It left in titi. Quebecor has received unsolicited support in recent days in its fight against ICI Tou.tv Extra, a pay video on demand (VOD) service from the Société Radio-Canada (SRC).
“I am not the only one to say this, even the journalists of The Press got together on this,” notes Pierre Karl Péladeau, big boss of Quebecor. “It is a truism to ask the question. We’ve been asking this question for a long time. »
The question is that of the paid or free service, or even the very existence of the service. And it’s popping up more and more everywhere. Do free public media news sites compete unfairly with private companies? Should Google compensate the news media for free distribution of their productions? Why are Web giants like Facebook or Twitter launching paid services?
An editorialist and a TV columnist from The Press indeed recently criticized the extra $7 (minus a penny, plus tax) per month that must be paid to subscribe to a public television service already financed by taxes. Online comments have added to it, and not always with delicacy. CBC’s GEM platform offers a different $5 version that simply removes the ads, without offering any scoops or exclusives.
Private competitor Quebecor has been repeating the same thing for years. A request to interrupt this paid service (but not the free part of Tou.tv) was even filed in January 2020 with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the sector’s regulatory body, for “anti-competitive practices “.
The exceptional approach was based on the supplement, but also on the transformation of the platform into a cable distributor, without contribution to the Media Fund, in apparent contravention of the Broadcasting Act. The complaint was dismissed in August 2021, with the CRTC ruling that the CBC service transmitted internet-only shows, such as Netflix and Club illico.
In a state of hybridity
What would be the solution now that the CRTC does not provide regulatory leverage to change the situation? “Let them stop selling advertising and let them stop selling VOD by subscription,” answers President Péladeau, speaking of the services of the SRC. […] There are limits to the use of public funds. »
Christiane Asselin, Senior Director of ICI Tou.tv, explains that the Extra paid component was launched to meet a demand from subscribers to its online service. “A very large portion of people want to watch on-demand content without ads,” she says, adding that the price ($6.99 per month) hasn’t changed since 2014. hybrid. We see that it is the platforms of this type that are best in dealing with post-pandemic problems. »
For the SRC, the argument of public financing of programs that would justify free access does not hold water since competing platforms, including that of Quebecor, also broadcast subsidized productions.
“I rather want to celebrate Club illico and Tou.tv Extra,” says Mme Asselin, citing the sad fate of the platform of streaming French Salto of the France Télévisions, M6 and TF1 groups, which will close on March 27 for lack of a buyer. “I watch with sadness what is happening in France, where attempts to counter Netflix or Amazon Prime have failed because they have taken too long to settle. »
The pioneering creation Tou.tv was born in January 2010 on the initiative of Sylvain Lafrance, when he was vice-president of the French services of the SRC. Now Director of the Media Department and the magazine Management of HEC, he speaks with all the more detachment from the platform as the Extra pay service was launched after his departure from the SRC.
“I find the attacks on the paid component a little short,” says Professor Lafrance, specifying that he does not want to defend the SRC, although the platform, including the Extra component, seems to him to be completely in line with the mandate of the Streamer. “The Canadian broadcasting system is mixed, private and public, also in terms of revenue sources. Radio-Canada receives subsidies and seeks commercial revenue. Similarly, private companies receive a lot of public money for their productions. We can ask to withdraw commercial money from the SRC, but are we also going to ask to withdraw subsidies to private television? »
Free/paid
This mixed model exists with variants elsewhere in the world and sometimes leads to the same tensions. The BBC, the world’s most prestigious public information and entertainment service, is sometimes accused of unfair competition by the private media. The Sky News network of the Comcast empire constantly repeats that the free services and the level of the fee favoring the public broadcaster give it an unfair advantage.
Professor Lafrance adds by email that if Tou.tv Extra offered all of its service for free, competitors would also cry out against unfair competition. “There’s a kind of lie about being free,” he said, aloud this time. As if we weren’t paying. We pay with our personal data. We pay with our attention because we are exposed to advertising. We pay with our taxes. »
We are now paying twice. The giants developed around free access, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, have recently developed paid sections. The ban on sharing accounts by Netflix for a week constitutes a kind of commercial variant around the paid or not dynamic.
“Until now, we took our personal data and our attention and it was free,” says Professor Lafrance. Now, we will still take our attention and our data, and even a little more, and we will have to pay. It’s extraordinary as a betrayed promise! We don’t say, “Pay $6.99 a month and you won’t get any more ads.” No no. We only promise to better reference you and better protect your data. So we have to pay them to protect the data they took from us! »
The entire business model of Web giants is in fact based on the capture and rebroadcasting of free data, then making it possible to profit from the sale of advertisements. The latest report from the Reuters Institute predicts that the year 2023 will be marked by struggles for the regulation of digital content and compensation for the news media for the free distribution of their news. Europe and Australia are already engaged in these paths that Canada is preparing to follow in its turn.
“The greatest danger of free GAFAM is that they do not put money into our culture,” says Mr. Lafrance. We are going to see more and more other people’s television, other people’s ideas, and we will have fewer and fewer resources for our own. This is a major issue, and there are bills to correct the situation. It is a major issue. It is fundamental. »
With Alain McKenna