Cartt.ca Podcast

WITH THE MYRIAD ISSUES facing the CRTC and regulators around the world, chair of the CRTC is a hot seat. Always has been. Always will be. Canadians care deeply about the subjects which the Commission handles on a daily basis, be it wireless phone pricing, email spam and phone scams, Canadian content, or any of the various challenges which fall under the purview of the Regulator. It all impacts our daily lives in the way we communicate, are informed and entertained. Over the course of part two of our interview with CRTC chair Ian Scott (click here for part 1), which was done at the Commission headquarters on November 13th, Scott (pictured) lays out more of what lies ahead in broadcasting and telecom in Canada and around the world. Should broadband providers, which deliver so much video, help pay for Cancon? How might AI help? Why is having two different federal government policy directives not actually a problem? What is the role of public broadcasting? How can a Regulator stay meaningful in this world? The

IAN SCOTT IS already two years through his five-year mandate as chair of the CRTC. He hasn’t been as active calling hearings as his predecessor, who kept thinking up ways of making sure regulatory departments and the journalists who cover them were always hopping, but the CRTC under Scott has still been very busy. While the Commission is an arm’s length agency, the federal government has been quite keen on pushing a few big issues which, despite what many critics might have to say, are awfully complex and difficult for the CRTC to regulate when the lists of desires from so many different parties are so long and varied. You can’t keep everyone happy, no matter what politicians might like. Scott (right) told our Bill Roberts last Wednesday at CRTC headquarters “we’re not the policy makers,” but he does have some wishes when it comes to how the federal government might set new policy in the wake of the Broadcasting and Telecom Legislative Review, whose panel report is due in January. He said he’s generally pl

“KNOW YOUR STUFF” is the advice Mary Ellen Carlyle gives to young men and women who want to make their own mark in broadcasting technology, because the challenges are difficult and numerous. If anyone knows her stuff, it’s Carlyle, who has spent 30 years at the cutting edge of live event television broadcasting and thanks to her huge and diverse body of work, she will be inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame on December 17th in New York. She will be the sixth woman and first Canadian honoured by the group whose membership are all sports broadcasters. Back in 1989, when she started with Dome Productions after a few years at TSN, the company produced just 81 baseball games and 10 CFL games. That has exploded to 2,500 events annually, consisting of all manner of sports (including the growing E-sports genre, in which Dome was an early leader) to political events like last year’s G7 in Charlevoix, Quebec and the Toronto Raptors run to the NBA finals and the championship parade. Thanks to the decisi

IN PART TWO OF our podcast with outgoing APTN CEO Jean La Rose, he tells our Bill Roberts how challenging it has been to try and serve the more than 50(!) Aboriginal language communities in Canada. He talks about how covering some very sensitive topics bubbling up from within Indigenous communities is a very difficult line for APTN to walk. Even popular shows like Mohawk Girls and Blackstone address, and display, taboo subject matter which some viewers would rather not see and has “caused some dissention” at first because they might be subjects people don’t want to address – but how deft producers can turn that into a positive. La Rose also demonstrates how APTN isn’t just about addressing the challenges facing Indigenous communities in Canada, but celebrating their successes, too. Speaking of successes, did you know when APTN launched, there were a total of six Indigenous TV producers in Canada – and now there are well over 100 who have benefitted from the work and exposure APTN provided – and who have go

JEAN LA ROSE HAS BEEN CEO of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network for 17 of the channel’s 20 years. To say he’s seen a lot is an immeasurable understatement. He tells our Bill Roberts how he felt the sting of racism as an Indigenous Canadian and how hard it has been not only to help to protect Indigenous people from harm, but their culture from the onslaught of global media which doesn’t reflect the lives of the majority of his viewers. APTN grew from a channel which, La Rose (pictured) admits, didn’t really know what it was doing at first, to what is now an internationally recognized force to be reckoned with. Its news “uncovers the stories others won’t,” which mainstream media will then cover only after APTN has pulled back the curtain. It’s not easy as an Indigenous broadcaster, but APTN has plans to grow despite cord-cutting (it’s a BDU must-carry, so cord cutting hits its bottom line directly) and to build on its burgeoning reputation as a player in television, which really took off after its ste

