Canadian Heritage Committee on May 10th, 2007

[Pierre C. Bélanger]

I do not have any exact figures on me, but I know the sources. I would be happy to pass those on to you.

[Maka Kotto, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Please do.

[Pierre C. Bélanger]

For seven or eight years now, I have been monitoring technology on a daily basis with a research group at the university. I like to think that most of these major trends are covered by our work.

A rather significant phenomenon occurred in the United States last fall. It happened a year after Apple launched its famous iPod video on the market in fall 2005.

ABC, CBS and the major private U.S. networks, together with Apple, conducted a pilot study for three or four months to see whether there was a demand for transferring such top-rated shows as Desperate Housewives and Lost to this new platform. I am happy to report the figures from that study. Six months later, the results ABC is now posting on its Web site, are encouraging.

This is a very determinant moment, I think, in the recent history of communication, or traditional media communication. If you go to the abc.com website today, not only will they encourage you to tune in tonight at 9 o'clock and see Lost, and Ugly Betty at 10 o'clock, and whatever else is playing at 11 o'clock; they will also encourage you to watch Lost tonight at 9 and tomorrow on the web.

This to me is a huge paradigm shift. I'm telling you that you don't need to program anything any more. This is my traditional business that I'm now moving to those other platforms. Now you have video iPods, and you can go to iTunes and actually purchase the program that you missed out on last night.

Monsieur Bensimon was referring to the BBC and YouTube. Well, take the NHL and YouTube; you don't need to watch the game tonight, the Sens playing in Buffalo, because if you go to YouTube at 11 o'clock, all the goals of the evening are now featured on that site.

So you see all the traditional broadcasters trying to explore the potential and the viability of developing innovative business models on various platforms.

There are plenty of figures now. We heard Bill Gates' statements yesterday on the new mobile platforms. I have one here.

According to the head of the Comcast cable network in the States, there is not going to be such a thing as a pure linear medium anymore--meaning, again, this notion of produce once, distribute many.

Notwithstanding Mr. Bensimon's comments, which are completely relevant, Radio-Canada is still one of the country's most important cultural institutions. It tells the story of Canada to Canadians from its various flagships all across the country. The idea of disseminating content as broadly as possible and mobile platforms... The storm will pass as soon as we have the famous WiFi networks

or the wireless fidelity network. Toronto is the first Canadian city that has this digital cloud now in place. They've run this project for six months. It's now going full tilt. Mind you, you have to pay, but this is mostly for business people.

Imagine; forecast 10 years down the line. When we started being connected on the net, we were paying per hour, much like long distance calls. Now you pay $35 or $40 and you can use it as much as you want. It's like a water tax. We don't really count, mind you, how much you consume, which might be a problem, but on the Internet, it's as much as you want to use it.

There are a number of emerging platforms we need to take into account to optimize the value and the public interest of whatever the CBC is doing. Right now the mandate really limits the CBC to the domain of radio and television. I think we need to integrate this new universe that is extremely prevalent and is unfolding on an everyday basis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Very short, Mr. Savage

[Dr. Philip Savage]

Thank you.

I just wanted to add a radio statistic. Often radio gets lost in CBC/Radio-Canada. This also speaks a bit to one of Mr. Bensimon's points.

CBC English radio has really done a lot of pioneering in podcasting. Apparently, in the last few months, there have been about a million podcast downloads from CBC radio per month. Of course, this is happening at the same time as there was a big move to satellite radio. Mr. Bensimon did not mention that, but it was a way specifically to bring Canadian musical artists to a North American setting, both in English and in French.

What's interesting is that when we talk to youth, they're not using satellite radio. Satellite radio is already being leap-frogged. It's really not relevant to the youth market. The downloading of the audio is relevant. Of one million podcasts a month coming from English radio, 500,000 are used by non-Canadians, half outside of Canada. You don't need satellite infrastructure to do that. What you do need is people producing every day, in every cultural sphere, in every region, the programming that forms the backbone of CBC radio--that old boring radio that 90% of Canadians still listen to every week, that employs the journalists who are throughout this country, that no one else, no organization, is doing in 60-plus locations. That is the basis for the content that is on a very cheap digital platform, user-generated, and going to over half a million people outside of this country each and every month.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you. We went a little long that time--again.

Mr. Angus, I won't cut you short.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I'm studious about time from my days in music, where we had to be off the stage.

But I'm very frustrated. This is a time for dialogue and there's obviously no chance for that. I'm going to ask three questions up front, and then allow just for answers.

I'd like to begin, Madam Rawat, with this issue of the low-power transmitters for digital.

One of the issues we're dealing with is what to do with the analog towers that connect the country and allow people to use the rabbit-ear signals, which they might lose. The only option that seems to be coming forward is that people have to purchase cable packages in order to enjoy the public broadcaster. My first question would be whether there is a way to transform the analog towers we presently have for digital. If you've looked at the costs, what kind of investment would it be to ensure we have these digital transmitters available?

