Category Archives: broadcasting

Final chat with Dwayne Winseck on state of our media (4/4)

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Over 20 years ago, Ted Rogers was using flag-waving and “threats” from big foreign firms to make galloping media concentration look unavoidable.

“Canada should not have to wait any longer to deploy a viable, national multi-platform solution, backed by a company with the resources to compete against well-funded global competitors.” – George Cope, Bell CEO, as quoted in the Financial Post (Sept 14).

“If you coddle companies at home by allowing them to exploit Canadian consumers in order to be big on the world stage, you have done your own people a disservice … If that’s the way that a deal comes in, wrapping itself in the flag, I’m skeptical about the real efficiencies that are pushing the deal.” — Melanie Aitken, outgoing head of the Competition Bureau, as quoted in the Globe and Mail (Sept 21).

“[T]he media economy in Canada is actually the eighth largest in the world. In 1998, it accounted for 2.6 percent of the global media economy; it accounted for over three percent in 2010, all of which casts doubt on the notion that Canada’s ‘small media market’ requires ‘big media’ to compete.” — Dwayne Winseck, communications prof, Carleton University; principle investigator, Canadian Media Concentration Research Project (CMCRP).

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In this 4th and final part of our discussion with Dwayne, we concentrate on the state of TV. TV turns out to have played a long-standing role in helping the conglomerates push their concentration agenda – starting back in the early 1990s, when Ted Rogers warned of the dire consequences of allowing American “death star” (aka direct-to-home) TV satellites to swamp Canadian viewers with un-Canadian programming. Plus ça change…

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Part 2 of Dwayne Winseck interview on Astral backstory

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And he’s back. Our favorite media-myth-buster picks up the next segment of our recent conversation – which is now likely to turn into a 4-part mini-series.

Maybe “industry context” is better than backstory – including the long, sad history of how we got into this mess. Too bad learning the lessons of history isn’t high on Canada’s regulatory agenda. Here comes your next 17 minutes…

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DE/DH

Say bye-bye to when phones stuck to the kitchen wall,
and Bell couldn’t screw with your messages

Producer friend on Bell/Astral: a Canada with 4 TV deciders

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Say hi to producer Barri Cohen, who’s not amused…

I’ve long taken a harsh line on the way the cultural community has played into a broken system for subsidizing broadcast Cancon. That’s in part because of the dangerous idea that the public Internet should be “regulated” in ways that would cripple it as an open platform for self-expression and innovation (see my Aug 27 post and, for lots more gory details, the June 2011 post entitled Get yer grimy paws off my Netflix: Ottawa’s big OTT scam). Continue reading →

Why Bell’s Astral grab is even worse than it looks

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[First, a commercial break. Coming soon - an interview with Dwayne Winseck of Carleton University, Canada's leading expert on vertical integration and concentration of ownership. Our in-depth hour on Astral and related issues will be posted in three parts. Meanwhile, you can check out Dwayne's  August 9 blog post: "The Significant Impact of the Bell Astral Deal on Media & Internet Concentration in Canada." His filing to the CRTC's Astral proceeding is uploaded in pdf, here.]

Let me offer you a couple of compelling reasons to hate the Bell/Astral deal that don’t seem to have garnered much attention…

  • The CRTC is obliged to handle broadcasting decisions in terms of cultural abstractions, while it routinely ignores the welfare of individual Canadian consumers in any cost-benefit analysis.
  • The so-called “tangible” “public” benefits everyone’s screeching about are neither tangible nor public. Continue reading →

Stursberg, part 3: it’s a digital world

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Here’s the 3rd and final part of our interview with Richard Stursberg. By this point, we’ve pretty much moved off the CBC to discuss the Internet, cross-platforming and residential broadband.

As Devin notes in the extro, we have more talks planned. Some will be interviews, others more like conversations. We’ve got unconfirmed commitments from the CEO of an indie ISP… the head of one of Canada’s major media lobbies… and an academic (or 2) who specialize in broadband Internet issues. All the fun of a talking blog, with all the substance of ink on paper.

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[Hey, speaking of ink, how about that Tower of Babble? Go buy Richard's book. If it doesn't make you laugh and cry, get some help.]

DE/DH

Stursberg speaks: CBC part 2, better late than never

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 “He has been variously been described as brilliant, bad, overbearing, charming, Machiavellian and unpleasant.”

Not to mention one of the sexiest men in Canada.

