Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is demanding Prime Minister Mark Carney step in and overrule the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) as it forces mostly American web giants pay more to fund homegrown media content. In an interview with CBC News, Poilievre said the CRTC's decision to triple the revenue streaming firms like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime must set aside to fund Canadian programming is akin to a tax on consumers and cannot stand. "This will be a consumer tax, it will all be passed on. Let's not be naive and pretend that the web giants or the streamers are just going to absorb it. Of course they're going to make Canadians pay more," Poilievre said ... CLICK HERE for the full story  

Peter Menzies: Canada's walled content garden has collapsed Many years ago, as a naive new CRTC commissioner, I attended the Canadian film and television industry’s annual Prime Time convention in Ottawa and posed a question. I asked Glen O’Farrell, who led the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) for many years, if there was a plan or if anyone could foresee a time in a future, more populous Canada — even 50 years from now — when the nation’s film and television industry could thrive without dependence on government subsidies. The answer was a firm “No.” Such a day will never come. Thus began my journey into the mindset of the regulated broadcasting and cultural content-production industries: What exists today will remain as it was in the beginning and ever shall be ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Sometime early in the new year, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is expected to cross its fingers and issue a decision that will define how Canadians can watch streamed content and, probably, how much more they’ll inevitably have to pay for it. And it will do so with a small prayer that its ongoing efforts to outsource the burden of funding for the Canadian film and television industry to Netflix and the other U.S. streaming giants won’t make U.S. President Donald Trump any more grumpy than he already is and trigger retaliatory action against Canada for picking on American companies. This will be the second major announcement from the CRTC. A couple of weeks ago, Nov. 18 to be precise, the federal regulator announced a new method of defining Canadian content (Cancon). That was the first of two decisions stemming from a wide-ranging consultation and the second, which it said will be published “in the near future,” involves spending and prioritizing ...

The purpose of news ought to be to ensure that Canadians have a shared set of facts around which they can form their opinions and organize their lives. In a previous world, whether they succeeded or failed at that was really no one’s business, at least provided the publisher wasn’t knowingly spreading false information intended to do harm. That is against the law, as outlined in Section 372 of the Criminal Code, which states: “Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to injure or alarm a person, conveys information that they know is false, or causes such information to be conveyed by letter or any means of telecommunication.” Do that, and you can be imprisoned for up to two years. But if a publisher was simply offering poorly researched, unbalanced journalism, and wave after wave of unchallenged opinion pieces with the ability to pervert the flow of information and leave the public with false or distorted impressions of the world, he or she was free to do so. Freedom of the press a...

LOCAL HOMETOWN RADIO IS DYING … and without serious measures put in place, it will likely never see the light of day again. For well over four decades, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) has presided over its’ demise, and for that I say, “Shame”. Without out a word to say enough was enough, the CRTC has allowed corporate Canada to buy up one radio station after the other, and then allowed them to slash staff to the point where some so-called local radio stations do nothing more than air programming that originates from communities well outside the region in which they are located. Case in point?   On CHNL* 610 in Kamloops, the morning show hosted by Vinnie and Randi, DOES NOT originate from Kamloops -- it doesn’t even originate here in BC. It’s a program that Stingray airs across multiple radio stations in Western Canada. It doesn’t end there. Not only are Vinnie and Rando doing mornings on CHNL, but they also show up on sister station Country 103 … and of course o...

By 2030 almost all legacy newsroom salaries will be paid by “the people we write about” and almost no one will be bothering to buy what is written. It was less than five years ago that Andrew Coyne was bemoaning the speed with which the newspaper industry was selling its soul . . . . . . . . Earlier this month, a once proud, fiercely independent industry had its begging bowls — which are growing in size — topped up by Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge. And it still hasn’t taken a single significant step towards solving its problems . . . . CLICK HERE for the full story

Next week, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will go live with its efforts to wrestle the internet and those who stream upon it into submission. Whether it fully understands the risks remains unclear. There are 127 parties scheduled to appear before a panel of commissioners at a public hearing in Gatineau starting November 20. The tone-setting opening act will be Pierre-Karl Peladeau’s always-scrappy Quebecor while the UFC will throw the final punches before the curtain drops three weeks later ... CLICK HERE for the full story

The federal government’s recent assurance that they will not be regulating podcasts under the Online Streaming Act is misleading since the legislation empowers regulators to oversee platforms that viewers use to access the podcasts they enjoy on services like Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts ... CLICK HERE for the full story

  This week the House of Commons elected a new Speaker. I congratulate Liberal MP Greg Fergus from the Quebec riding of Hull-Aylmer. Speaker Fergus becomes the 38 th  Speaker of our Canadian Parliament, and I look forward to working with him in his new role.  A different topic that has raised concern from some is recent media headlines along this National Post-themed version: “Yes, the Liberals are coming for your podcasts.” Many of these headlines result from a rare Friday (September 29 th ) announcement from the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that will require registration for some online content providers currently operating in Canada. The announced CRTC threshold that requires mandatory registration is for online streaming services that “earn $10 million or more in annual revenues” and will “need to complete a registration form by November 28, 2023.” Th...

Earlier this morning on the blog, I posted an op / ed piece from John Feldsted entitled, “ We have lost the diversity of media opinion through consolidation, and the concentration of media reporters, to a few multiple media outlets ” It got me thinking … Me in the studios of CKWL in Williams Lake (early 70s) As someone who began a 25+ year career in radio, beginning at the age of 15 working part-time while still in High School, I can personally attest to what a dismal failure the buying up of media has been – at least in the case of radio. In EVERY instance of a larger company, buying up a smaller local community station, staff were let go, automation increased, and news became more and more a centralized creation – eliminating or reducing differences of opinion and thought. I know from personal experience that you can tell when a station is automated --- all you have to do is listen for time checks (you don’t hear them when automated) ... the weath...