My second question is to you, Mr. Bensimon, because of your experience at National Film Board.

National Film Board has suffered immense financial cutbacks, yet I think the quality of the films coming out is still unparalleled. It is one of Canada's great success stories. I'm looking at a whole bunch of cultural silos that were built for the 20th century notion of what Canada was. We have Telefilm, which some say is very challenged. We have CBC. We have National Film Board. We have the Canadian Television Fund. Yet we don't seem to have a holistic view in this multi-channel universe; we have all these funding envelopes, some of which are doing very well and some of which are probably doing very poorly.

Is there a way of radically redefining how we're doing things so we can have some cohesion among these various envelopes to actually create the kind of international success we should be having in television?

My third question would be to our university panel.

We've heard about the million options out there in the new media. Basically I look on the web, and there are 10 million blogs, and they're all absolutely boring. My kids relentlessly troll the Internet looking for content. Good content is expensive. What has changed as far as I can see is that they still watch TV, but never at eight o'clock. They watch TV by buying DVDs. We watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer night after night after night, based on when they want to watch it. They watch YouTube. Right now, they're watching The Mighty Boosh and Never Mind the Buzzcocks every night--when they want to watch it.

So there's the issue of content, but someone has to produce that content. How do we get it out there? I'd like to hear from you on that.

As a supplementary to that, I'd like to know whether you have looked at the LaPierre report called A Canadian Charter for the Cultural Citizen Online.That is one of the most profound things I've read in the last number of years--and it's collecting dust somewhere in the heritage department. Mr. LaPierre said the need to develop an online cultural capacity to create a notion of citizenship in the 21st century.... I've never heard that report mentioned again. Is there any relevance to it?

I'll pass it over.

[Dr. Veena Rawat]

I will ask my colleague Mr. Caron to respond.

[Bernard Caron]

Maybe I'll give you the example of Quebec City. There is a transmitter in Quebec City. The analog transmitter is at the tip of l'Île d'Orléans. It covers Quebec City and also the surrounding area. What you really want to cover is along the St. Lawrence River, from the west part of Quebec to the east. Instead of having one central transmitter that is more or less covering a circle, you can put a number of transmitters along the river for that coverage. The problem is that you may need to build smaller towers, which do not exist now. You may need to share them with cellular telephone companies, so the network will look much more like a cellular telephone tower that you see along the highway. If you go away from that, the signal will disappear. You'll get similar coverage in the case of TV.

The total cost should be lower because the electricity you need to transmit these signals will be lower, and at the end of the day it should reduce the cost of operations.

[Jacques Bensimon]

To my part of the question, that's been my message to you, as the standing committee. Publicly we invest close to $5 billion in audio-visual and communication as a country. In my view today--and that includes the National Film Board, in all due success with what it has to do. I've been saying that for the last five years. Resist the concept of reviewing the CBC mandate without reviewing all the agencies in this country, because you will do a disservice to the country if you isolate the evaluation of CBC without thinking of the consequences on all the players that are there. That includes Telefilm. That includes CBC. That includes the arts council. That includes all the players. If you don't do that, I really think you're going to miss the chance of reviewing.

The NFB wins the Academy Award, but at the same time, they invest in a concept called Hothouse in which kids are able to develop their own products, with today's tools, that are accessible--the same kind of thing as you have here--and they're able to show it to you almost immediately.

But I'm not preaching for one. I think that you need an overall review.

To go back to content, the beauty about content today is that at the same time as we've shied away from the idea of having to see the program at 8 p.m., programs today have blown away the concept of the half-hour, the hour, and the hour and a half, which were made for publicity consumption and for broadcasters' discipline that you could get into.

Today, products and content have burst out. They are three minutes in length; they are an hour in length; they could be two hours in length. The beauty of all of that is that it is being produced by all kinds of people. You have top pros who are doing high-definition programming that costs more than $1.5 million to produce a three-minute program to something that is done for $5,000 or even less. I think one has to look at the idea of content based more on the fact that, yes, you will continue to have a professional industry to which you belong in the world of music, but you will have also what citizens are able to create at that level. So it is a multi-pronged universe where content is not defined by only one thing.

Regarding the LaPierre report, I'm glad you've raised it, because I agree with you. It is accumulating dust, and it's too bad, because there were a lot of great ideas in that concept. But it's happening. I gave you the example of Homeless Nation, where basically kids in the streets of this country are connecting with each other through whatever way they can. If they can have access through their own computer or through a computer in a store, whatever, they are creating, communicating with each other, and finding solutions to their own personal faith amongst themselves, not requiring any intervention from outside in order to do it.

