Staying Alive S02E07: Breaking Down Public Policy’s Role in Local Broadcasting with Anja Karadeglija SPEAKERS Anja Karadeglija, Winston Sih Winston Sih 0:05 It doesn't matter whether you're watching TV or listening to the radio, or now, even streaming media online. Most of Canada's media is regulated by the Broadcasting Act and the CRTC, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. This involves guidelines and processes aimed to engage the public, to generate new policies to ensure Canadian values are reflected in our broadcasting system. It also supports public affairs programming through CPAC, Indigenous communities via APTN, and licensing the public broadcaster, the CBC. It also regulates hundreds of private broadcasters across the country, to ensure access to high quality local news, programming, Canadian talent, and increasing visibility across diverse populations. Well, it's a big job. But in an evolving media landscape where there are more streaming players, fewer legacy newsrooms, declining advertising and changing business models, is the CRTC prepared to support the needs of today's media economy? I'm Winston Sih and today we discuss public policy on Staying Alive. The fear is real. In recent days, we’ve seen big regulatory developments, including the passing of Bill C-18, a new law that will require tech giants like Google and Meta to pay media outlets for linking to news. This was slated as relief for newsrooms, providing another source of revenue in today’s digital age. The day the bill passed, Meta announced Canadian news would no longer appear on its platforms by the time it takes effect. Bell, which had just slashed 1,300 jobs across their media unit, has asked the CRTC to remove conditions of license requiring the production of local news, as journalist Steve Faguy reported. There’s a lot going on in the broadcast regulatory landscape right now, so here now to help us make sense of it all is Anja Karadeglija, parliamentary reporter at the National Post who covers Canadian politics, internet and digital platform regulation, telecom and the CRTC. Anja joined me to discuss all things broadcast and policy, before Bill C-18 received royal assent. Welcome to the show, Anja! Anja Karadeglija 2:22 Thank you so much for having me! Winston Sih 2:24 So I think a good place to start is by explaining the main mandate of the CRTC. Why are they important in our current media ecosystem and telecommunications ecosystem? I know you've covered the Roger-Shaw merger quite closely. And of course, we know telecommunications and media have a really unique relationship here in Canada, but ultimately, whose interests are they protecting? Anja Karadeglija 2:49 So the CRTC is the federal broadcast and telecom regulator. And that means they're in charge of things like broadcast licensing for TV stations and radio stations. They're in charge of deciding on disputes between telecom companies in some cases, or setting things like wholesale rates that small internet providers need to access networks of big telecom providers. So they have a pretty wide mandate in the traditional telecom broadcast space. And that mandate is now set to be expanded even more with internet regulation bills introduced and in one case passed by the federal government that's going to see the CRTC get more involved in internet regulation. Winston Sih 3:35 The past few years have been full of conversation around the Broadcasting Act. We look at Bill C-10, which rolled into Bill C-11. Why have they been such big conversation topics in both local news and local media overall? Anja Karadeglija 3:50 So it's because these bills are wading into uncharted waters, really, it is the Canadian government, the Liberal government, trying its hand at internet regulation, without in some cases, a little bit of a precedent to follow. These are new questions in policy, these are new questions in politics that nobody has the answer to. We're all used to an open internet, right? So anything that brings up the prospect of internet freedom, of online freedom potentially being threatened, and I'm not making the case that that's the case in these bills, the prospect of that really has an opportunity to become controversial in the case of Bill C-11, that is the online streaming bill that just passed about a month ago. And there we saw a huge controversy over the past two years, over people who were afraid that the bill gives too much power to the CRTC and specifically over user content, so that it allows the CRTC to regulate in certain ways. It is only in a limited way, but the prospect of the CRTC having regulatory authority over YouTube videos so that Canadians might post a TikTok video that a digital creator might post. The idea of that being regulated just does not sit well with a lot of people. So that's why you hear so much about these bills. Winston Sih 5:13 So when it comes to these bills, of course, it's been met with a level of controversy. What kind of criticism have we seen? And is it a left or right situation? Or is it just a matter of free speech on the internet? Anja Karadeglija 5:28 As we've seen this debate play out in Parliament, it has become a partisan issue in a certain way, with the Conservatives really being on the attack when it comes to accusing the Liberals of wanting to censor the