Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 28th, 2010

[Gavin McGarry]

No.

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

You've got to get on Facebook, man. You'll be okay.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

He's still doing his MySpace page.

[Gavin McGarry]

Yes: MySpace is ripping it up. MySpace is a mess.

So here's what we tell our clients, and I'm speaking from experience. I was hired twice as an SVP of digital media to go into content companies to fix them. Three or four years ago they said, “We need someone in digital media”. A TV production company tried to bring me in. I was there for three months and I left. They thought I built websites.

Digital is everything. It's not just one little part. It's everything. We tell our clients now, and these are big clients, such as Naspers out of South Africa, “Do not get rid of your senior executive people. Train them.”

We built part of our company...and it wasn't something that I tried to do. We train all these CEOs and SVPs. We tell them what they need to know.

For TV companies, the person who's creating the content or signing the programming doesn't need to know the ins and outs of how a TV works, exactly how a mobile phone works, or even how a video camera works. He just needs to know how to use it and create some content for it. So don't fire all your middle-manager guys who have been there for 10 years, because you're going to lose all your experience.

We bring in the 22- or 23-year-olds who are familiar with this. It's actually a bit startling and shocking how many don't know, really, what's going on. So we bring them in at the bottom, we train up the senior executives, and we make them work together. That's all you can do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Angus.

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

Well, this is very provocative.

You know, we've heard over the last few years, when people have come in, a lot of kicks at YouTube: “Oh, YouTube; it's people watching videos of their cat.” Obviously people really are shocked and horrified at what YouTube did. It changed.... It is television. My kids don't have televisions. They wouldn't think to buy a television if it was the last thing in the store available. They're on YouTube. But they're on YouTube through a wide variety of elements, and they're not watching people's cats flushing the toilet. They're watching content, because content is still king.

I'm interested in your experience with the CMF, because, you know, what is the role of the Canadian government? What is the role of our federal institutions? We created some really top-notch content creators. Take the National Film Board; to me, this is still one of the great film laboratories of the world. There's Radio-Canada. We created great content.

But it seemed over the years that the idea was that we had to create content because we had to make sure that Canadians didn't disappear. Then we had to create content so that the broadcasters didn't disappear. It was like culture became a kind of corporate welfare state. There seemed to be this mentality.

Now I'm looking at the possibilities that are there from the digital realm. But still, even with the Canadian Media Fund being updated, the vast majority is tied to the fact that you have to have a broadcaster, and the broadcaster is going to want 12 years' worth of rights, and he might show it or he might not show it. It's going to be a huge investment because you're not going to run a pilot unless there's a whack of dough there.

Meanwhile, there is this whole other world out there, where we could start getting buzz and hype and things could start happening. I'm interested that you've found the experimental stream full of great ideas. It seems to me odd; it seems that we would say, okay, the experimental stream is over there, it's not the serious stuff, whereas I actually wonder if that's where the real serious stuff is going to be created.

Would you suggest that we actually open up this Canadian Media Fund so that more funding is available to just create content, and then worry about where it goes as secondary to the creation of content, and allow perhaps more of this just to get out there online?

[Gavin McGarry]

Yes, it's platform agnosticism. Being platform agnostic is key.

Yes, to create some sort of funding model that will be able to do that is important, and I'm not sure how you do that. One of the reasons I left was the number of hoops you have to jump through to get the funding, the fact that it has to have a Canadian flag in it. I've never believed in that. I think that we make some of the best content in the world, and I don't think it has to be....

Some of it is for Canadians, and all of it is by Canadians, but it doesn't have to scream “Canada”. I live in New York, and what most people don't realize is that the entire media upper echelon is full of Canadians. The reason I'm in New York is that the O-1 visa I'm on eliminates anyone.... It's so difficult to get that only the best go to the U.S.

So this is our biggest problem. Are we creating funding in order to train people up so that they can go to the U.S.? Canadians are being hired like crazy in the U.S. because they know we're very well trained. We've had a lot of experience.

To answer your question, yes, I think we need a new funding model. I think the key is to fund things that make money on new platforms—mobile, YouTube, and so on.

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

I have a quick question here.

Again, the idea of whether the Internet is probably the greatest distribution system in history or it's a cultural tsunami that's wiping out our industries seems to be the thing that we go back and forth on.

The suggestion was made earlier, or the recommendation, about the “three strikes and you're out” principle.

[Gavin McGarry]

Oh my God, no.

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

If we make it illegal to trade, will that have an effect, from what you have tracked with BitTorrent and the number of files going? Is it realistic for us as legislators to act like King Canute, demanding that the wave shall recede, because it's a three-strikes principle? Is that even in the game?

