Canadian’s are continuing to lose patience with the awful programming of traditional TV and are moving towards streaming services.
If you are as old as me, you’ll probably remember a time when the biggest problem with television was figuring out which show you wanted to watch. In the prime time hours, several stations competed for viewers, showcasing some generally pretty interesting programming. Of course, it is broadcast television, so you could only watch one show in a given block of time (whether it’s a half an hour block or an hour block). A show like Wheel of Fortune, once upon a time, was something you watched when the other channels weren’t really hitting your interests and you just wanted to watch something at least half way decent. It was one of those desperate last ditch efforts to entertain yourself type of show.
PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) did help with that, but that technology, unfortunately, came out right as the quality of television was entering into decline. Television, in general, went from a smorgasbord of great entertainment to looking for the odd lingering show worth watching. Things like Mythbusters and The Simpsons was worth watching still, but you are actually having to dig through the TV schedule and flag the days and times when those shows were airing. BitTorrent was a thing, so if you didn’t have the right subscription, you could simply just download those sweet sweet TV rips and watch those handful of shows you wanted to watch (not something we recommend, but lets face it, a good number out there did it).
Interestingly enough, as television continued to decline, streaming services were on the rise. People were talking less about what they saw on TV and more about what they saw on streaming services. Shows I regularly hear people talking about were The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, for instance. The evolution of TV watching was really unsurprising. A major factor in this is broadcasters trying to find the cheapest way possible to air their programs (a reason for the cancellation of shows like 1 vs 100) while streaming services like Netflix were looking at ways of making huge investments in creating shows.
This, of course, happened along side the rise of social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. Again, creators on streaming platforms were working quite hard to make their content interesting for viewers. So, people end up watching video’s by Mark Rober, Mr. Beast, Gameranx, Fire Department Chronicles, Adam Savage’s Tested, MoistCr1TiKaL, and, really, a whole bunch of other creators out there (I could go on forever just about).
Naturally, streaming platforms and social media platforms have advantages over broadcast television. A good chunk of the content is on demand and can be viewed at any time. This is a technological advantage over broadcast television. While there is a technological advantage of both, there is one area that they excel in that broadcast TV has not: focusing on content viewers actually want to watch and creating the best possible product. Premium streaming services comes with a cost, social media platforms are advertisement based (though some money can be spent to make some platforms ad free), but traditional television seems to be the most expensive out of all of the options – and the costs just keep skyrocketing.
It really isn’t a big mystery why people are moving towards the streaming services and social media in general. Cheaper price, higher quality content, and much more on demand (so, naturally, more convenient). What’s more, the last draws for television are pretty much on the way out. News broadcasts are increasingly ditching the standard practices of journalism in favour of an agenda driven program designed to convince you of something (as opposed to presenting the facts) and traditional sports are gradually shifting towards the online space where an increasingly large share of the audience resides. So, really, the reasons to cut the cord are growing by the year because, let’s face it, there’s nothing on TV worth watching any more.
This isn’t to say everything is perfect in the online world. For premium services at least, recent price hikes are well documented. People who subscribe to these premium streaming services are increasingly picking and choosing which service they want to watch and watching what they spend more and more. While that kind of activity has really stunted the growth of premium streaming services, it hasn’t exactly caused people to switch back to those traditional TV subscriptions. From Global News:
The annual Couch Potato Report released Monday by Convergence Research says 42 per cent of Canadian households did not have a TV subscription with a traditional provider by the end of last year. It forecasts that by the end of 2026, half of all households won’t be traditional TV watchers.
Meanwhile, the report says more than 80 per cent of Canadian households subscribe to a streaming service, while 70 per cent subscribe to both TV and one or more streaming services.
Last year saw 2.6 per cent of Canadian TV subscribers cut the cord, as the revenue brought in by traditional TV providers declined three per cent to $7.2 billion — a pace the report predicts will continue through 2026.
Meanwhile, streamers’ Canadian subscription revenue rose 14 per cent in 2023 to $3.73 billion and is forecast to reach $4.25 billion this year.
“It’s kind of a no-brainer that the alternative is going to be, and continues to be, the Netflixes and the Amazons and the Apples of the world. This is where your content lives,” said Convergence Research president Brahm Eiley.
Now, from the perspective of a traditional TV broadcaster, the obvious response would be to look at what it is people want to watch and invest in the production of the kind of content people want to watch. The problem, however, is that for Canadian broadcasters, that takes time and costs money. That’s about the last thing they want to do. Traditional broadcasters want a cheap solution that allows them to carry on with business as usual rather than actually going through all that hard work of attracting an audience.