THERE’S NOT MUCH TIME left to save our cultural institutions and corporations in Canada, says Richard Stursberg. If our federal government doesn’t act soon, what it means to be Canadian will be subsumed by the sheer volume of American culture washing over us online while our “feckless” Canadian government stands idly by. “We’re going to be completely dominated by American content,” he says. The former assistant deputy minister of culture and broadcasting and former CBC, Shaw, and Telefilm executive, recently released a brand new book, called The Tangled Garden. A Canadian Cultural Manifesto for the Digital Age, which is a soup to nuts re-envisioning of Canadian content and the Canadian media industry which is cracking under the enormous pressure being applied by the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) companies. Those foreign interlopers need to start playing by the same rules (at least start with having them pay the same level of tax, he implores) as Canadian broadcasters (because those FA

NO CANADIAN MEDIA company has grown over the past 12 years the way Montreal’s Stingray Group has. Getting its start in 2007 when its founder purchased a South Carolina-based karaoke business, Stingray has grown in ways that co-founder and current CEO Eric Boyko couldn’t have fathomed in the beginning. With its $506 million purchase of Newcap Radio last year, Stingray is now one of the largest radio station owners in Canada – while also owning 80% of the world’s karaoke market (who knew!?). Known primarily in Canadian media circles as the TV music company (but with a thriving line of business providing companies like retailers and ski resorts with background music), Stingray now has over 400 million subscribers in 143 countries, primarily in the business to business space, but with a growing B2C presence. It provides music and video such 4KTV and concerts to cable, IPTV, or wireless carriers and some, like Stingray Qello, direct to consumers. Imagine the myriad copyrights regimes it has to manage! Boyko (ri

JUST FIVE YEARS OLD, producer New Metric Media’s star is rising. In this edition of the Cartt.ca podcast, company president and executive producer Mark Montefiore tells Cartt.ca’s Bill Roberts why he’s optimistic about Canadian content in a world of transnational digital giants, why working in Sudbury is great and how franchising rural Canada and its icons like craft beer, hockey and the mob, will work – and is working around the world. While Letterkenny may be the best known title in his stable as the primary original production anchoring Bell Media’s Crave and which is also now available Stateside on Hulu, New Metric’s Canadian mob series Bad Blood (a tentpole production for Citytv in 2018), made its debut on Netflix just before Christmas – with the hopes it will be picked up for season two by the streaming giant. In this podcast, Montefiore (right) also explains his shift five years ago from film to TV when he asked himself “why is 100% of my business in feature films when 100% of what I’m watching is t

PHIL LIND MAY ALWAYS BE remembered as Ted Rogers’ cajoling consigliere. Sure, Phil had more appearances before the CRTC – over 100 – than anybody; and he’s put in 40 exciting years co-building the Rogers brand and our country’s second-largest telecommunications and media company – Rogers Communications. But to caricature Phil Lind as merely Ted’s strategic “Abominable No Man” is to sell this man very short. His new book Right Hand Man: How Phil Lind Guided the Genius of Ted Rogers, Canada’s Foremost Entrepreneur, written with Bob Brehl, may not be headed for the RBC Taylor Prize, but I couldn’t put it down (Cartt.ca published excerpts here and here). From sports to politics, to the arts, to environmental awareness, to Canada-U.S. relations, to the stroke that left the right side of his body paralyzed — he’s got quite a story to tell. It’s also at times pretty candid about Ted’s character, which clearly included business genius – but also bullying, encouraging back-biting, and sometimes resenting this righ

THE CBC REACHES 20 million Canadians every month when counting its various platforms, be it TV, radio, online, apps, or podcasts. It’s an impressive number, but not one Catherine Tait (pictured), who was hired as CEO of the CBC five months ago, wants to dwell upon – as she tells our Bill Roberts in the latest Cartt.ca podcast. Tait is more concerned about engagement, about fostering trust and connecting Canadians in as many ways as possible. She calls trust, especially now when we are all so swamped with information (not to mention misinformation, disinformation and lies) the CBC’s “most precious asset” and something that needs constant tending with tools like high quality investigative news, local news and top-notch Canadian programming. Despite growing global media players (some of whom CBC has partnered with on certain shows) dominating the media space, Tait believes there are a great many niches the public broadcaster can serve which are being missed by those media titans. Netflix might be a great part

