A group representing major foreign streaming companies told a hearing held by Canada’s broadcasting regulator on Friday that those companies shouldn’t be expected to fulfil the same responsibilities as traditional broadcasters when it comes to Canadian content.

The Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents large streamers like Netflix, Paramount, Disney and Amazon, said the regulator should be flexible in modernizing its definition of Canadian content.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is holding a two-week public hearing on a new definition of Canadian content that began Wednesday. The proceeding is part of its work to implement the Online Streaming Act — and it is bringing tensions between traditional players and large foreign streamers out in the open.

  • @SincerityIsCool@lemmy.caEnglish
    27•1 day ago

    This isn’t a technical issue, it’s a sociocultural one. Streaming services fill the same role so some of the same policies still make sense.

    • Avid Amoeba
      9•1 day ago

      Absolutely. It matters enormously what kind of content is available and for example what is shown on the all-important carousel on the Netflix home screen. These services clearly have enormous power to get people to watch different kinds of content according to corporate priorities. I end up watching through no intentional effort a lot more Canadian content when I open CBC Gem compared to Netflix.

    • @mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      -5•1 day ago

      What, like if you binge a whole season of Stranger Things, you have to watch at least two episodes of Murdoch Mysteries?

      The policies for domestic broadcasting literally do not make sense - not over sociopolitical objections, but for plain technical reasons. Streaming does not work like broadcasting. You can’t make an American video-on-demand company produce Canadian content, almost by definition. You cannot reasonably make any streaming service show people a certain percentage of domestic content, because they’re not in charge of what people watch.

      • @healthetank@lemmy.ca
        4•18 hours ago

        Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me…

        Currently, large English-language broadcasters must contribute 30 per cent of revenues to Canadian programming, and the CRTC last year ordered streaming services to pay five per cent of their annual Canadian revenues to a fund devoted to producing Canadian content.

      • enkers
        8•1 day ago

        That’s… not what anyone is suggesting. They just want streaming services to also have to contribute a % of their revenue to CanCon, just like traditional broadcasters do.

    • kbal
      -4•1 day ago

      It’s not just minor (or major, such as the limits of electromagnetic spectrum) technical differences. The streaming services — unlike cable TV — are not serving the main function that traditional television broadcasts did. There is no “channel 4” to tune in to any more. Not in this household anyway, they cut off the broadcast signals that used to reach here many years ago. Some of the big streaming services do live streams, in which case they’re getting a little closer to traditional broadcaster territory in terms of their function, but for the most part it’s video on demand which is clearly different.

      Some more different than others of course. The average youtube video probably gets about zero views. Even videos pretty near the top of the popularity charts might usually have at most one person watching at any given time. How is that anything like broadcasting?

      I think they ought to be treated more like social media companies. Twitter does video, is it a broadcaster? Whatever it is, it poses problems for us that are more like those of the streaming services.

      • @Penny7@lemmy.ca
        3•22 hours ago

        That comparison is apples to oranges. (They’re both fruit, but they’re different types of fruit.)

        Both socials and streaming show videos, but they’re different types of platforms.

        With social media that has videos, the users create the content, not the platform. Aside from so called Community Guidelines, they don’t control what’s created or by who. And as long as there are Canadians on the platform creating content then Canadian content is being created anyway.

        Whereas with streaming, the platform controls what content is on them since they either license it from other companies or they create it themselves. They spend money on all of the content on their platform, so they should be able to budget out some money for Canadian content just like they do for American-based content or any other culture/country’s content out there.

        They can’t be compared simply on the basis of ‘they both show videos’.

        • kbal
          -3•18 hours ago

          I’m just saying the divide between the two isn’t so clear, and things are still evolving. Things aren’t so clear for the CRTC either:

          the Commission will continue to consult on the role and importance of online undertakings that broadcast user-generated content, along with the underlying question of how to define terms such as “social media service.”