That was the whole purpose of the Online Streaming Act. On the one hand, the law would force Canadians to watch the broadcasters content, ramming so-called “Cancon” down the throats of Canadians on online streaming services like YouTube and Netflix. Then, the other part of the law is to force streaming services operating in Canada to cough up millions of dollars, redirecting that money to the traditional broadcasters in an obvious shakedown. While it is highly questionable that forcing “Cancon” down Canadians throats is a recipe for success (given that Canadians are likely to scroll past what is largely garbage programming in the first place), requiring platforms to pay the broadcasters ransom payments is really putting everyone in a bind.
Some platforms have pointed out that they have no means of making the “Cancon” regulations. Others have pointed out that profit margins are thin and being required to fork over millions more over top of their costs would compel them to leave the country altogether. For platforms that stay, there are fears that further price hikes to cover the ransom payments will be coming down the pipeline for Canadians. Naturally, this was reported as the “solution” in all of this:
But the struggles felt by Canada’s broadcasting sector have been significant enough to prompt calls for reform — and help — from the CRTC.
The federal regulator held a 15-day hearing late last year that focused on modernizing the regulatory framework for broadcasters.
It was part of a public consultation in response to the Online Streaming Act, which received royal assent last April and is meant to update federal legislation to require digital platforms to contribute to and promote Canadian content.
The commission is exploring whether foreign streamers should be asked to make an initial contribution to the Canadian content system. It has said that could help balance the scales for local television and radio companies that are already required to support Canadian content.
So, for broadcasters, the push to do anything and everything to continue pumping out cheaply made garbage and demanding audiences like it is continuing. They clearly feel that their business model of churning out unwatchable programming is not a problem in their eyes and online streaming services offering quality content is some sort of market problem that the government needs to step in and “correct”.
Now, there are obvious side effects of this approach. The biggest being that Canadian creators trying to take advantage of modern online tools to express themselves will invariably be stifled. This is a very broad concern expressed by many creators. It’s those concerns that the government dismissed as “misinformation” or even prompting calls from some lawmakers to start “investigations” into anyone daring to not say that their glorious bill is perfect in every way. So, understandably, many Canadian creators are fearing that their voices will soon be stifled as their careers are sacrificed at the altar of propping up the traditional broadcasters who clearly want nothing to do with producing high quality content in the first place.
Indeed, the consultation process at the CRTC is ongoing. As we previously noted, the regulator has released a plan for how they are conducting consultations.
The CRTC has been very stingy on tipping its hand on when consultations occur, often intentionally trying to keep the public out of their processes via comically tight deadlines. Stakeholders on all sides have been repeatedly asking for things like extensions or even something as basic as a heads up on when the next round of consultations are actually going to happen, but as far as we can tell, those calls have been met with rejections and radio silence.
What we do know is that sometime in “Winter 2023-2024”, there’s going to be another round of consultations, but when the heck that is going to happen specifically is anyone’s guess at this point.
Either way, the CRTC is doing everything it can to wall off the public while pretending to be open and transparent about the process. After all, the concept of “Winter 2023-2024” would have you believe that this time window is, well, almost over if it isn’t already. Yet, no consultations were held to date on those scheduled topics.
At any rate, there is a massive market shift in television habits as more and more people use more open platforms and other online offerings. For traditional broadcasters, they are still trying to turn back the hands of time to when they had that captive audience before the internet was widely adopted. This by using meaningless talking points like “level the playing field” among other things. It just shows you just how much they are dependant on heavy government intervention into the marketplace to tilt everything in their favour. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have very many options to survive given that they don’t have a product that people want to consume.
(Via @Pagmenzies)
Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead originated on pay cable TV networks, HBO & AMC, and not on streaming services. Both networks content is available on streaming services, AMC is a stand-alone service, while HBO content has been licensed to Crave.
US networks were slow to respond to streaming and cordcutting, but once they entered the streaming market their goal was to build global platforms. Canadian networks looked at this and panicked, as most of their major content suppliers are now competitors. Their big worry is when will the US networks cut off the supply of content and keep it for their streaming services. The solution was to release the lobbyists to demand the government “level the playing field” ie Protect us from competition and our lack investment in original content.
The CRTC will do its damnest to please its corporate masters. After all, it takes it motto, Higher Prices Less Choice, very seriously.