BANFF – Although the combination of two major regulated TV assets was the talk of the 2007 Banff World Television Festival (Hello, Rogers/Citytv), the focus of the event’s final panel was on the potential impact of unregulated new media vs. the fortunes of old media.
In fact, the first question posed by moderator (and festival CEO) Robert Montgomery during his closing session on the BWTVF green Paper to the diverse collection of opinion leaders was: Will the TV industry collapse in the face of broadband Internet and other unregulated platforms?
The question may sound like a Chicken Little approach to a festival keen to hear how CTVglobemedia would deal with the CRTC’s June 8 decision to approve CTV’s takeover of CHUM Limited – so long as it sold off Chum’s five major-market Citytv stations – but panellists sounded concerned.
“There’s no guarantee it won’t collapse,” began Norm Bolen, executive vice-president, content, at Alliance Atlantis Communications, given the protections our industry enjoys, including regulation.
“What I think about all the time is that we can’t be complacent,” he adds. He believes Dawn Airey, newly-named director of global content at Britain’s ITV, was right when she said in the festival’s opening keynote address that broadcasters need to be more flexible and open to trying new things.
It’s important, for instance, that broadcasters and new media content developers make a joint investment in the future, according to Mark Bishop, a partner in new media production company Marblemedia. “We wanted to produce content for mobiles six years ago at Banff,” he says. “Everybody laughed at us.”
With online and multi-platform content flooding onto screens of the world, especially from the U.S., Canadians have to find ways to compete, according to Lucie Lalumiere, vice-president and general manager of television, interactive at Corus Entertainment. “At ytv.com, we’re competing with Americans like ivillage.com, and monetizing web traffic,” she says.
Companies without a well-honed target audience will be lost in the maze, says Michael Hennessy, vice-president wireless, broadband and content policy for Telus. “Twenty percent of the industry is toast. Those that are…in big trouble would be the specialties that have never really developed a tight niche or deep audience loyalty.
“As viewers spend money online, a large number of discrete specialty channels at the bottom end of the spectrum will fail. Everything is becoming so discretionary that if you don’t target some kind of audience, you’re toast.”
But not everyone on the panel was convinced the system is about to cave in on itself. Marcela Kadanka, senior director, arts and entertainment at CBC, notes the Green Paper, a consultation document on the future of TV in Canada, asserts that new platforms and traditional platforms can co-exist. She agrees, however, that some specialties are vulnerable, “along with commercial conventional (stations) focusing on American content.”
Like Val Creighton, president of the Canadian Television Fund, Kadanka says the industry must look at new methods to support Canadian content production. “We’re also looking very seriously at working with American partners…to produce less than 10-point (Canadian) content… (and considering) international co-productions to free up money.”
While plenty of Canadian producers already work with U.S. cable channels to finance production, because Canada does not have an international co-production treaty with the U.S., it is unusual for a Canadian broadcaster such as the CBC to take this approach to finance programming.
The view from the regulator, meantime, is that “none of the conventional businesses are in trouble.” Scott Hutton, the CRTC’s acting associate executive director, says the outlook is good, according to its recent Broadcast Monitoring Report.
But the national TV and film production association, CFTPA, begs to differ. Mario Mota, senior director of broadcast relations and research, says the system needs new and additional capital to “join the online content parade.”
Mota’s point speaks to the session’s second question: Is new media production drawing on the existing funding sources such as the CTF and various other funds and distributors, or will new money become available?
Bolen, whose company owns and operates blogtv.ca, says Canada can’t attract investment until it builds a significant online presence. “We’re drowning – no, we’ve drowned – in a sea of foreign content.”
To fight back, says Hennessy, would be easy, if Canadians looked to foreign investors. But, “too many Canadian companies, too many production companies, have been trained (to use) …the public trough. They get so little money for so much effort; they should go find the money elsewhere.”
The rise in online content may really threaten conventional broadcasters, adds Bolen, because web sites can provide the on-demand content people want. He mentioned heavy.com as an example of a site which licenses content quickly “and in a big way. No one in Canada is doing social media at all. No one is taking risks. We don’t attract risk capital in this country.”
While the CTF’s Creighton argued there should be a way to attract more risk capital to companies working in Canada’s “protected environment,” many panellists agreed that luring new money from outside the public funding system may be the only way to generate a critical mass of new online content, and profit.
Hennessy says he found out during two years on the CTF board that Canadians don’t have to tell a Canadian story to get a Canadian perspective across.
Bishop adds that marblemedia’s multi-award-winning compilation of short films for mobiles, Shorts In Motion, he discovered that people around the world applaud the Canadian perspective and don’t care what platform it’s on.
In the “town hall” spirit of the event, Claude Galipeau, senior vice-president, digital media at AAC, came to the mic. Although French-Canadian producers are “somewhat protected” against U.S. competition by their language, English content is not competing effectively with America and can’t expect to attract foreign dollars.
“Let’s say,” he says, “that News Corp bought whatever for $150 million. Someone in Canada should have bought a social media company here for $15 million. It never happened. It’s not content that’s king right now, it’s cash.”
He adds that Canadians’ online space is dominated by very large, highly capitalized American companies.
Lalumiere says the future is not all bleak. She points out that many kids’ sites, including Club Penguin, are holding their own. Bolen shot back that few media companies take the type of “risks you did.”
The final question asked panellists and audience members to suggest new policy and regulatory approaches to help redress the market imbalances in this new world.
When one person suggested we continue to promote Canadian content, Mota jumped in: “Let’s not continue to promote it, let’s start. We know the (American-first programming) model and why this is, but everyone should stop throwing up their hands.”
On a personal note, he adds it might be time to throw out the simultaneous substitution model. “When you produce, schedule and promote Canadian content properly, it will succeed against anything.”
“Let’s keep this party going,” agreed Bolen. “Are we really going to develop a Canadian cultural policy and promote an industrial strategy? … If we’re just hewers of wood and drawers of water, is that the best way to leverage the education models in this country?”
“Don’t go at the guts of the system,” countered Hennessy, referring to simultaneous substitution. He says the system needs incremental changes, given that “regulation is not going to do much more. It can’t….We sit on the border with an entertainment and media empire of 300 million people….So maybe we need some sales people to go down and sell the product there and take away” the aspects of the content that make it too Canadian and prevent it from being sold.
Adds Creighton: “Canadians are good storytellers,” but they’re not doing a good job of “getting it out there. This is no time to give up on it.”
Bishop suggests broadcasters should be able to count interactive licences toward their Cancon totals. He wants the CTF and Telefilm Canada to look at the role of new media in the Canadian voice. He was very frustrated by the Heritage minister’s announcement of a two-year, $29 million-dollar renewal of the Canada New Media Fund. It’s an increase of just $500,000 per year. “Two hundred million is needed, not 29 million!”
All of which leads back to Bolen’s earlier contention that money in the system currently comes from ads, subscriptions and government, the latter unlikely to grow. So where, he asked, is more money coming from?
“Kids today don’t have a problem stealing content. Advertising is a zero-sum game. More ad minutes (on TV) won’t mean more total dollars available. The fastest growth is in specialty TV and online – where you have proof of your return-on-investment. Linear advertising is declining. Innovators should go where the money is going.”
