From James Bawden:
Is Canadian TV “Fundamentally Broken”?
Two big new items both affecting the future of Canadian TV clashed this week for our attention. First up the president of Bell Kevin Crull told a TV audience in Ottawa that the current model for traditional broadcasters is “fundamentally broken” and “unsustainable.” And in Toronto the CBC our venerable public broadcaster unveiled a tattered schedule for fall 2015 that is barely a schedule at all. I’m suggesting both events are closely intertwined and both demonstrate how dangerously close to collapse the whole Canadian broadcasting system has become. Continue reading.
The Canadian broadcast model is quite different from the American model. In the U.S., the main business of broadcast networks is to create content and hope it’s popular enough to make profits.
The Canadian networks don’t really try to make profitable content.
Instead, they run American shows and basically seem to think of Canadian content as a tax (which they try to minimize every time they go before regulators). That model is not sustainable, no.
Cancan is a huge reason why Canadian tv is in trouble you can’t force something on people.
Is Canadian tv broken? Is tv in general broken? U.S. networks/channels are having just as much trouble coping with the new world order. Streaming services like Netflix and illegal downloading have basically wiped out traditional broadcasting although the various networks haven’t called it quits yet. I believe that in the near future, the Canadian networks and some of the smaller U.S. networks like CW and FOX will call it quits as networks but perhaps will launch streaming services or merge with a streaming service. I’m not sure what the minimum amount of viewers would be before a network calls it quits. The ratings numbers (except for sports) are shrinking dramatically and not too many people actually watch commercials (thanks to DVRs which make it possible to fast forward through commercials), especially in the preferred demo. Eventually, the networks will have to evolve into paid streaming services as advertising will not bring in enough revenue. Scheduled tv will disappear (except for sports and news) and on demand television will take command. The idea of a timeslot will be null and void. As to what this will do to Canadian content, who can say?
Seems a strange time to make the argument. I would argue that CBC’s schedule is not ramshackle but seems surprisingly robust. I also noted that there have been times this year where as many as five Canadian programs (excluding news broadcasts) have made the nations top 30 show of the week. I’ve been in the business for a long time and I can’t ever remember that happening.