Category Archives: TV

Bell’s MTV2 becomes latest casualty of specialty channel decline

If you’re a subscriber of Bell Media’s MTV2 channel, you may have already received a notice that the channel is being shut down at the end of March.

The shutdown is not too surprising. It was on my list of endangered channels along with ESPN Classic and Yoopa, which have seen dramatic declines in subscribers and advertising in recent years.

According to the latest CRTC data for the 2021-22 broadcast year, MTV2 had about 750,000 subscribers (including zero satellite TV subscribers), about $215,000 in total advertising revenue, and had cut expenses by 84% in four years to try to shrink itself back into profitability.

Billed as “the ultimate destination for Canada’s 12-24s”, the channel currently runs marathons of reality shows like The Real World, Teen Mom, Catfish, Geordie Shore and Canadian filler shows Cash Cab and Comedy Now!

The channel began service in 2001 during the digital specialty channel explosion, originally as Craig Media-owned MTV Canada, then rebranded to Razer and finally to MTV2. MTV still exists as a separate Bell Media channel under a separate licence, though Bell hasn’t done much more to promote that channel than it did MTV2, and it was also bleeding money according to CRTC data.

Natasha Hall, Mose Persico, Lise McAuley among Bell Media cuts in Montreal

Two weeks after BCE announced it was abolishing 4,800 jobs, we’re starting to learn how those losses are trickling down to the local level.

In Montreal, CTV News was hit hard. The station’s website confirms weather presenter Lise McAuley, assignment editor Derek Conlon and production assistant and movie reviewer Mosé Persico no longer work for the company. That’s decades of experience with CFCF gone.

Director Yves Marion and producer Helen Michailidis have also left the organization.

CTV News also lost Montreal-based national reporter Vanessa Lee. There’s no official list nationally, but correspondent Judy Trinh notes some names gone at CTV National News. It includes Kevin Gallagher, who was formerly a local reporter with CTV Montreal.

On the radio side, CJAD cut afternoon co-host Natasha Hall and Trivia Show co-host Dan Laxer. The loss of Hall isn’t entirely unexpected — a schedule shuffle in 2021 to incorporate more unoriginal programming on the schedule meant merging her show with Aaron Rand’s and making them co-hosts. This made one of them an easier cut in the next round of layoffs.

Rand, no stranger to having to carry on after his co-hosts get fired, paid tribute to Hall in a Facebook post, calling her “a smart, talented, and a consummate radio professional who didn’t deserve this outcome.”

With Laxer’s departure, Ken Connors is listed as the sole host of the Sunday morning Trivia Show.

I haven’t seen any cuts at CHOM, Virgin Radio or TSN Radio in Montreal. Despite the sword of Damocles seeming to dangle above TSN 690’s head, the station itself seems to have survived the latest round of cuts.

As announced with the news of the layoffs, CTV has cancelled noon newscasts at local stations outside Toronto, as well as news on holidays. CTV Montreal’s weekend newscasts survived the cut, along with Ottawa and Toronto, but other CTV stations have seen those newscasts cut as well.

Jon Stewart is coming back to The Daily Show, but it’s not coming back to CTV

For those of you who miss the good ol’ days of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is the old host is coming back. Stewart will host the show Mondays during this presidential election cycle, starting Feb. 12, and be an executive producer.

The bad news is the show isn’t coming back to CTV or CTV Comedy. Paramount confirms the show’s Canadian rights will remain with the Paramount+ streaming service, where it had moved since the end of the writers strike.

The show will be available on Paramount+ the day after it airs on Comedy Central.

Many Canadians (including myself) were confused when they heard the show had resumed production in October but CTV continued airing The Big Bang Theory reruns at 12:05am weekdays. Bell Media would only say it no longer had the rights to the show.

Then Paramount+, a service few Canadians have heard of much less subscribe to, announced it was adding The Daily Show last month. But within weeks, the show disappeared from there too. Paramount told me it’s because they weren’t producing new episodes at the time. (Why they couldn’t have archived episodes available is unclear.)