internet. But, politicians will make things into a political issue. And I think at the core of it, where the controversy came from was people concerned about freedom on the internet, not regulating the internet, keeping current norms and rules, they were the ones who raised red flags. So while it's been made into a political issue, I don't think it necessarily has to be one. Winston Sih 6:05 And of course, we know that this is in large part because of the internet, because of the streaming industry. You look at Bill C-10 and it looked very closely at the streaming players like Netflix, like Disney, Amazon, etc, but we know the streaming players are global. So, are there models in other countries that Canada is watching closely? Are there other models in your area of work that you've noticed that is being explored in an interesting manner that might do things a little bit differently? Anja Karadeglija 6:35 Legislation was initially introduced as Bill C-10. Then it died on the order paper in the 2021 election, and then it was Bill C-11. There is precedent in the sense that the European Union has looked at protecting their cultural industries, has looked at how we can get some money out of streamers. But, there is not a ton of precedent for what this legislation does and certainly its critics say that it goes farther than some other countries have. Specifically, where it does give the CRTC some authority over user content, they say that that is unwelcome, and now unwanted. There's a lot of confusion around what this bill actually would do. You have one side saying it would allow the CRTC to tell us what to post online. You have the other side saying there is no problem, no freedom of expression issues whatsoever. So, what this bill actually would do is that it's limited in what the CRTC could do in regards to user generated content. So, in regards to YouTube videos, or TikTok videos. The CRTC could only go to these platforms and tell them they have to promote Canadian content. So it's called discoverability. Winston Sih 7:52 And I also want to mention news as well, because news is so important and it's the world that we work in. Local newsrooms have really suffered with the shift in how consumers consume the news, the presence of social media, players like Facebook, Google Twitter being around, how news articles are discovered - speaking of discoverability. The CRTC knows this. What have they done to support? And perhaps where have they dropped the ball? Anja Karadeglija 8:19 When it comes to CRTC and the news, the only involvement that the CRTC has in news is as a result of their role as the broadcast regulator. So, they do things like say "TV stations have to air a certain amount of news, same with radio stations." Or they set standards for CBC when they renew CBC's license and say "You have to have this amount of news." Beyond that, it's not in their mandate to have anything to do with news, with newspapers. That is all about to change with the introduction of Bill C-18, which is the Online News Act. Winston Sih 8:56 And Bill C-18 is something that's definitely picking up in conversation. Can you talk a little bit more about what that looks like and what the impact that could have on local newsrooms? Anja Karadeglija 9:07 Absolutely. So Bill C-18 would essentially force big tech platforms, and we're really talking about Google and Facebook, to reach commercial licensing deals or commercial deals with news publishers, so it would enforce revenue sharing between the big tech platforms and news publishers. This is something that news publishers have been pushing for quite vociferously, they've been pushing for this for a couple of years now. It's been presented at times as the thing that will save journalism and I think some of that perspective has-has changed. I think that it's no longer being seen as this thing that will save everything, but it is a framework that would see quite a bit of money come into the Canadian news industry. So that's why you're hearing a lot more about it. Where the CRTC would come in is that the CRTC would be in charge of administering this whole system. So, they would be in charge of looking at the deals that have been made and determining whether they're good enough. They wouldn't be arbitrating the decisions, but they would be deciding whether to send a dispute to an independent arbiter they would have some fining power. So, when I say that this bill would expand the CRTC's reach in the news world to newspapers and online outlets, that's how it would do that. Because all news outlets would be eligible to be covered by this regime that the CRTC would be in charge of. Winston Sih 10:41 And no doubt legacy newsrooms would explore the possibility of being part of this, especially in a time where newsrooms are bleeding money, advertising is declining. It's a completely different world. And then on the other side, we've seen instances where companies like Google have tested blocking access to Canadian news, almost in protest of these Liberal bills that suggest tech companies should pay news publishers to redistribute content. And then of course, the tech companies are saying that it's bad public policy. So what kind of a precedent would this set? Anja Karadeglija 11:15 So there are differing views, depending on who you talk to. Certainly Canada would be