In my view, it also links to what the LaPierre report has been saying, which is that citizens should be put forth as being part of the creative process. We used to have professionals of this and that, and we thought that we had created--a generation to which I belong--professionals of the audio-visual. Today we are all professionals of the audio-visual. We have a language where we are able to decode images; therefore, we are now in a position to produce images.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

On the last question, Mr. Bélanger, do you want to lead? And let's try to keep our answers relatively short.

[Pierre C. Bélanger]

I'll try hard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I'm trying to give you the same amount of time, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair. You're wonderful.

[Pierre C. Bélanger]

We appreciate this kind of question, because I think it's at the heart of what technologies are doing to traditional broadcasters.

There are so many new devices available right now for you and me to consume those contents that I think it's created what I now refer to as the “homozapiens”—zap—in the sense that if it's not according to what I think I could do with it, I have zillions of options, not only on satellite television and on cable and what not, but most importantly, on the web.

A number of neologisms have sprung up over the last few years. There's the notion of mash-ups, for example, where I have access to content, and you provide me with a pair of scissors so I can actually edit, for my own benefit and purposes, some of the elements of the content. There's the notion of crowd-sourcing, because we're talking about user-generated content. We always talk, especially in the private sector, of outsourcing to cheaper markets and stuff. The notion in the media is of crowd-sourcing, turning towards the public. Do you guys have anything we could use?

Look at some of the implications in the legal aspects, for example. Was it Rodney King in L.A., 10 years ago, where a citizen on his balcony caught the police in action? This notion of citizen journalism is another example of where the CBC should start moving towards over the next 10-year period, because that's what they're asking for.

I think there are a number of initiatives out there that are citizen generated. It would make the public broadcaster even more citizen oriented if only it could open up and be more sensitive to a number of initiatives that exist out there.

I'll stop it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

We'll move to Mr. Fast, please.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, to all of you, for attending today.

This has probably been the most informative session we've had so far. To have experts on new media here...Mr. Bensimon, your testimony is refreshing. It just puts a whole new perspective on the issue of CBC, a public broadcaster, and what we have to review before we extend the funding that's already available to CBC.

Because we have a number of specialists in the area of new media, I'm going to focus in on Mr. Savage and Mr. Bélanger.

As you know, the CRTC has made it quite clear that for the time being the new media exemption will stay. Mr. Savage, you touched on it briefly. I'd like you to expand on that.

Mr. Bélanger, you didn't touch on it specifically, but I sense that you probably have a view on that as well. I'm wondering if you could tell us whether you support the extension of that exemption at this point in time. If so, why, and if not, why not?

[Pierre C. Bélanger]

Specifically with regard to the CBC?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

No, just generally, on the new media exemption that the CRTC has in place right now.

[Dr. Philip Savage]

I'll start with probably what was a bit of a catalyst for a lot of this. About a year ago, when mobile television came up, broadcasters were a bit shocked to find that in fact it would be outside, that the CRTC would take a hands-off approach to that, essentially.

I think there probably needs to be some very creative thinking, that the CRTC take a bit more risk in how they can actually support the tenets of the act in terms of the mechanisms that support the production and distribution of Canadian programming. I can't tell you specifically how one would do that. I think that it's a question that has to be raised.

In their 1999 new media exemption decision, they essentially said they would come back and review this as things went on. They really haven't done that. The Lincoln report asked them to do so. There probably just hasn't been time or the resources for them to do that. I think it's probably time for them to open that up to the public and to get a full range of thinking about this.

I suspect that there will be broad areas where any regulatory body will be unable to act to regulate content, because as quickly as they figure out ways to ensure that there are some content levels supporting Canadian content on a new piece of technology, there will be another one popping up.

One of the things that I think we've seen around the world is that other countries have started to deal with this. What has become clearer and clearer is that in fact there is a policy instrument that goes beyond content regulation, which is for producing local content, and that is the public broadcaster. So in fact—and I would agree with Monsieur Bensimon—it's actually that there is a whole range of agencies that need to be coordinated.

I'm a little wary of the notion of taking chunks of CBC money and putting them in things like the CTF, given what we've seen in the last few months of the unwillingness of certain parties in the broadcasting and telecommunications sector to actually buy into that, and they want to take their marbles and go home.

My point would be that what you see around the world—specifically with the BBC as the model—where you want to see experimentation, where you want to see local content, you use the resources of the public broadcaster to do that so that there is a choice. You offer a choice of content to Canadians.

There is a lot of mashing up. Among the students we talked to, Facebook is kind of a bricolage. I create my persona, I create my own media persona by whether I have Will Ferrell clips on my site or whether I have something from the CBC archives.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I don't want to cut you short, but my time is limited. I think you've explained yourself well.

By the way, I wanted to congratulate Ms. Oreskovich for attending. You did a great job of presenting.

[Christina Oreskovich]

Thank you.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I did note that you mentioned that your research shows that a high percentage of students download music illegally.

[Christina Oreskovich]

Yes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Was it 93%, the figure that you used, or 80%?