Following Online Streaming Act Passage, Corus Halts Nelvana Production

It seems that the Online Streaming Act didn’t save Nelvana as Corus halts animation projects at Nelvana Ltd.

When lobbyists were pushing Bill C-11, now known as the Online Streaming Act, it was under the lie that this was about saving jobs and “telling Canadian stories”. They argued that Canadian culture and identity was dying (lol!) and that the only way to save it was to pass Bill C-11 (LOL!). None of those talking points were ever true and it was pretty obvious prior to the bills passage that this was not only a shakedown of platforms for cash, but also a means to legally push out competition on platforms by suppressing user generated content. The scam was seemingly obvious to everyone except the government who were happy to let the big media companies hoodwink them.

The punchline in all of this is that Bell didn’t even bother to hide this obvious scam. Within months after the passage of the Online Streaming Act, Bell ran out of fucks to give and went ahead and raised dividend payments for shareholders while laying off 1,300 employees. It was a giant middle finger to the government who bent over backwards to do everything companies like Bell did. Then Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, furiously called Bells move a garbage decision. Bell was hauled before the House of Commons committee to explain themselves, but the representative that showed up mocked lawmakers, treating the whole hearing as a silly game. Bell then further gave the Canadian government the middle finger by following that stunt up with another round of layoffs. The moves laid bare that the passage of Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 had nothing to do with “telling Canadian stories” or “saving Canadian jobs” and everything to do with a quick cash grab. The only surprise here was the fact that a company would be that obvious about it afterwards.

Of course, while Bell was blatantly obvious about how they really were viewing the whole Online Streaming Act debate, others took a slightly more subtle approach. For instance, the CBC slashed 10% of its workforce, but tried to pretend that this was only because they weren’t getting the money fast enough. The gullible Canadian government, of course, bought that line hook line and sinker and bailed out the CBC in exchange for cancelling the layoffs. The CBC agreed, took that money, and proceeded to shower its CEO with bonuses afterwards.

The government bailouts kept coming as other large media organizations also received major bailouts from the government. While part of that also has to do with the abysmal failure of the Online News Act, the effort was clearly to try and make these media companies whole anyway despite the massive bungling of Canada’ss digital policy.

Well, that story of receiving handouts and cutting production or laying off staff afterwards is a trend that is continuing. This time, Corus is the one cutting production… again.

Last year, after getting Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, Corus slashed 25% of their workforce. It proved, yet again, that the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act was never about saving Canadian jobs. Luckily for Corus, they didn’t get the heat that Bell received when they made a similar move.

Today, we are learning that the cutbacks at Corus is continuing. From the Globe and Mail:

Debt-beleaguered Corus Entertainment Inc. has halted production at the storied animation studio Nelvana Ltd., potentially ending a more-than-five-decade run that helped transform Canada into a globally recognized exporter of cartoons.

The media company said in an e-mail Tuesday that it was not shutting down Nelvana entirely, but rather moving ahead with a previously announced plan to wind down its existing projects and to pause new productions “for the time being.”

The Nelvana brand will still exist, “focusing on distribution, merchandising, and managing existing properties,” said Melissa Eckersley, Corus’s head of corporate communications. The company declined to confirm how many jobs were affected as its production work came to a close over the past few months. “As always, we continue to review opportunities and priorities as part of our ongoing business operations.”

Nelvana was long a giant of Canadian animation and helped popularize the country’s now-common business model of developing cartoons based on successful – or potentially successful – intellectual property. Founded in 1971 by Clive Smith, Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, Nelvana shot to acclaim in the 1980s with The Care Bears Movie.

It spent the next 15 years becoming an animation powerhouse, producing or co-producing shows such as Franklin, Babar and The Magic School Bus. More recently, Nelvana’s work has included such series as Barney’s World and Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go.

So much for the Online Streaming Act and subsequent bailouts saving Canadian jobs. Given the amount of time that has come and gone, it’s likely that the Canadian government won’t even put two and two together and realize that this is another company that scammed them throughout the Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 process. It worked before, and it’s likely to work here as well.

Of course, the funding coming directly from the Online Streaming Act is currently before the courts because of the demands that portions of the money inexplicably being siphoned off and redirected towards news organizations. Obviously, entertainment on platforms have little to nothing to do with major news organizations who rarely even contribute to the success of these platforms in the first place. That credit falls largely on the digital first creators who were frequently told that they have no talent, don’t produce “real” art, and would never find an audience from the major media companies in the first place. Of course, those are just pesky little details that can be ignored.

Now, credit where credit is due. Corus was able to make these cutbacks with much fewer people putting two and two together. Luckily, we have long memories and can make such connections. Other media outlets, like the Globe and Mail, make no mention of the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act, let alone the government bailouts that happened to prevent such moves in the first place. So, for Corus, quietly waiting to make a move like this much later on clearly paid off.

(Via @Fagstein)

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.