Today’s news confirms that even with Stewart’s return, the show won’t be widely available in Canada. Paramount+, which also includes Yellowstone, Yellowstone spinoffs, a bunch of series you’ve never heard of and that Sylvester Stallone project you may have seen ads for, costs $10/month directly, or through Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime Video.

Bell Media has complained recently to the CRTC and others that big U.S. streaming services are unfairly competing for Canadian rights to shows, making it harder for Bell to make money. It used the example of Star Trek, which is also owned by Paramount. Though CTV and Space/CTV Sci-Fi has been Star Trek’s home since the days of The Next Generation, expect future Trek series to be exclusive to Paramount+ in Canada. (The service already has all the Star Trek series, but for now at least those rights are mostly non-exclusive.)

PWHL’s TV deals are a win for fans

As I’m writing this, the Professional Women’s Hockey League is playing its first regular-season game, featuring Toronto and New York (they don’t have names yet) at Mattamy Athletic Centre (aka the old Maple Leaf Gardens) in Toronto.

There were a lot of unanswered questions in the months leading up to this launch. Some, like names and logos, remain unanswered, but the league understandably wanted to get the players actually playing as soon as possible.

One thing that worried me was television coverage. You’re not going to build a fanbase if the fans can’t watch you play. And as the weeks went on without news, I started to get worried. Surely they can’t start the season without a broadcaster, can they?

On Dec. 20, I noticed that TSN had added “Hockey TBA” to its schedule coinciding with the first three PWHL games of the season, and RDS had added a “TBA” for Montreal’s first game. Then I saw Sportsnet added a game to Sportsnet One, and CBC put the inaugural game on its schedule.

The press releases only came out Dec. 29, three days before puck drop and in the middle of that news dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s. It confirmed that rights to the league would be shared between the networks:

  • 34 games on TSN, of which seven will be only on the TSN+ premium streaming service
  • 17 games on Sportsnet
  • 18 games on CBC, though most of those will be streaming-only. CBC will also air some games at 1:30am after Hockey Night in Canada.
  • 16 Montreal games on RDS
  • 8 Montreal games on Radio-Canada’s Ici Tou.tv
  • 24 New York games on MSG Networks
  • 24 Boston games on NESN (or NESN+)

No deal was announced for Minnesota games, so hopefully someone steps up soon to bring games to those fans. The deals allow for out-of-market broadcasts (MSG and NESN are regional networks) so hopefully other U.S. regional networks pick up rights to bring women’s hockey to their fans.

I compiled a full PWHL season schedule for Montreal for the Gazette. All 24 games will be available in at least one language, though three of them will be online-only in both.

This could have ended several other ways. The PWHL could have tried to launch its own paid streaming service, or signed an exclusive deal with one broadcaster. Instead, the first game is on three competing networks and all games are available on YouTube (the PWHL promises no geoblocking so people in other countries can watch the league through the world’s most accessible video streaming platform).

They’re probably not getting a lot of money out of these deals, if any, but right now what’s important is getting fans invested, and this is a good step toward that goal.

The Daily Show disappears from Canada after CTV drops it (UPDATED)

If you’re like me, you missed late-night shows during the U.S. writers and actors strikes. And though you moved on to other things during the summer, you were looking forward to seeing topical comedy again when they came back.

You might have tuned to CTV at 12:05am and seen another Big Bang Theory rerun and wondered how long it would be until The Daily Show resumed production. And then you might have been confused when you learned they had been producing new episodes for weeks.

Unfortunately, you won’t be seeing The Daily Show again on CTV, or CTV Comedy, any time soon. Bell Media has dropped the show.

When I asked about it, this is the entirety of the response I received from Bell:

I can confirm that Bell Media is no longer carrying THE DAILY SHOW.

I didn’t get a reply to follow-up questions, including the obvious “why?”

A convenient hole-filler

The existence of The Daily Show on CTV, and its popularity among Canadians, probably has as much to do with a scheduling quirk as anything else.

