While radio has equally been affected by technological change, as we will see, some things in the radio world have not. Local broadcasters continue to be an integral part of their communities by employing local people, contributing to local regions, creating local content, and investing in and promoting local artists.
To demonstrate Bell Media's role you might consider the following. We employ 723 staff dedicated to our radio operations. We have sponsored thousands of community events. At a more recent one, Ottawa's CFRA raised over $2.4 million to fund care programs at the Elizabeth Bruyère Hospital.
We support and promote local talent through programs like the Bell Media emerging artist initiative, which features a new Canadian artist each month on our radio stations across the country. We invest in Canadian talent development by making substantial contributions to the Canadian content development initiatives. In 2011 Bell Media paid $7.3 million to Canadian content development. We help Canadian artists achieve success in many ways, including airplay and concert sponsorship. In 2011 our radio station in Windsor—93.9 The River-—was a big supporter of Canadian independent musicians, with more than 10,000 airplays.
In addition to all of this, we continue to support the music industry as a whole through the copyright royalties we pay. Last year, of the $64 million radio broadcasters paid for the performance of the songs they broadcast, Bell Media's share was $8.1 million. This is not at issue, and we will continue to pay these royalties. As a content owner ourselves we firmly believe that broadcasters should pay for the music they broadcast.
In addition to paying to broadcast the songs, radio broadcasters are also paying $21 million to the same people for the technical copies made to get those same songs broadcast on air. Not only do two payments for one broadcast amount to double-dipping, but the $21 million reproduction payment basically amounts to a digital tax or a penalty because of innovation. We did not pay it when we spun records, and we did not pay it when live DJs played CDs. But because technology has advanced and the guy or gal that used to drop off CDs for the labels has been replaced by a digital delivery system that the labels created, we now have to pay them to receive their music and put it in a format we can use.
There is something wrong here. They gain huge efficiencies, and even though this may be helpful for us, we nevertheless aren't sharing that gain. We are paying for it, and paying a lot, despite the contributions we continue to make to support their business. Not only is this counter-intuitive, but it also fails to achieve the fundamental goals of Bill C-11, which we understood were also supportive of innovation and business efficiency.
Bill C-11 attempts to address this problem by saying we don't have to pay for these digital copies if we destroy them 30 days after they are made. Although the overall intent is good, this is an unreasonable and unworkable solution that demands that time-intensive processes be implemented at every radio station and that more copying be done. The drafting of proposed subsection 30.9(4) fails to reflect a clear intention, and instead maintains the status quo—a status that is not pro-innovation, and sends a message to the radio industry that it will pay more for innovative and technologically specific business solutions.
We have heard concerns that a meaningful exemption for broadcasters would have a big impact on Canadian artists. We know, as you heard on Tuesday morning from the Canadian Federation of Musicians, that it will not. Most of the money only goes to record labels and publishers, many of whom are not even in Canada.
In sum, we are asking the government to amend the broadcaster exception by creating a clear technical exemption for technical copies. That will acknowledge and encourage innovation, facilitate business efficiency, and more importantly it will put an end to double-dipping.