Canadians are continuing to tune out of the mainstream media, so the government has decided to bail them out again.
The studio lights are on, but nobodies watching. That’s the general sense I keep getting when discussing the state of mainstream media these days. Indeed, all you have to do is look at various statistics on cord cutting to see just how bad things have gotten. From iPhone Canada:
Canadians are paying more than ever to watch their favourite shows as the country’s top streaming services hiked prices by an average of seven per cent last year.
Data from the annual Couch Potato Report from Convergence Research reveals that while streaming giants like Netflix, Disney+, and Crave continue to get more expensive, consumers are still choosing them over traditional cable TV. The report suggests that cable and satellite television are quickly becoming “niche” products, with nearly half of Canadian households (48.5%) now living without a traditional TV subscription.
“Even though prices are going up, people are choosing the alternative which is significantly less in cost,” said Convergence Research president Brahm Eiley, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
While some apologists working on behalf of the mainstream media might argue that this is all just because Canadians just don’t know what’s good for them and making “bad choices”, the reality is that quality in Canadian media has been pretty abysmal. For decades now, the overall sentiment about mainstream media in general is “hundreds of channels and nothing to watch”. Gone are the days of Whose Line is it Anyway?, Mythbusters, 1 vs 100, and a number of other programs that actually made non-news TV programming worth watching. It was all replaced by the cheapest garbage that executives could throw on the air. The endless parade of CSI shows and unwatchable Canadian knockoff programs such as Amazing Race Canada (the advertising packed abomination of a show that was at least half interesting in the original race around the world format the Americans got) and Family Feud Canada (hosted by a comedian whose sense of humour is on par with the humour of paint drying).
Then there is the last mainstay of any sense of profitability that is live sports. Examples include YouTube scoring a deal with the NFL and Amazon picking up a partnership with the NBA to name two examples. As live sports get into the online streaming space more and more, people have fewer and fewer reasons to tune out of traditional TV programming.
The last reason for people to watch, of course, is for traditional news broadcasters that are increasingly messaging focused and less news focused. Rather than report the news, media companies are increasingly of the mindset that they are there to tell you what to think and determine what is actually important. When news media companies get it wrong, not only will they refuse to correct the story, but will happily tell you that providing actual journalism and fact-checking is not even their job.
As subscription costs start sailing into the $100+ per month range, it’s little wonder why people are tuning out. Are you really willing to pay $100 per month to complain that there is nothing to watch? Well, roughly half of Canadians have already said “screw that noise” and cut the cord. As time goes on and prices increase to make up the difference, more and more die-hard TV watchers are going to find themselves making the “tough” decision that it’s not worth it.
Now, ordinarily, in a free market, this would be a huge five alarm fire level alert for the mainstream media. Clearly, what they are doing is not working and maybe there needs to be a serious rethink. Yet, this is not the reaction of the mainstream media. Instead, their reaction is to simply shrug it all off and say that they are perfect in every way and that it’s the audience who is wrong. This as they carry on with business as usual. They exhibit clear signs that they aren’t willing to change one bit as if they are immune to market forces. Well, if you think that way, you’d at least be partly correct.
Indeed, as I wrote in 2024, the Canadian government has been issuing massive bailouts to these companies. In a callback to the 2008 financial crisis, the system that was ultimately put in place is to privatize the profits and socialize the losses. It’s an unsustainable mess right now, but a mess that keeps getting perpetuated by a government who is basically funding these “private” companies.
This year is no exception. During the fiscal update, one story that is mysteriously not appearing in the headlines is, of course, the return of the massive media bailouts. From Michael Geist:
The government is doubling down on its support for the Canadian news sector by proposing to massively expand the Labour Journalism Tax Credit to include television and radio news. The announcement in yesterday’s Spring Economic Update didn’t garner much attention, but it will mean tens of millions of dollars for Bell, Rogers, Corus and other broadcasters. The tax credit is the most important support for those who meet the standard of being a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO) as it provides a 35 percent refundable tax credit up to $29,750 per employee. The government paid out roughly $71 million for just over 3,000 journalists in 2024, but that would likely double if coverage extends to television and radio news.
The current credit, which I have written about repeatedly since the 2023 Fall Economic Statement bailout, was structured to exclude broadcasters. To qualify as a QCJO, an outlet must not hold a licence under the Broadcasting Act. That carve-out reflected a deliberate policy choice since print and digital outlets had no comparable revenue streams such as must-carry rules or simultaneous substitution. The Spring Economic Update reverses that logic without acknowledging it. The government is consulting on the measure, but expect the broadcasters to push for the broadest possible definition of which roles should qualify for the tax credit.
For the government to cover one-third of the labour cost of the newsrooms of Canadian broadcasters would undoubtedly be worth tens of millions to the big private broadcasters. For example, Bell Media operates CTV News, the country’s largest private television news network, with more than twenty owned-and-operated stations, a 24-hour news channel in CP24, BNN Bloomberg, French-language Noovo Info, and news operations at over 100 iHeartRadio Canada stations. That is likely at least 1,000 employees, and if the Canadian Association of Broadcasters succeeds in lobbying for the expansive definition of “newsroom employee” it has previously pursued, one that would extend eligibility from journalists to sound and video engineers, researchers and fact-checkers, the number climbs higher still. Indeed, the CAB has already signalled that it will use the consultation to push for the credit to reflect “the many roles and functions in the provision of broadcast news,” which is the same lobbying play it ran during the Bill C-18 regulatory process.
In almost any business, labour costs are frequently the number one expenditure and I don’t think media companies are any different. So, when a third of all of the costs of your biggest expenditure is footed by taxpayers, what exactly is the incentive to adapt and change your business model to try and turn things around? Probably nothing. Every couple of months to a year, the media lobbyists simply show up to parliament, cap in hand, and just beg for more money. The executives get the massive paychecks, the employees get laid off, and the cycle simply repeats over and over again. Really, if anything, having an audience at all is a bonus at this stage, rather than what keeps you afloat.
While the bailouts may keep the studio lights, the audience continues to shrink as they realize that online offerings are still proving to be a superior alternative to the garbage that is modern broadcast TV. Executives see no reason to change as they continue with business as usual even as their respective TV stations increasingly look like relics of he past. If anything, TV is rapidly becoming a taxpayer funded vanity project by a group of old people yelling at clouds.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Bluesky and Facebook.
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