the second country in the world to have a system like this, the first being Australia. There are people that say the reason that both Facebook and Google are currently fighting against this legislation is that they don't want to set a precedent that could haunt them in other jurisdictions. It's not the concept of having to pay money that necessarily bothers them. The argument that they make is that the premise of the bill essentially institutes a link tax. So, the bill is freezed, and even named in a way, that says "it's aimed at news outlets that make news available." And so, if you make news available by search or indexing, that you then have to enter these commercial deals. So, the companies say that this essentially establishes a link tax. That is not in any way how the internet has ever worked. And it essentially imposes untold liability if they go ahead with this because they don't know how much they're going to have to pay for links. Now, others say that that's not what this is about. But it is quite a complicated debate. Winston Sih 12:27 And when I look at these bills, too, there seems to be a lot of confusion as well, when we look back at content creators, for example, the definition of who creators are. It doesn't include social media user data, who these changes affect. People argue it gives the government way too much regulation and control. But I also wonder why there's so much ambiguity to this. Anja Karadeglija 12:51 So part of the reason for that is by design, that the government doesn't want to be too specific in legislation, because technology changes much faster than governments create legislation. And we see this in pretty much any piece of legislation covering tech. So the concern is that if you're too prescriptive in legislation, well, that legislation might not be updated for another 30 years. The last time the Broadcasting Act was updated was in 1991. So if you're too specific now, who knows what platforms look like? Who knows what the internet looks like in 30 years. So the idea is to leave that relatively open, and then have these more specific rules be made by regulation, which is still often sometimes criticized as slow but much more nimble and much more able to reflect the changing times. Winston Sih 13:45 I wonder why they wouldn't just build in opportunity to take a look at these bills more often, given how quickly our media ecosystem evolves today, compared to back in the 90s. Anja Karadeglija 13:58 I think that's just a wider question. And this might be a bit of a divergence. I'm currently working on a story about AI. We have experts saying there's an existential risk of AI, governments need to act quickly, governments need to do something now! Canada has an AI regulation piece of legislation that it introduced a year ago, that is now kind of outdated because it predates ChatGPT. So, it's just the speed at which the government operates and the difficulty of the legislative process where you have to go through multiple stages, where you have opposition, I'm not sure how feasible it would be to expect that process to move. Winston Sih 14:36 That's a fair argument there. And then when we look at local news, we know the relationship between local media and the CRTC. It's one that can often be very tense. You watch licence renewal hearings, and you see Rogers and Bell and the CBC and Corus go in front of the CRTC. It's often a tense environment. It's not always necessarily conducive to a collaborative environment. As someone who watches these types of hearings and reports on Parliament, do you see opportunities to better build support between local media and the CRTC? Anja Karadeglija 15:15 That's a pretty interesting question and it is a little bit difficult to answer because the CRTC's relationship in terms of supporting local news, but also being a government regulator that a lot of news outlets don't want involved. There's a tension. The CRTC currently mandates certain amounts of local news that broadcasters exclude. It does also run a fund for small broadcasters that they can access. In terms of support, that is the kind of support that it has in place. Now, that would obviously expand under Bill C-11. But, when it comes to the question of how we can better support, I think that is where we have experts saying there's an existential risk of AI, governments need to act quickly, governments need to do something now might look at it and say, "Hey, whatever you can do for me, I need the help, great!" Others might look and say "This is a government regulator, I want it far away. Even some of the biggest proponents of this legislation, like the news publishers association, acknowledged that they wouldn't want to be going to the CRTC. There is a quote there, we have from Paul Deegan, the CEO of the publishers association, saying "We have a market failure, and we need a solution, and that's why we've come to government." Even though quote, "Frankly, we would like to stay as far away from the government and the CRTC as we can, but we do need them." There's a very complicated tension there and that's why there's no, I think, simple answer to your question. Winston Sih 16:50 Now, when we look at vertical integration, you covered Rogers and Shaw really closely. CTV goes into Bell, Citytv goes into Rogers, the Shaw-Corus family are connected. Does