For decades, CTV’s schedule in most markets consists of prime-time programming mainly imported from the U.S. between 8 and 11pm, followed by CTV National News until 11:30 and then late local news until 12:05am. Because the CRTC set Canadian content rules defining prime time as 6pm-12am, the schedule made sense from a regulatory perspective. The more Canadian content (including news) you put in 6-8pm and 11pm-12am, the more U.S. imports you can put in 8-11pm.

After midnight, the rules are different and U.S. imports can come back in. But the two big late-night shows, NBC’s The Tonight Show and CBS’s The Late Show, both start at 11:35pm. ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Live started at midnight but now it too has moved to 11:35.

As a half-hour show, The Daily Show could fill a gap between the 12:05am end of the local news and the 12:35am start of the late-late shows. And during the post-9/11 Jon Stewart era, it gained popularity in both countries.

Now, for whatever reason, Bell has decided it no longer makes sense. Not because schedules have changed, but probably because of money.

The Daily Show isn’t what it was under Stewart. Besides Stewart himself, top talent have moved on to other shows like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Since Trevor Noah’s departure a year ago, it has had a parade of fill-in hosts.

Meanwhile, The Big Bang Theory is cheap and reruns are very popular in Canada. So for now, at least, CTV is going in that direction.

The Daily Show wasn’t part of CTV’s fall schedule announcement in the summer, which means the decision not to keep it probably dates to at least then.

Where can I watch it?

So if CTV no longer has the rights to the Daily Show, where can Canadians watch it?

The short answer is you can’t. At least not yet. It’s not on a competing network, it’s not on Netflix or Amazon. Your only option to watch it legally is to buy individual episodes on Apple TV.

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris for pointing this out — Paramount+ Canada is adding The Daily Show starting Dec. 5. Comedy Central is owned by Paramount.

There wasn’t another obvious home for The Daily Show on regular Canadian TV. Global has The Late Show, Citytv has Jimmy Kimmel, and there isn’t really another non-Bell-owned comedy channel it would be a good fit for.

UPDATE (Jan. 23, 2024): Some people have noticed The Daily Show disappearing from Paramount+. I asked Paramount about it, and they said “The Daily Show does not currently have new episodes which is why none are currently appearing on Paramount+, stay tuned for more information.”

The day after, Jon Stewart announced he was returning as host one day a week, and Paramount confirmed his shows will be exclusive to Paramount+ in Canada, the day after they’re broadcast.

YouTube blackout

Fans of Seth Meyers may have noticed there aren’t as many clips of his late night show on YouTube as there used to be. Unfortunately the clips are there, they just are being blocked in Canada, along with those of the Tonight Show. Both are Bell-licensed NBC shows. It’s unclear if this is at Bell’s request, to protect its rights, or if it’s NBC’s doing, cutting off non-U.S. countries. The Daily Show has the same problem, with just a handful of YouTube clips not being restricted here.

My questions to Bell on this subject did not elicit a response.

Fortunately, Seth Meyers clips are being posted to Facebook and those are still accessible here, and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show is posting clips (mostly vertical, cuz the youths) to social media as well.

TVA to replace Yoopa with TV version of QUB Radio

The fallout of the Bell-Quebecor war has another victim: Yoopa, which Bell pulled from its television service in retaliation for Quebecor’s Videotron pulling Bell channels Vrak and Z, is being shut down in January, replaced by a video version of Quebecor’s QUB Radio online radio service as of Jan. 11.

According to its annual filing with the CRTC, Yoopa had $2.6 million in revenue, all but $30,000 of which came from subscriptions, in 2021-22, and spent about $2 million on programming, a bit less than half of which was Canadian. It had 340,000 subscribers and a staff of three.

The loss leaves a hole for television targeting young children, though public broadcasters Radio-Canada and Télé-Québec devote much of their morning programming to programs for kids.

Meanwhile, Quebecor seems to be doubling down on its QUB Radio digital talk radio project, and will now be putting even more resources into it, even though it already has a 24/7 news channel in LCN. Quebecor doesn’t release ratings or financials for this online-only service so we have no idea if it’s successful. But it’s cheap, at least compared to the news programming we see on LCN.

