Cancon will survive online, but regulation won’t help: iSummit panel

A lunchtime panel on "the idiosyncrasies of the Canadian marketplace" at the first-ever iSummit on March 31 tackled the difficult issues around what it means to be Canadian in an ever-competitive and open world. Moderator Steve Billinger, senior VP of broadcast at Cookie Jar Entertainment Inc., lobbed incendiary questions at the panelists and peppered the discourse with comments of his own. One such query put to the panel was, "Are Canadians really culturally different without the government telling us what to do?" Canadian content is "a record of our heritage," IBM Canada Ltd. strategy consultant Alan Sawyer said, but regulation isn’t necessarily the best way to preserve that heritage. "Does the state have any business in our living rooms, or cars," he said, referring to Pierre Trudeau’s famous quote about the state having no place in the nation’s bedrooms. "The Beachcombers and Corner Gas are wonderful, but they’re not broadly representative of what Canadian culture is," he added. Fellow panelist Brent Bernie, president of media measurement bureau ComScore Media Metrix Canada, said in the Internet world – where Cancon rules don’t apply – many Canadians are voting with their mouse buttons and choosing foreign content over home-grown productions. "Canadians already do go to US sites, just like they’d do with US television if it wasn’t for simultaneous substitution," he said. "My argument is the CRTC is not a cultural protection agency, but an economic protection agency, protecting our nation of 32 million against this goliath of 280 million to the south," said Charles Zamaria, project co-director and principal co-investigator at the Canadian Internet Project – the local version of the World Internet Project, a digital survey headquartered at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg campus. Despite the appeal of foreign programming, the panelists agreed there is still a market for Canadian-produced content, but it needs to be more than a slavish imitation of successful US franchises. Yankee Group Inc. director of Canadian market strategies Jeff Leiper said that while the old linear, single-device broadcasting model clearly is waning and being replaced by an always-on, multi-platform content delivery model that’s largely untouched by CRTC regulation, content customized for local and regional Canadian markets will always command an audience, no matter what the device. "I a model like CHUM has, with local content and access to US content, as very exciting," he said. Sawyer said sports and music are two obvious formats where Canadian producers and distributors can offer local content and differentiate themselves from the numerous competitors found online. "There’s less opportunity for differentiation between a gardening show airing in Toronto and a gardening show on the Internet," he said. By contrast, if Canadian broadcasters rely on retransmitting US content such as Desperate Housewives or The Simpsons – content that US broadcasters are putting online themselves – "that isn’t going to be an effective model," Sawyer said. Like Leiper, he said the entire division of old and new media may be beside the point. "The discussion of silos is all crap," he said. "What’s important is where the consumer is….Tech for tech’s sake doesn’t matter." In all this, the panelists said, there is an inherent contradiction: while new media methods of content delivery are gaining ground, the business model for successfully monetizing them has yet to be figured out. While Bernie said that not enough research has been done on online and other content to gain a better understanding of how people use it, what they might pay for and how advertising success should be measured, the situation is changing. "The major media organizations in this country – and there are only seven or eight – are starting to see the light," he said. "But you know what? It’s not about more channels, it’s about integration." Attendees in the audience chimed in with their observations that niche interests are uniting users on the Internet, with total disregard for national and cultural boundaries. " have more in common with someone in Hong Kong than in Moose Jaw," said one audience member. "With the Internet we now have access to the entire world," proclaimed another. "We don’t want to be hemmed in by borders." "I don’t think it’s culture we want to support," agreed Bernie. "It’s entrepreneurism." Despite well-publicized doom-and-gloom statistics claiming that burgeoning online audiences are the cause of declining television viewership, Zamaria said the results of his project show the Internet is complementing – rather than replacing – television and other forms of media, reinforcing Bernie’s point about the importance of integrating content across platforms. "TV isn’t going to disappear," Zamaria predicted. "Our research shows that high-speed broadband isn’t attractive to consumers because there’s more content necessarily, but because it’s always on," a finding that might validate futurist Marshall McLuhan’s philosophy of the medium being the message. ISummit was produced by the Toronto-based New Media Business Alliance, and ran March 29 to 31. Powerful PodcastingAnother second-day iSummit panel brought together some of the biggest names in podcasting to discuss the opportunities afforded by the emerging media form.In contrast to the preceding lunchtime panel (see above), Canadian content is alive and well at CBC Radio Three’s radio programming and podcasts, said director Steve Pratt – in fact, it’s the station’s raison d’être."Our is all user-generated content, and our specialty is emerging Canadian artists," said Pratt. "The deal is you give us permission to podcast it, and we’ll get your music out to places where it’s not getting exposure." The service has helped Canadian artists in measurable ways, he added. Many artists are reporting an upswing in album and track sales after appearing on CBC Radio 3, and many of the music downloads the station offers through Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes service are bought by non-Canadians."Our podcast audience doubles our best terrestrial audience right now," Pratt said. "This is essential to our survival."Like other forms of new media, however, a commercially successful podcast – whether in audio or video form – is still an elusive beast. Despite the relatively low cost of creating the content and putting it out there on the Web, advertisers are wary of the small numbers involved: a successful podcast is one that garners an audience of several thousand loyal listeners or viewers.One podcaster who’s managed to secure advertising revenue is Andrew Michael Baron, founder and producer of New York-based Rocketboom, who sold five 30-second advertising spots during his podcast for US$40,000 on eBay earlier this year. However, he cautioned, podcasts are a very personal media, and the advertising techniques that have served television so well won’t work for podcasting. For instance, Rocketboom’s ads run at the end of each podcast installment, to avoid alienating the audience and give viewers the option of not watching the ads, he said.Pratt agreed that podcasters have to be selective with the companies they take on as advertisers, as well as with the ad itself and where it’s placed. "You can’t pull one over on the audience," he said. "They smell it, they hate it and they react to it."

Cancon will survive online, but regulation won’t help: iSummit panel

Broadcast | April 17, 2006

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