Canadian Heritage Committee on April 1st, 2014

[Paul Cunningham]

What I'm basically saying is that we're regulated for content and also for CCD contributions under the Broadcasting Act. I'm just asking that—the same as terrestrial radio—online services are regulated, or fall under the same guidelines as terrestrial radio and satellite radio.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Vanessa, do you have a problem with that?

[Vanessa Thomas]

I don't have a problem with that because I believe we're probably over that already. So I don't. The model that we have—

[Andréanne Sasseville]

Perhaps, Vanessa, I'm not sure if you do have the numbers, but for satellite radio all of our Canadian-produced channels have 85%, if not 100%, Canadian content. Twenty-five percent of that is new music and 40% is emerging on every channel. That's what we're regulated to today, which is even more than terrestrial radio itself.

So, we're absolutely in agreement with you, 100%. If you guys are willing and able to do this, hurray. All artists are going to be living off their music and off we go. Let's celebrate.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I appreciate this dialogue actually. It doesn't happen very often we can actually dialogue like this.

Vanessa, the chair mentioned that we have difficulty sometimes remembering our folks who are coming to us from TV or video. We're not having any trouble remembering you at all, so that's great.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Vanessa Thomas]

Fantastic. I appreciate that.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

A lot of this is about the potential and a lot of times my questions have come from or are about Canadian content. One of the suggestions I've begun to hear over the last couple of weeks just from people who have been paying attention to this study and commenting on it is the whole concept of Canadian content, but elaborating on that or making it even more specific to say “from a local perspective”.

Andréanne, you mentioned the fact that you do Canadian content, local content, across North America. So it struck me as to say that's not really.... How do you actually say that sentence and actually mean it?

From this perspective, I wanted to get all of your opinions on how we could in fact say—whether it's radio, whether it's streaming, whether it's through satellite radio—that in a particular area where you're being heard, that you actually promote even more from a local Canadian content perspective.

So local emerging bands, individuals, artists, have an opportunity to get more than just a chance hearing with a potential producer. They actually are able to have their voice, if you will, their creative work heard on local radio so that we would have a small percentage of content ensure that anyone who is playing locally actually would be heard locally.

[Paul Cunningham]

First of all, we're regulated such that from the local standpoint, in terms of local content, we can't necessarily have local content, per se, on satellite radio.

I'll let Andréanne talk a little bit about how we promote local bands through the CCD expenditures and through concerts and getting them on air through our Canadian music services.

[Andréanne Sasseville]

Sir, I just want to make sure I understand the question very clearly. You're asking me how we get local content. What's your definition of “local content”?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

We should push—let's say within a 300-kilometre radius—this radio station, or whatever station we happen to be listening to, to say that there needs to be some form of a narrow definition of what local content is, what Canadian content is.

That way, we give local artists the opportunity to be heard in their local area versus just hoping that they might be heard as a percentage of Canadian content.

[Andréanne Sasseville]

That's a very good question. It's also extremely complex. I'm not sure I'll have the right answer for you, but let me just go over what we have tried to do.

Obviously our channels are programmed per genre. We don't discriminate or benefit from having local artists or specific artists. An artist is an artist. We go with the genre or with the programming we have.

But out of the Canadian content development activities or initiatives that we have put together, we don't necessarily go out and pick festivals that are all in urban centres—the jazz festivals, FrancoFolies de Montréal, North by Northeast, and Canadian Music Week that are in either Montreal or Toronto. We will go out of that realm, more than 200 kilometres out, whether it's the Festival de musique émergente in Rouyn-Noranda, northern Quebec, or in Gaspé. We focus on ensuring that some of their local talent is featured on our programming as well as in the initiatives we do.

That's how we've gone about it.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Shawn.

[Shawn Cooper]

We're actually on the opposite side of it. I would say we do more for artists in music export than we do on helping them locally.

Artists are usually pretty good at getting people in their area to know about them and at getting friends to come out to shows. The successful artists are the ones who are really part of the community at that point. People know the artist's name or whatever.

A little bit over half of our installs are actually worldwide. A lot of that has to do with the fact that we do support iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, with BlackBerry making up most of our Latin America and Southeast Asia installs.

So I don't really know how to answer you properly in that I don't think that we really help artists on a local level. We help them on the mass market level. One thing we do, however, is that in the same way a fan who has a show happening near them gets a push notification about an event, the artist, using their phone or computer, can log in and do a back-end system that lets them specifically target in certain radiuses.

Let's say an artist is playing in Ottawa tonight and tickets aren't really selling that well. They can actually jump onto their iPhone and send out a push notification only to fans within two kilometres of the venue, saying “Hey, we're doing sound check; come by”, or “We're down the street grabbing lunch; come say hi”, and that type of thing. Again, it's trying to make the personal relationship with their super-fans.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much.

We're out of time—

[Vanessa Thomas]

Can I answer that question, just very quickly? We are doing some local stuff.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Sure. I'll give you 10 seconds.

[Vanessa Thomas]

On the festival playlists, we are dealing with them outside of Montreal and Toronto as well: Ottawa blues; one we're working on for a B.C. summer festival; one in P.E.I.; and the Festival d’été in Quebec City, which has Canadian artists from all over.

We also do celebrity curation with a lot of artists, especially ones who are touring across Canada for the summer. They are curating their own touring playlists for us within the system, so we can geo-target those playlists to specific areas of the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you to our witnesses. Thank you for your contribution to our study. If you have any further contributions that you can send to us in writing, we would appreciate those.

Thanks for coming.

The meeting is adjourned.