[Gavin McGarry]

No. It's just the craziest idea I've ever heard. Because do you know what happens? I mean....

It's like no one reads history. Before there was digital media, before there was analog media, there were castles in England. You block people and they'll find a way around it.

The reason why Canada's number four in the world for BitTorrent downloads is that we want to watch American programming. We want to. We don't care. We want to watch U.K. programming. We want to watch programming from all over the world.

We keep restricting people, so they're like, “I'm not going to pay $79 for the Hindi channel. I'm just going to go and get it online for free.” Then we get mad at them, because, “Well, you were supposed to pay for that.”

I think at 99¢ for a song on iTunes is way too expensive. I might pay 1¢, or I might pay 2¢, but I won't pay 99¢. It's ridiculous.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Brown.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This has been very interesting today, Mr. McGarry.

I want to take this in a different direction. What do you think the changing trends and the embracing of digital media mean for local television? I notice that in a lot of small towns and communities we're trying to see them embrace little bits of digital media, but it's still far away from where it is in the mainstream. What are communities going to have to do in Canada to make sure we don't lose that local content? When it becomes international and becomes national, I guess the worry is that it'll get lost in the wave of change. How do you still hear about your local charity events? How do you still have a medium that shares your municipal updates?

[Gavin McGarry]

You guys are all local, right? You're all members of Parliament. How do you do it?

Seriously.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Householders.

[An hon. member]

Ten-percenters.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

And even the mediums we do use, in terms of sending out lots and lots of mailings, that's becoming less of an effective medium. Not that it stops any of us, but it's becoming less of an effective medium to communicate when more and more people check their mail less often, especially younger people, of course.

I use social media to communicate with the younger people in my riding. As I say, I think it's getting harder and harder for a local newspaper to sell advertisements. I think it's getting harder and harder for local TV stations to stay open.

I worry that trend is going to continue.

[Gavin McGarry]

I have this discussion all the time. It's difficult, right, because it's not a discussion, it's a change. It's happening. If you look at Craigslist, that's local, hyperlocal. We spend all our time talking about hyperlocal.

People don't like to see change. They don't like change. They don't want their TV station to go away. They're used to sitting back and watching the local TV news.

I don't even read the newspaper anymore. I get all my information on Twitter. I'm following probably half of the members of Parliament to see what you are talking about. I know before I even get here who you are. I've been on LinkedIn. I can see all sorts of information. That we didn't have before.

With this whole change, yes, we have to make sure we're taking care of people who are used to that. It just means we need 25-year-olds running the local TV stations, who are interested in TV, but understand social media and are able to connect with the younger and the older.

How do you regulate that? How do you deal with it? Well, the people are deciding, right? Crowd sourcing is where it's at. You decide what the local area wants. And that's what we're seeing on Facebook. People in Fergus, Ontario, don't really care about anything else but what's happening in Fergus, Ontario.

And Moses Znaimer was the first one to do this. It was all about local, local, local. Citytv is a perfect example.

Full disclosure: he hired me out of university.

I built a TV show 17 years ago at Western that was hyperlocal, but I figured out if I did a TV show on the campus, no one else could touch me. I'm just doing what CTV does. No one was allowed to come on that campus and shoot video unless they were a student. I was a student. I made $26,000 a year. I paid for my university by using that exclusionary factor that most of our broadcasters have.

But now that's all changing. Could I do that today? Probably not.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

You talk about opportunities for this changing dynamic. Do you see potential labour opportunities for Canada if we positioned ourselves in the right way? What advice would you have for us on a labour front, on how to tap into the new jobs that are going to be created in this industry?

[Gavin McGarry]

A lot of technology companies locate in Toronto now.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Why?

[Gavin McGarry]

Just because we have a really great education system. I live and work in America. I will tell you right now that it's shocking how little they know about the rest of the world.

Part of my job is when.... As I say, I start out by saying, “I'm Canadian. I understand what's going on in the rest of the world. There about a billion people who speak English on the planet. That's your new market.”

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

How do we attract people like you to be in Canada?

[Gavin McGarry]

I love Canada. I'm here all the time. My wife lives here. I think someone said it before: it's a question of scale. If I'm located in New York, people want to work with me, the old-school guys. The young guys, they don't care. I could be in the middle of Minnesota, I could be in Toronto, I could be in Fergus. It doesn't matter.

Most of the people I deal with on a daily basis who run our web shops and do our stuff are all over the world. One guy doesn't even have a home. He calls himself a “digital peasant”.