CBC’s Tait says IP ownership has to remain front and centre of CanCon rules; Amazon disagrees

OTTAWA– An Amazon Inc. Prime Video executive has said CanCon rules hinder getting Canadian stories to a world market, but CBC/ Radio-Canada’s president and CEO says “that’s not true.” Magda Grace, head of Amazon’s Canadian, Australian and New Zealand operations spoke at the Canadian Media Producers Association’s 2023 Prime Time conference Thursday. Grace said Amazon is committed to providing Canadian stories to a global audience but many of its productions do not fall under current Canadian content regulations. “We are happy to work with Canadian producers, we work with some amazing production companies in Canada,” she said in a discussion with Canadian Film Centre executive director Maxine Bailey. Grace pointed to shows like Kids In The Hall, The Lake and LOL. The last program has both English and French versions. Not all these productions are eligible for CanCon status. “That’s a challenge for us. We want to continue to invest but we need a modernized definition that accounts for the different business model we have.” In a Friday speech and subsequent interview with The Wire Report, CBC president Catherine Tait said that "tt's a very American studio centric approach to think that's the only way that business can be done." The Online Streaming Act was adopted by the Senate Thursday. Under the legislation, foreign streamers will now be required to feature a certain amount of Canadian content but what exactly qualifies as CanCon has remained a sticky point. During the bill's legislative review process, witnesses calling for change to the CanCon provisions noted that movies like Turning Red, which centres around a Chinese-Canadian family living in Toronto and stars Canadian actress Sandra Oh, or 2021 science-fiction epic Dune, directed by a Montreal-born Denis Villeneuve, do not qualify. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has said he will ask the CRTC to review the criteria. Tait said that Canadian IP ownership has to remain the threshold for what qualifies as Canadian content. “I may sound like an old fogey but 10 out of 10 has worked for a very long time,” she said, referring to the CRTC’s 10-point system that determines what qualifies as CanCon. “I don’t understand why we need to fix something that isn’t broken.” Grace said company research has shown that customers want Canadian stories, which is why the firm invests in them. Prime then makes the content available through its international offerings. The firm secures global rights in order to get programming to a global audience, she stated. Currently, Prime has 20 staffers dedicated to its Canadian operations. “Our objective is to get the best content to our customers possible and we will find a way if a show works for us,” Grace noted. The company has worked with other broadcasters to promote streaming services in this country. It partnered with Corus Entertainment Inc. to create Stack TV. Prime collaborated with Rogers Communications Inc. to make content from CityTV streamable. At the Thursday session, Grace said the quality of productions needs to keep going up. With so much choice in the marketplace, consumers are demanding more and better programming. Prime does not alway secure the intellectual property rights to the shows it streams, she said. Tait said that “it’s not true” that the current system is hindering Canadian shows from breaking into the worldwide market. She noted that Schitt’s Creek, which was produced in association with the CBC, began an international hit thanks to Netflix. (The broadcaster did announce earlier this week that the show would be taken off Netflix Canada and moving to CBC Gem at the end of the month.) “They just don't need to take Canadian rights. They can also negotiate for shared rights. Why is the idea that in order for a Canadian show to reach the world, the Canadian IP holder has to give all the rights to a foreign company? Why is that a requirement? That's their business model. They can share those rights,” she said. Canadian media producers are also upset with the “two-tier CanCon system” left in the bill. Foreign streamers will have less CanCon obligations to meet than traditional Canadian broadcasters. Rodriguez responded to the concerns Thursday at the conference saying that something is better than nothing. In a Friday news release, the CMPA wrote that it is "very concerned that a provision, which remains in the bill, creates a two-tier system that will hold foreign streamers to a lower standard than Canadian companies.” “This will result in foreign streamers using fewer Canadian creators in the production of Canadian programming, which undermines Minister Rodriguez’s stated mission to level the playing field,” the CMPA added. Tait said that the two-tiered system is counterintuitive to the objectives of the bill — to create an equal playing field between traditional broadcasting distribution undertakings and foreign streamers — but there’s still time to rectify that. “I'm hopeful that in the directives that come from cabinet with the new legislation, and all the work that the CRTC still has to do to implement the bill, the devil will be in the details to ensure that in fact, we do end up with legislation that supports our Canadian owned industry.” –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca; editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

CBC’s Tait says IP ownership has to remain front and centre of CanCon rules; Amazon disagrees

News | 02/03/2023 5:14 pm EST

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