Whether QUB Radio or its still-to-be-named TV version lasts is an open question. Honestly I’m a bit surprised it survived the latest round of media cuts at Quebecor.

In theory, QUB TV could apply to be a national news service, requiring other providers to carry it, but that would require having news bureaus and regular news updates, and the CRTC might have some questions if it tries to just piggyback on LCN’s resources to achieve that status.

Videotron will obviously embrace QUB Radio on TV. Bell is probably not interested. Whether others who carry Yoopa, like Cogeco, make the switch is an open question.

Desperate TVA cuts a third of its staff

In what the union representing TVA employees called “La journée la plus noire de notre histoire” (the darkest day of our history), the company announced on Thursday afternoon (after a leak from La Presse forced an order to halt trading on its stock) that it is eliminating 547 jobs, representing 31% of TVA Group’s current workforce.

Most of those jobs — 300 — will be in in-house productions through its TVA Productions subsidiary. Though most drama, variety and bid-budget primetime shows are already produced by independent companies, there are a few still done in-house, and three of them — game shows Le Tricheur and La Poule aux oeufs d’or plus trending-video magazine show VLOG — are being outsourced.

This leaves news and news-adjacent programming as the only stuff still done in-house. Newscasts, LCN, morning news/talk show Salut Bonjour, and some programs at TVA Sports.

The expectation is that many of the people working on producing these shows will be hired by the independent companies they will be outsourced to, and TVA “will begin discussions with its partners to encourage them to hire employees affected by the announced measures, according to their needs.”

But that doesn’t mean they’ll get the salary or benefits they did at TVA, and it probably means no longer being unionized.

What’s changing

So here’s a quick list of what has been announced:

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CTV adds national newscast at 5:30, taking a page from Global

A very disinterested-looking Sandie Rinaldo will host CTV National News at 5:30, but CTV wants to make sure it doesn’t take any of the spotlight off Omar Sachedina.

After decades of having local news at 6pm and national news at 11pm, CTV is mixing things up a bit, announcing this week that it is launching a new national newscast at 5:30pm weekdays on CTV stations across the country, hosted by Sandie Rinaldo.

On one hand, this could be seen as taking a direct shot at Global, which runs Global National during the supper hour, either before, after or sandwiched between local newscasts depending on the market.

On the other hand, this could be seen as CTV wanting to save some money by eliminating half an hour of local news every day and replacing it with national programming. This interpretation fits with CTV’s statement that National News “now also provides unique segments covering the key stories and events happening across Canada and around the world as part of the early evening CTV News local newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays.”

I asked Bell Media if this means cuts to local news staffing.

“We can confirm there are no impacts to staffing levels as a result of the launch of the 5:30 p.m. edition of CTV National News,” was the statement I got back.

That doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be indirect impacts, but at least there are no layoff notices going out right away.

Starting Nov. 13, CTV stations that have been running 5pm local newscasts for the past six years will see those early programs cut to half an hour and replaced by National News. Then the 6pm local newscasts will be “intensely local-focused,” according to Bell Media, since they won’t have to include as much national and international news content. It might not mean less local news (90 minutes is still plenty) but it will mean having to fill less time, and getting a break during what is right now two straight hours of broadcasting from local stations.

Global already sandwiches national news between two local newscasts in several markets including Montreal, so expect a similar feel at CTV, with the assumption that most people will watch one of the local newscasts but not both.

What early national newscasts will look like is a good question. Will it be like local noon newscasts, where reporters do live hits explaining stories they’re just starting to cover that day? Will national reporters have to file earlier, making the 11pm national newscast mainly rehashing what was reported at 5:30pm, or will the 5:30pm newscast have a lot of stories repeated from 11pm the previous day, or some mix of the two? Or will it be like just watching half an hour of CTV News Channel, but with a somewhat larger budget?

