Are you ready to leave traditional television?

The CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada created a surprise earlier this week when she said that the Crown corporation’s traditional television and radio would plunge into a 100% digital universe within 10 years.

A few hours after the publication of this statement in the Globe and Mail, she corrected the shooting. There is no question of taking such a turn as long as all Canadians do not have access to a high-speed Internet system.

Catherine Tait is now talking about a transfer spread over 20 years. It is less audacious than the 2030 deadline announced by the bosses of the BBC, in England.

Ten or twenty years… It is all the same astonishing that the CEO makes such predictions when her mandate expires, in principle, in six months. She should rather leave that to the person who will succeed her. Unless Catherine Tait wants to imitate Hubert Lacroix and extend his term.

When we hear about the digital shift in the world of television, we immediately think that this change will mean the disappearance of traditional television or, if you prefer, linear television with programs scheduled at fixed times.

I am far from convinced that the digital revolution, which includes the advent of streaming television (streaming), will eliminate traditional television. In any case, I spent the week wondering if I could live without this model that has accompanied me since birth.

And you, could you?

Me, it’s simple, I want both. I want to be able to choose à la carte and I want TV that will give me emotional moments at the same time as hundreds of thousands of other people. This aspect is most often singled out by specialists in the media world.

Of course there is the live streaming which is increasingly popular, but it is mainly reserved for large events.

Will the streaming madness kill this absolutely unique state of collectively experiencing a television event? Will it prevent us Quebecers, so fond of television, from gathering together to witness the birth of a program or the finale of a series?

The rise of streaming TV has me worried about another phenomenon that no one seems to see at the moment: gender balance. If I ask you what you watch on these platforms, I’m sure you’ll tell me that these are series.

Will these platforms end up overshadowing other types of programs (news, variety shows, quizzes, youth programs, documentaries)? Are we about to enter an era of fiction?

Another effect of the pay-per-view model affects our relationship with television works. Streaming platforms have introduced us to the phenomenon of “listening overload” (binge-watching Or viking marathon), this way we have to binge watch multiple episodes.

No more seven days before finding out what will happen in the next episode, no more hypotheses in front of the coffee machine, no more waiting for a sequel. Today, it’s who will devour the ten episodes of a series the fastest in order to get straight to the point. And wow the gallery.

I wonder why the scriptwriters are having a hard time finding punches to end their episode. The credits of the end of an episode is not finished yet that one connects with the following one.

And it affects our mood. Since the time I watched six episodes in a row of Six Feet Under and that I came out of it more depressed than Jacques Brel in heartbreak the day after a drunk, I decided that I would never do that again.

Streaming is nothing new. From the moment the video recorders offered us the possibility of recording, we put our arms in the wringer. This was the beginning of personalized listening.

I am in no position to resist this revolution, I who work for a daily newspaper which took a serious digital turn a few years ago. For me, television is consumed in a thousand ways. The screens of my tablet, my computer or my telephone are television screens.

But carried away by this exhilarating whirlwind, let’s not lose sight of the content that must appear on these screens. When I hear people say that television passes for them by short videos on YouTube or on Facebook, I confess that I am worried. It is not with images of three-legged dogs or insignificant podcasts that a society grows.

It would be good to think more about these questions rather than throwing expiration dates at technologies.

***

It’s been a rough start to the year for some platforms. To counter the drop in subscribers and revenue, Netflix wants to prevent the sharing of passwords and Disney+ will lay off 7,000 employees.

The competition is fierce. We fight to have us. And since a single platform can’t meet all our needs, we pay a nice sum each month to have access to several.

We are starting to realize that it is expensive.

Speaking of funds and platforms, this is a great opportunity to remember that our television industry is based on a public funding system. Programs produced for Canadian (or Quebec) platforms benefit from the same support, ie from the Media Fund (federal) and SODEC (provincial). Added to this are tax credits from Ottawa and Quebec.

The money we pay for a subscription to a Canadian platform should (in principle) replace the revenues of advertisers found on traditional channels.

But a question bothers me about Tou. Extra TV. Why impose a sum of $6.99 per month to offer programs produced by the organizations mentioned above, when we also fund CBC/Radio-Canada to the tune of $1.2 billion per year?

To watch programs offered “en primer”, we have to pay several times.

That’s a lot of help from us, don’t you think?