this kind of business model ensure the long term viability of private broadcasters? Or is it a model that's broken in this day and age? Anja Karadeglija 17:11 How viable is traditional broadcasting? So the reason the CRTC regulates broadcasting is because broadcasting frequencies are a limited resource. So we need somebody to determine and to say "you are broadcasting on this frequency" or "you're using this one." And that falls apart when it comes to an online world because all of a sudden, there is no limitation. This is why a lot of people are skeptical of the CRTC extending its regulatory reach into the online space because they say that there's no need to. But when it comes to vertical integration, that happens because you had telecom companies, you had the cable services, the phone companies, then became internet service providers. They bought up the broadcasters and so they own both telecom and the broadcast business. So when will vertical integration fall apart? As soon as or whenever traditional broadcasting becomes irrelevant. When that will happen? I wouldn't want to hazard a guess. Winston Sih 18:17 That is a million dollar question. I think a lot of people don't have the answer to. I often wonder whether these broadcasters like the CTVs like the Globals of the country, how well they would perform if they weren't owned by telecom companies? And whether that would completely change the landscape of how media is run? Anja Karadeglija 18:37 That is a question that has previously come up where the companies themselves say, “we can't prop up our media divisions forever. We have an obligation to our shareholders and to you know, have a profitable a company. And this isn't feasible,” and local news, traditional, you know, TV news has been in trouble for years. So even within that vertically integrated system, the profits from wireless aren't necessarily going to keep over the air television alive. Winston Sih 19:14 Now you spoke about vertical integration, as well. And I think it's really interesting to look at how that happens and exists here in Canada. Bell Media, Rogers Sports and Media, Corus Entertainment and their relationship with Shaw. This idea of media convergence, is that setting up the local media ecosystem for success? Anja Karadeglija 19:38 A lot of people are trying things and where you've seen success, it has been with smaller publications that have a stable subscriber base. So if you can offer something that people aren't getting elsewhere, people will pay for it. We're seeing more and more people launch up podcasts and Substacks. I hope they all make it, but the thing that's going to keep an entire industry going? Probably not, but where you are seeing the success cases, it is in the smaller startups. It is in the subscription-based outlets, where you're seeing the struggle of legacy print media, that traditionally relied on advertising. Advertising revenue isn't there, subscriber revenue isn't really making up for it. And in that way, it kind of comes full circle to Bill C-18. The reason that that bill and these efforts target Google and Facebook is because Google and Facebook are in the 80% of digital advertising revenue in Canada. And if you look at a generation ago, the newspapers and other news outlets had survived on advertising. Newspapers and other outlets are not really able to have a viable business through advertising, and they'll look at Google and Facebook, who earned all this advertising revenue, and that's how you get to a bill like C-18. Winston Sih 21:02 Okay, so final question. Do you think there is a role for the CRTC to help ensure local newsrooms have access to adequate funding so they can keep local journalism going? Anja Karadeglija 21:15 I think that the answer to that question depends on where you land on the tension that we were talking about earlier, in terms of whether you believe that the CRTC does have a role to help and to support local news, or whether you land more on the camp of 'you're not comfortable with the CRTC getting involved in this question, or having anything to do with newspapers or expanding its involvement in terms of broadcast news.' Winston Sih 21:47 Right, right. I think that's the takeaway there is government as they become more involved, it can come in with good reasons and it can also come with some bad consequences. So it's really up to someone to decide whether you want the government to have that kind of integration, if you will, into the business model and mandating how much newsrooms get from tech companies and at the same time, how much news they have to provide. And that's really the million dollar question is "What is the right balance that you strike?" So much great information and we know that the relationship between the media and the CRTC is one that continues to evolve, so thanks so much for offering your insights today. Anja Karadeglija 22:28 And thank you so much for having me! Winston Sih 22:30 Anja Karadeglija is the parliamentary reporter at the National Post. Next week, we wrap up the season by discussing mental health, wellness and trauma-informed reporting. How do journalists and sources take care of their mental well being while living and covering an even more polarized world? We discuss that next on Staying Alive. I'm Winston Sih. Thanks again for tuning in.