ONE OF THE MOST powerful TV executives in Canada says she’s responsible for one thing – audiences – and earning them via Corus Entertainment’s TV, radio, digital and content properties. Those audiences are faced with more entertainment choice than at any time in history – and they are more fickle than ever before. So what is the plan of attack for Barbara Williams (pictured), the company’s executive vice-president and chief operating officer? It’s to make Corus into a modern, data-focused, globally competitive content company, one whose base is in Canada – but which hasn’t been helped by a federal government which she says has forgotten Canadian broadcasters are still a massive, vital portion of our creative economy. How will Corus compete against Netflix, which is claiming more and more cable-style series? How important does simultaneous substitution remain when linear television is enduring substantial ratings declines? What’s the plan to lure young people to watching Corus’ popular content? How does the

Listen in as Bill Roberts interviews Claude Joli-Coeur, the government film commissioner and chair of the National Film Board. The NFB has long been a global leader in the film space in so many ways. So much of its content is just superb and its films often push the envelope on content, as evidenced by its 74 Academy Award nominations and hundreds of other accolades. It has launched some groundbreaking, and early, pushes into digital distribution and its more recent work on gender equity in Canadian filmmaking as well as the promotion of the work of indigenous filmmakers has others playing catch-up. It has developed substantial Canadian film talent over the years and has told myriad Canadian stories to Canadians, and the world – and has some cool plans to help celebrate Canada 150. Please listen in to this fascinating interview done last month in Montreal.

LISTEN AS THE TWO DISCUSS topics such as Michael's strategy for Blue Ant, international media opportunities for Canadian entrepreneurs (big), what makes leading Blue Ant different from helming Alliance Atlantis, the opportunity YouTube presents (also big) plus the Canadian pick and pay future. The wide-ranging podcast interview also touches on some of Michael's personal passions – such as his Samara charity, dedicated to engaging Canadians with the democratic process; and being a winery owner in Prince Edward County with the hazards of late May frosts…

Join Bill Roberts (former president and CEO of VisionTV) in an exclusive Cartt.ca podcast with Conway as she talks about CBC host firings, the effect of the CRTC’s Let's Talk TV policies, staff cuts, the future of streaming content, CBC Radio 2, ad sales, NHL hockey and more. See above to click right to the 32-minute interview done at the CBC headquarters. (Ed note: As a busy executive, Conway doesn’t have a ton of free time for media, so our preamble you’ll read here is taken from a post-podcast interview Roberts did with her to finish up the line of questions he had, but ran out of time to ask – so you can either read it before, or after, listening to the podcast.) Heather Conway (pictured) walks a fine line in reconciling the aspirational needs of a creative and innovative CBC with the requirement to be both popular and accessible to the Canadian public. "There are quite a few guideposts,” according to Conway. "For example, legislation gives us a mandate to enlighten... but we have to be very cognizant a

IN THIS CONVERSATION WITH our crack interviewer, former Vision TV CEO Bill Roberts, Hubert T. Lacroix quickly answered one of the questions we recently posed to him in print: Whether he believes it is his good fortune – or misfortune – to be leading the CBC at this particular moment in history. His answer? “It’s the most important and the greatest job in culture in this country,” he said. “I feel very fortunate to have the job that I have.” Good thing, because Lacroix will be facing his board of directors the week of June 16th to present them a new plan for a smaller, more agile, CBC. While he couldn’t divulge his exact strategy to Bill, what’s at stake is clearly personal to him. Referencing his childhood and life as a Canadian, Lacroix says “CBC/Radio-Canada is the place where my values were shaped… There’s no more fierce defender of public broadcasting that Hubert Lacroix.” The CEO noted that it’s not only CBC that is feeling the heat and trying to deal with massive media disruption, but all broadcaster

ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, TFO, Ontario’s publicly-owned French educational media outlet, will host a bilingual one-day conference for educators, policy makers and technology leaders to discuss this technology’s impact on children in the classroom and beyond. The Tablettistes Conference will run from 8 am to 4.30 pm, at York University’s Glendon College in Toronto. TFO, which flies under the radar a bit as the only French-language broadcaster outside the province of Quebec, has been a leader in the multiplatform media space, offering innovative content for Francophone and Francophile audiences. In Ontario, the rest of Canada, and even beyond, as you’ll hear. They talked about television, new technology, education and adapting to change in an enlightening 25-minute conversation. We hope you enjoy. And, if you have any other ideas for a podcast subject, please let us know and we'll do our best to make it happen!