Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2010

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

—and perhaps has sold more—

[Genevieve Rossier]

In other words, the minimum amount beyond which a customer must pay more has been increased. That's clearly not in Radio-Canada's business plan.

What we've offered is a platform where content is free and we've done it in a legal and proper manner for content rights holders.

The fact that there have been 18 million hits means that there was really a need and that people may be prepared to pay more for bandwidth to meet their need to see programs. That's roughly the answer I can give you. I also want—

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Do you acknowledge that that's a misappropriation of revenue?

[Genevieve Rossier]

Yes... well, no.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

If you had put the first season of the Les Invincibles series on sale at Archambault—I know it's on sale—who would have received the profits?

[Genevieve Rossier]

Definitely the rights holders, as is the case when it's broadcast on TOU.TV. Certainly Quebecor, in part, because Archambault...

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Regardless of how it's done, Quebecor always takes in money.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you!

[Geneviève Rossier]

I simply want to point out to you that, at the CRTC hearings on the ISP issue, Radio-Canada said it was in favour of a tax that would hand over money to content producers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, that's the answer I wanted.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Merci.

Go ahead, Mr. Angus.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today.

One thing that can be certainly said about CBC/Radio-Canada is that you are in the forefront in terms of digital access and digital products. I always love listening to CBC North in the morning and hearing people who are listening to the show call in from South Korea, because you can listen to the local show anywhere in the world, depending on where you are.

I'm interested also because in digital culture the big catchphrase is the long tail, and in terms of cultural products in Canada there isn't anything as long as the tail of CBC. For a long time we worried because a lot of that product was sitting in vaults, but I'm seeing more and more of it up online.

I just posted on my Facebook page an awesome little bit footage of Don Messer's Jubilee and got twenty-some comments. I don't know if that was off your page or if someone else had posted it, but I'm not going to quibble, because it's on YouTube.

By the way, there's phenomenal footage of Malcolm X being interviewed on Front Page Challenge. I think the Americans would go crazy if they knew that footage existed.

These are amazing cultural resources, and they are being posted on YouTube and on Facebook and so on. Is there is a coherent strategy on CBC/Radio-Canada's part to try to again get some of those eyeballs back to any kind of central viewing platform, to a place where people could access other content and perhaps at a certain point end up monetizing their traffic?

[Fred Mattocks]

That's a big question. Anything to do with the archives starts with the rights--artists' rights, creators' rights--that accrue to those properties, and that can be a significant consideration when we're thinking about it.

That said, when it's appropriate we build content from our archives into virtually everything we do. We don't do a news story that has profound implications for the country without some kind of historical reference. That content comes from archives. Similarly, archival products have a use in programming around current events and virtually everywhere in programming.

For a number of years we also, with the help of the Department of Canadian Heritage, worked on a digital archives website in both CBC and Radio-Canada. Its mission was to portray the history of this country and some of its events and characters in a digitally accessible and friendly form. At the end of the day, that's the good news about all of this.

The reality is that we do have huge archives, but access to those archives is restricted by two factors. One is the rights aspect that we talked about, and the other is simply the cost of digitizing that content and then mounting it on some kind of digital platform. Those are realities we deal with. We deal with them on a program and opportunity basis, and ultimately on a business basis. Parts of our archives are always being digitized as a result, but we don't have a comprehensive goal to digitize all of the content.

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

I think it is a major issue because of what is sitting in the archives. It could be seen anywhere around the world--not just in Canada, but people around the world could see it. For example, I saw Brendan Behan in a debate with some stodgy British aristocrat, and it was brilliant. It was on CBC, and you wouldn't see that anywhere else.

I'm running out of time, so I'm going to have to change channels. CBC made national and international news for two reasons: the first was their decision to use BitTorrent to distribute Canada's Next Prime Minister, and the second was the throttling of that show by some of the ISPs, who saw it as a peer-to-peer threat.

I'm interested in the decision to use BitTorrent for distribution and whether or not you're looking at these new platforms for further exploration.

[Fred Mattocks]

I think it's fair to say we're always evaluating ways to reach users or reach citizens in this country. In a way, we take our lead from them. What are they using? What are they interested in? How are they populating their devices? What technologies are they using?

The BitTorrent experiment--and it was an experiment--came right out of that. It was an experiment on a number of fronts. It was an experiment on a production front: what's the user experience going to be like? It was an experiment on an economic front as well. We'll continue to do that kind of thing.

We always have an eye on two things, really. One is having the right user experience for the right people, the target audience, and the other one is the economics of it: can we make it work on a sustainable basis?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Angus and Mr. Mattocks.

Go ahead, Mr. Armstrong.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

First of all, thank you for your presentation.

You used an interesting term: you call people who are connoisseurs of your productions “users”, not “viewers”. Is the term “viewer” something we're going to refer to less and less frequently? My father would be a viewer of The National every night in Nova Scotia at ten o'clock. Even if he could get it at nine o'clock, he's not going to watch it at nine o'clock. He's not going to watch it at eleven o'clock. He always watches it at ten o'clock, so he's a viewer.

Can you define what a “user” is?

[Fred Mattocks]

I think all users are viewers but not all viewers are users, in the sense that the viewing experience is the classical visual media experience. You can substitute “listeners” if you want to think about it for radio. It's the classical conventional media experience. It's one-way. “Passive” is the wrong word, because anybody who's ever listened to a radio program and really enjoyed it knows they're not being passive, but it's a passive experience in the way it's delivered.

On the other hand, the term “user“ denotes an ability to engage in interactivity. Increasingly we are finding that lots of our viewers are becoming users at the same time. We've got tens of thousands of people watching Hockey Night in Canada on any Saturday night who are online at the same time, engaged in a live conversation with other people who are online about what's going on in the game. Sometimes with the program itself, we actually build that content into the conversation.

So that's the difference.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I've been thinking a lot about this over the last few days, and it's really about the strength of content.

You've been putting a lot of emphasis on reaching out, interactive media, blogs, and the other things you put in so that people can comment back and, to an extent, direct your content. Do you think the competition you're now engaged in, with several different platforms, is going to make your content much stronger and much better overall against the competition that's causing that?

[Fred Mattocks]

I think so. I think all these different capabilities that are inherent in digital space give content new life. They give it new value and they build an experience beyond the content. They go right to the core of what media are all about, which are those fundamental human experiences. We all remember a storyteller in our lives, and the goal of every media company is to create those kinds of experiences. We do those with Canadian experiences. We are focused on those kinds of things.

I think there's opportunity here. I don't actually see this as competition between platforms; I see it as a way of creating a synergy.

[Geneviève Rossier]

On our side, we have found that making something available on the web doesn't cannibalize television or radio at all. It actually builds on the strength and the notoriety of the original brands. We really find that it's building things.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Then there's no intimidation at all. I suppose there are business concerns, but you've embraced several different aspects of digital media.

In terms of content itself, is the production of television shows that can be seen at any time of the day changing the way your producers are thinking about the content they're producing? Can they now reach out to new markets that they couldn't get to before?

[Fred Mattocks]

At the end of the day, the impact or the effects on the business are profound. I'd say we were afraid a couple of years ago, maybe five years ago, and we've gotten over the fear. We're now at the point of opportunity, and as we look at the opportunities, we realize there are some things that make sense today. We look at where the economics are and we look at where the audiences are, and those help us to define the opportunities. As we look forward, we see shifts in various parts of the industry, and we try to anticipate those shifts and work with them.