Review

UPDATE (Nov. 16): I watched CTV National News from Nov. 15, its third day on the air. It looked like the same CTV National News we’re used to. There was a bit more of that afternoon live-on-the-scene feel, particularly with some breaking stories. More live throws to reporters, although many of them were probably “look-live” in which the reporter’s part was pre-recorded.

With one exception, the 11pm newscast with Omar Sachedina had the same stories as the 5:30pm one with Sandie Rinaldo, though most of the hard-news ones were updated with the evening’s developments and reporter standups that had less daylight outside.

As for the “intensely local-focused” 6pm newscast, it looked like any other. It stayed local for 20 minutes, but for the rest of the hour I counted a couple of local stories, a couple of local briefs, a live interview and weather segments, and the rest was national news, local news from other CTV stations, and various international stories, including one that mostly duplicated one from the national news. The 5pm local newscast, in its reduced 30-minute version, stayed almost entirely local.

CRTC adds Natyf TV to Quebec basic packages with 13 hours notice

If you’re a digital TV subscriber in Quebec, you’re soon going to start seeing a new TV channel in your basic package. Last week, the CRTC announced it was giving Quebec ethnic TV channel Natyf TV a broadcasting licence and ordering all providers to add it to their basic service and pay $0.12 per subscriber per month.

The order took effect Sept. 1, 2023, and lasts five years. The decision was announced at 11am on Aug. 31, 13 hours before the order came into effect. It was one of several decisions the commission put out in the days before the end of the broadcasting year as it rushed to meet its deadlines.

The next day, realizing that this may be a bit short notice, the CRTC wrote a letter saying providers should add the channel “as soon as reasonably possible.”

(For context, Natyf’s application was filed in April 2021 and the hearing to discuss it was held in January.)

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Videotron to shut down MAtv community channel in Montreal

MAtv, Videotron’s community television channel, is shutting down its Montreal service, Quebecor announced on Wednesday.

The reason is the same reason why Rogers shut down Rogers TV, Shaw closed Shaw TV and Bell pulled funding for TV1 in large cities: The CRTC gave them a financial incentive to do so.

In 2017, when the commission reviewed its regulatory framework for community and local television, it decided to allow vertically integrated broadcast/telecom companies to take some of the money their TV providers had to spend on Canadian content (and were incentivized to use on community television channels) and instead redirect that money to their local private television stations for local news. This was the CRTC’s solution to local news being in financial difficulty. (Non-vertically-integrated TV stations are supported through a separate fund, which is also in crisis because now it has to support Global News as well.)

Quebecor resisted this change at first, choosing to keep MAtv open in Montreal. But with TVA’s financial situation worsened, it has finally chosen to pull the plug. The company says the equivalent of five jobs will be affected, plus three others in the rest of the MAtv network.

The CRTC policy allows 100% of community TV funding to be redirected in large cities (which have private TV stations that do local news), but in smaller markets, only half the funding for community TV can be redirected, so those communities are generally keeping their community TV stations. MAtv will continue to operate in markets outside Montreal. (TVRS, an independent community channel on the South Shore whose content appeared on the MAtv channel on Videotron systems there, will also continue, it said.)

The loss of the Montreal channel, however, means the loss of English-language programming on MAtv. Not that there was much left anyway. CityLife, the last regular program in English, was cancelled a year ago.

Quebecor says it will keep MAtv Montreal going until next summer to air programs it has produced. After that, it’s a bit unclear. They could keep the channel and just fill it with programming from other regions, they could replace it with another community channel in Montreal, or remove the channel for Montreal subscribers.

Bell Media gave up on Vrak, now it’s shutting it down (which channel is next?)

The announcement came last week: Bell Media is ending the “activities” of Vrak, a channel that used to be about family and youth but recently has become just another soulless number airing reruns and dubbed American shows.

It was surprising in that Vrak was one of the marquee Astral Media specialty channels, had a larger than usual amount of original programming focused especially on youth (kind of like a Quebec version of YTV), a hefty per-subscriber fee and a good amount of name recognition in Quebec.

