CanCon, AI & listener retention all challenges, says Ontario Association of Broadcasters

Regulation of the radio industry must adapt to changing times, two board members of the Ontario Association of Broadcasters (OAB) believe. Chris Pearson is president of the OAB, while Doug Bingley is past president and chair of the group’s government relations committee. The organization is made up of private sector radio and television stations in Canada’s most populous province. Current Canadian content (CanCon) rules say older stations must play 35 per cent music that qualifies as Canadian. Stations which received their licences in the past 20 years must play 40 per cent. Music qualifies as Canadian if it hits two of four MAPL points – the music is composed by a Canadian; the artist must be Canadian; the performance must be recorded in Canada; or the lyrics are written by a Canadian. Those regulations are more than 50 years old. They do not take into account changes wrought by the advent of streaming services. “The demand for the 35 per cent CanCon is not what we’re seeing from the evidence from what people are actually choosing when streaming,” Pearson tells The Wire Report. “That puts us in a more difficult position to retain audience when that’s not what they’re really looking for.” “Now we have streamers. Regulation was set in the 1970s primarily and that was for an environment that no longer exists,” Bingley explains. “It was set up for a time when it was pretty much a closed environment so you could regulate a radio station in a marketplace and you regulated everybody equally. Now we have an open environment. So basically the broadcasters are heavily regulated and the streamers have virtually no regulation.” The OAB made the same point in a recent submission to the CRTC on revisions to the Broadcasting Act. The brief is in anticipation of the commission’s proceedings on broadcasting next September. “Listeners are now in control of their destiny,” the brief states. “The reality is that, with one click, regulation which prescribes specific content can simply be bypassed; listeners who don’t like the CRTC’s prescription will switch from regulated services to unregulated digital services.” The submission warns that if CanCon requirements are too high, listeners will abandon radio for streaming services, resulting in a net loss of musical exposure for Canadian artists. The OAB also wants spoken content to be considered when determining CanCon. “Radio is very much personality driven,” Bingley tells The Wire Report. “And that’s something we sometimes forget. Our key component is our on-air staff that bind the music together.” Pearson points out that at live events, listeners flock to get their pictures taken with DJs. The OAB’s brief illustrates the need for spoken content to be mandated by citing the case of Winnipeg musician Randy Bachman. For years his program Vinyl Tap ran on CBC Radio. His stories and music were considered to have great value and Parliament contributed funds to keep it going as part of the corporation’s larger mandate. “The show was dropped by the CBC and picked up by private radio,” the OAB brief reported. “The commission’s current policies would not consider any of Randy’s contributions as having value, nor would the entertainment value of his overall musical selections be considered. Only the Canadian music played would be considered as adding to the Canadian broadcasting system.” Bingley points out that private radio has a broader footprint than the public broadcaster. It reaches about 70 per cent of the population which is double the number of listeners to the CBC, he states. The OAB submission cites statistics from IPSOS Public Research that shows 68 per cent of the Canadian population is reached by private sector radio versus 32 per cent for CBC/Radio-Canada radio in English and French. Bingley is calling for more recognition of that fact by the federal government. “The prime minister in the campaign said they were going to allocate another $150 million to CBC so that CBC can go into smaller markets because journalism is failing in those markets,” he notes. “The first thing should be saying ‘hey, we’ve got radio stations in the markets. What can we do to help them?’ And that’s not being addressed.” The CBC is not his only bugbear -- print journalism is supported in the country while private sector radio is ignored. “The government of Canada really has a blind spot for radio,” he avers. “When you take a look at print journalism, I think total support including periodicals is about $170 million a year. When it comes to radio, zero.” Figures in the OAB submission to the CRTC state the Independent Local News Fund will contribute an estimated $17 million annually to the sector with more coming from the Google fund. But radio must pay an average of $35 million in Canadian Content Development (CCD) and tangible benefits, according to the CRTC. This results in a deficit for the sector, the OAB argues. Meanwhile, last July, Canadian Association of Broadcasters president Kevin Desjardins told The Wire Report that artificial intelligence (AI) is a threat to private broadcasters. Pearson believes it can be a useful tool, if deployed properly. “I see there’s a great opportunity with AI but personally I would not want to lose that personal connection we have with our communities and local communities and having people behind the mic,” he reports. “But there are opportunities to do things with AI that are more like administrative and don’t really add to the experience for the listener.” He compares it to advances made in technology over the years from vinyl records to CDs to computers. AI could free staff to do less clerical work. Pearson didn’t set out for a career in broadcasting. He didn’t know what to do as a career and took a suggestion that he apply for a salesman position at the radio station in Bridgewater, Ont. “I got into it like a lot of people almost by accident and really fell in love with it,” he says. He became sales manager and then station manager. Later he became vice president of sales for Acadia Broadcasting Ltd. Eventually he was appointed president of the company. “It feels like it all happened really quickly but I just had my ninth anniversary as president the 1st of April. I enjoyed every minute of it,” he states. Bingley, the CEO of Central Ontario Broadcasting Ltd., has an even more unlikely entry into radio. “I’d never been in a radio station until I won a licence to operate one,” he laughs. He started as a videotape editor in television, working for TVO and CBC. He opened his first radio station in Barrie, Ont. in 1988. He deliberately limited expansion. “I purposefully stayed small because I wanted to work at a radio station. I didn’t want to be running a chain of radio stations,” he remembers. “That kept me as a general manager for years, which is the best job in the world.” ppark@thewirereport.ca

CanCon, AI & listener retention all challenges, says Ontario Association of Broadcasters

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By Paul Park
| June 24, 2025

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CanCon, AI & listener retention all challenges, says Ontario Association of Broadcasters

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