Canadians don’t want CanCon funding passed down to subscribers: report

A report prepared for the Privy Council Office found Canadians were generally in favour of increasing contributions to Canadian content, but don’t believe those increases should be passed down to customers. Focus group participants were given four options — making telecom companies pay contributions, making foreign streaming services do so, giving consumers the option of making a voluntary contribution on their bills, and making “telecom companies add an app to every smartphone sold in Canada that provides access to a variety of Canadian music, TV and film.” The report said that making “telecom and foreign companies contribute, in addition to television broadcasters, was preferred, if the cost is assumed by those companies and not subscribers.” The report was prepared by Corporate Research Associates Inc. in November. The results are based on 20 in-person focus groups, with a total of 162 participants, conducted in nine markets across the country between June and September 2016. Participants did not have a clear understanding of how Canadian content funding works, though the report noted that “when the concepts are further explained and discussed, there was support for increasing contributions to Canadian content. There was concern with regulating online content, as it was unclear how it would be applied, and what impacts it would have on consumers and subscribers.” Overall, those participating were in favour of government support of Canadian content. “It was believed that accessing American content is easier which supports the need to protect Canadian content, and that the way we consume content is rapidly changing, thus requiring that we modernize to adjust,” the report said. It noted that among participants, “there was a sense that Canada’s culture is threatened by a lack of proper funding and recognition from the public and institutions alike.” Given that the Internet has made it easier to access culture from other countries, participants “believed that this changing landscape has introduced the pressure for Canadian cultural producers to enhance the product’s quality and ‘do more with less’ in order to compete with American productions.” When asked about quality of content, participants said music had the best content, followed by TV, though they were “generally critical of the quality of Canadian theatre and film/movies. Nonetheless, opinions were that the quality of Canadian content across media has improved or stayed the same over the past few years,” the report said.

Canadians don’t want CanCon funding passed down to subscribers: report

Brief | January 13, 2017

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Canadians don’t want CanCon funding passed down to subscribers: report

Brief | January 13, 2017

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