And here he is, back for Part 2 of our exclusive interview. A little late in coming? Trust us, we’ve had to deal with some really overwhelming technical issues to bring this to you – seriously. Big technical issues.

But that’s all behind us for this week. So you can now enjoy Richard at his best, talking about some of his and your favorite topics…

  • becoming a content company, chasing audiences across all the platforms
  • what happens when Ottawa’s CBC deciders decide not to watch TV
  • how being arrogant affected Richard’s job, or not
  • CBC’s cozy relationship with Apple and the great CBC app it spawned
  • CBC-pinko-bashing at the National Post.

[One of my notes-in-passing... And one of my all-time favorites, especially with a post brewing here on our poor TV broadcasters losing a subsidy - the Local Programming Improvement Fund. Did you realize that, in the province of Ontario, three-quarters of the TV audience belongs to just two of the conglomerates: Bell, at 41%, and Shaw (inc Corus) at 35% - a grand total of 76%! (source: R. Stursberg)

[With the CRTC ripping the heart out of their tiny local businesses, Bell's chief regulatory officer says loss of the LPIF is "obviously a major concern. It reinforces the very real need for a secondary revenue stream." We're Bell, give us back our freaking money! Thus spake Mirko Bibic, the Bell EVP who was last heard telling us congestion was so bad on their access networks they could only survive by driving their competitors into bankruptcy. Hang on to your wallets and watch for the post coming here: "Boo-hoo: Canadian TV owners losing one of their subsidies."]

Meanwhile, Part 3 of Stursberg Speaks will be up before you know it, or whenever we figure out the rest of those pesky computing, compression, filtering, splicing and FTPing problems, whichever comes first. Oh right, the interview. Here we are…

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DE/DH

Stursberg speaks: CBC and the meaning of life (part 1 of 2)

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“He has been variously been described as brilliant, bad, overbearing, charming, Machiavellian and unpleasant.”

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Today we make good on our 3-week-old promise. We’re finally in audio! And to kick it off, we have a (nearly) exclusive interview with Richard Stursberg, booyah!

In our June 4 Almost in audio post, I introduced my partner in crime Devin Harris. Devin’s taking care of our leap into multimedia, which includes doing service as the man behind the mic, as you’ll hear momentarily. 

Our plan is to provide some posts in audio only, particularly interviews. Otherwise, I’ll be posting in prose as usual, while Devin will be turning many of these posts into mp3′s for your listening pleasure. As he’ll be doing some trims and edits along the way, you’ll find a few differences between written and audio versions.

Today’s item is part 1 of 2, and runs about 15 minutes. My voice is on the quiet side, so you may wish to crank up the volume, while shaving the treble to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Btw, in a burst of enthusiasm, we elevated Richard on the recording to former president of the CBC. The position he held was of course Executive Vice-President of CBC’s English services. For further background on Richard and the book, check out the Douglas & McIntyre site here.

Enough intro – time to press PLAY and enjoy!

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D.E./D.H.

Ottawa likes OTT – but will it ever follow the DoJ’s lead?

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Update: This post now available in audio. Just press the player button below…

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Last year, the CRTC held secret meetings about the OTT “threat.” More recently, Comcast seemed to be thumbing its nose at the FCC over its attempts to put anti-competitive roadblocks in the way of Netflix (just like Rogers has done with its caps).

Ottawa and Washington may be divided over the digital divide, as I noted recently, here and here. But this week, they’ve found common ground in an apparent defence of OVDs and their right not to be trampled on by legacy media operators who can’t innovate and don‘t want to compete.

Don’t mess with my Netflix

Some of my most enthusiastic rants on this page have been inspired by the coming of Netflix. Apart from my deep dislike of the Hastings hookup with Zuckerberg a few months ago, I’ve argued that Ottawa’s Cancon cabal should keep their grimy paws off over-the-top video services (see e.g. Results of CRTC fact-finding on our Netflix agony: there are none!).

Suddenly, the cavalry has turned up, on both sides of the border. Speaking in Banff for the (outgoing) acting CRTC chair, Commissioner Peter Menzies had this to say about the onslaught of over-the-top video:

There’s been some concern that OTT could draw audiences away from our existing world of regulated broadcasting, and undermine the system that supports investment in our own Canadian content. We have been monitoring the effect of these services. So far they seem to be complementary to the existing system. They don’t appear to have led Canadians to cancel or cut back on their cable and satellite subscriptions.

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