Any comparison sucks. Still, the current stance of Meta, Google and co is similar to the stance of our cable companies in the middle of the last century.
In Canada, the history of cable dates back to the early days of American television.
As soon as the first televisions started broadcasting in the big cities of the Northern United States, the smart little ones imagined – not without reason – that they could make a “big buck” by catching their signals to pass them on. At that time by cable to the houses in the neighborhood. So they frantically got to work.
So it was the sheer theft of signals from the first American broadcasters that created a whole new Canadian industry, that of cable television.
For decades, our cable companies made a living by relaying signals for which they paid no fees.
Like Meta, Google and Co. are now spreading the news that our media has collected with great effort without compensation.
When the Clyne Committee set up by Jeanne Sauvé, then Federal Minister for Communications, met in the late 1970s, people began to protest against the shameless cable theft.
In 1990, Ottawa estimated that cable companies had to pay $50 million a year to the American networks whose programs they continued to broadcast. Since then, the crowd has fluctuated.
THE TURNING OF GPS
Encouraged by this decision, our traditional television stations, no longer real dollar presses as they were in their early days, launched a campaign to demand royalties from cable providers as they were now doing for American broadcasters.
The cables were immediately rejected. Because without them, TV stations would not have the same radiation and the image transmitted by Hertzian waves would not have the same quality.
CBC, CTV, TVA and Co. argued quite differently: Without their content, the cable companies would no longer be making record profits.
Cable wouldn’t have the same interest if it stopped carrying such popular shows as “La petite vie” or “Trailer Park Boys.”
Didn’t the special stations that had just emerged also receive license fees from the cable stations? Why shouldn’t GPs have them too?
The CRTC was deaf and our general stations got away with their problems.
IT’S ALL ABOUT CONTENT
Today our media makes the same arguments as the mainstream channels of the time. Without their content, Facebook, Twitter and Co. would not have the same appeal. The number of their “followers” would be lower and they would have to sell their advertising at a reduced price.
As in the cases I have just described for television, everyone involved in the current conflict is right and wrong. Our media now needs the digital giants and they need our media.
With the passage of the C-18 bill, which will come into force in six months, the digital giants will have to put water in their wine and some cash in the media coffers on which they owe in part their success.
Ah! that the world was simple when we communicated with each other by means of smoke signals or when we instructed carrier pigeons to deliver our messages…
