The massive layoffs at TVA have caused a stir, and for good reason. In total, 547 jobs were eliminated, or 31% of the workforce. The president and CEO of Quebecor, Pierre Karl Péladeau, will carry out a major restructuring aimed at “saving TVA”, nothing less. The shock wave heralds the upheavals that will hit traditional broadcasting.
The written media know something about this. From 2016, they mobilized to obtain support measures for digital transformation. The idea gained ground, reinforced by the conviction of public decision-makers that written media did not have an audience problem (they were more read than ever in their history by combining print and digital readership), but challenges structural challenges to be addressed in order to get their fair share of digital advertising revenues in a cross-border market dominated by GAFAM.
Through the combined effect of federal and provincial support measures, Quebec’s written media are the best supported in all of North America. Despite everything, they are not exempt from constantly questioning their ways of doing things in order to adapt to the radical transformation of information consumption habits and the public’s growing fatigue with news content.
Private broadcasters face similar challenges today. Production and broadcast tax credits, invented during the golden age of traditional television, no longer provide them with the stability they once did for multiple reasons. The near-monopoly on regional markets that they enjoyed in an analog world has broken down in the digital age. Young people unplug from the cable. Disney, Netflix and others are direct competitors. Radio-Canada behaves outrageously like a competitor to the private sector without questioning its mandate. Advertising revenues are eroding to the benefit of GAFAM.
In this demanding competitive environment, regulation is still too heavy to stimulate innovation. The beneficial effects of the new Law on continuous and online broadcasting are still awaited. This law, which encourages platforms to contribute to the Canadian production ecosystem, will not alone be enough to reverse the trend, nor will the compensation provided for in the Online News Act.
Creative solutions will be needed if “post-traditional” television is to be viable. TVA is the first broadcaster to suffer the blow for the migration of audiences and revenues to digital, but it will not be the last. It is too important an asset, for the diversity of Quebec’s cultural landscape, for us to let it sink by looking the other way.