English language television already has one leg in the dark and our Quebec television is on the brink of collapse.
As with climate change, we anticipate the disaster that awaits our television, we talk about it, but we don’t do much to avoid tragedy. In English Canada, the situation of the CBC is dramatic. Especially since it’s the only network that really cares about broadcasting original broadcasts. Barely 5% audience despite the hundreds of millions of public money spent on CBC. So much so that Pierre Poilièvre, leader of the Conservative Party, knows full well that he can promise the disappearance of the CBC without losing votes.
In Quebec we are proud of the success of our TV. We even watch the misadventures of English-speaking television with a certain insolence. We forget that television in English Canada is in direct competition with that of the United States. This is a unique situation in the world. For example, what would the state of our television be like if Québec had France as its neighbor and not Ontario? If TVA competed directly with TF1?
profitability
In English Canada, No Show attracts enough advertising revenue to pay back its production costs. With the exception of certain sports programs, no type of program can be said to be of the lowest profit. In other words, if CTV and Global weren’t carrying American programs, they would have gone out of business long ago. Despite hundreds of millions of public funds, the CBC can no longer compete with American television.
The rise of digital giants Netflix, YouTube, Disney and others has clipped the wings of English-language television and is seriously threatening Quebec television. The digital giants monopolize between 75% and 80% of all Canadian advertising. Advertising has been vital not just to our television, but to all of our media. Ever since our advertisers migrated to the American giants, our entire media infrastructure has collapsed. Newspapers and magazines are closing, radio stations are declining, and our TV stations are suffocating.
This shows the blatant recklessness of the senators who delayed passage of Bill C-11, which will force the giants to contribute to our broadcast system. Nor will they fail to throw spokes into the C-18 project, which will oblige the giants to compensate our information media for the profits they derive from the distribution of their content.
All parties
With each passing day that the digital giants continue to plunder our advertising resources for nothing in return, the Canadian media, which has hitherto resisted, comes one step closer to bankruptcy, despite all the crutches that governments have provided them with. The crutches are numerous: hundreds of millions in tax credits, half a billion from the Media Fund and various independent funds including the Small Markets Fund and the Local News Fund. Not to mention $1.2 billion from the federal government for CBC/Radio-Canada.
We are all concerned about the problem posed by the adoption and entry into force of these two laws. If the digital giants don’t leave Canada soon with a certain percentage of their earnings here, sooner or later we will have to forget the TV we know and the information we get. This is how our identity and our culture will disappear.
