of Montreal and Ottawa, to protect the French stations in those markets.
Despite the quota, Numeris data show francophones in those markets gravitate toward the English-language stations. Montreal francophones ages 25-34 do 31% of their listening to English-language stations, while in Ottawa the split is closer to 50/50. In the evenings when French stations play more French songs, the balance tips even farther toward English stations.
The French-language broadcasters are happy to keep that quota in place, because without it “the transfer of listening would doubtless be even bigger,” they say.
English broadcasters would rather it disappear.
“In bilingual markets where our hit music station is prohibited from playing hit music, up against Spotify and Apple Music, how does that make sense?” asked Julie Adam, SVP News & Entertainment for Rogers Sports & Media.
In a move they’re sure to like even less, Leclerc Communication has proposed that English-language stations in Quebec be subject to a new 10% French-language music quota.
Replies to the proposals are due into the CRTC April 28.