But Videotron finally pulled Vrak from its distribution service last week (it wanted to do so more than a year ago, but Bell complained to the CRTC, which finally ruled in February that it could not prevent Videotron from terminating its agreement with the channel and sister channel Z).

And all the stuff that was special about Vrak was in the past tense anyway. It cancelled all that original programming, and even dropped its youth focus. When it announced its fall schedule recently, the “original productions” section was all shows that were original to Bell Media but not to Vrak, and had already aired on Noovo or Crave. Its “interim” schedule, until Sept. 30, allows it to finish off seasons of shows for the few still watching.

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It’s not just Bell: Here’s how Canadian TV broadcasters are begging the CRTC for relief

There’s been a lot of uproar since Bell Media applied to the CRTC seeking rather drastic relief on its conditions of licence for conventional television stations. But it would be a mistake to think this is just a Bell thing. Just about every major TV broadcaster, including the CBC, has recently asked the commission to give some relief or flexibility. Some of those requests are reasonable, even logical. Others are exceptional. But all of them have the same underlying purpose: finding ways to save money because of economic forces that are pushing people away from traditional television.

Here’s what they’re asking for.

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Bell Media asks CRTC to eliminate all local news requirements for CTV, CTV2 and Noovo stations

Saying it can’t wait until the coming review of television policy and group licence renewals completes its long process, Bell Media has filed applications with the CRTC to eliminate all regulatory requirements for local news at all of its CTV, CTV2 and Noovo stations across the country.

“Over the last decade, the operating environment for traditional, private Canadian broadcasters has changed dramatically,” Bell writes in its application. “Whereas in the past, Canadians looked to domestic services for information and entertainment, they can now access a virtually unlimited array of DMBUs such as Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple+, most of which are foreign owned and controlled.”

Specifically, Bell is asking to eliminate the following conditions of licence:

  • A requirement for English-language stations in large markets to broadcast 14 hours of local programming per week
  • A requirement for French-language stations to broadcast local programming each week (5 hours in Montreal and Quebec, 2.5 hours at other stations)
  • Requirements for locally reflective news in English each week (6 hours in large markets, 3 hours in small markets, and special lower quotas for smaller or regional stations)
  • A requirement for 5 hours of locally reflective news each week on Noovo’s Montreal station
  • A requirement for Bell (as a group) to spend 11% of CTV/CTV2’s gross revenues on locally reflective news and 5% of Noovo’s gross revenues

If the CRTC grants all these requests, the only condition of licence related to local programming that would remain is a general requirement that stations outside metropolitan markets must broadcast seven hours of local programming per week (other smaller stations have exceptions for either less local programming or allowing them to group that requirement with nearby stations). This content would have to be local, but not necessarily news.

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Your guide to the new CanCon dramas of 2023

Canadian content. Depending on your views about the broadcasting industry, it’s either an important public policy to ensure Canada has its distinct culture and its citizens consume it, it’s a nationalist protection of cultural sector jobs to prevent talent from moving to Hollywood, or it’s a waste of taxpayer money for poor-quality TV shows that no one wants to watch.

Or maybe a combination of all the above.

This winter and spring saw a bigger than usual crop of new English Canadian scripted series on TV, and with a mix of curiosity and patriotic obligation, I decided to sample each of them.

While funding has always been a challenge for homegrown Canadian TV, discoverability has been an increasingly large one as well. You’re no longer limited to a handful of channels on TV, and even most people with TVs don’t watch a lot of their shows live. Without discoverability, a fantastic Canadian series could be lost to history because no one gave it a chance.

Canadian TV networks are trying. CBC has been pushing its series during Hockey Night in Canada, while CTV has aired endless commercials for its series during more popular programs.

They could do better, though. CTV and Citytv have their series behind online paywalls, requiring TV subscribers to sign in even though CTV and Citytv themselves are available free over the air. And if your TV provider doesn’t have deals with those networks (like, say, Videotron), then you can’t sign in to get access to these series. You’ll either have to wait for reruns or hope they show up on Netflix some day.

Anyway, to help give these series a discoverability boost, I watched a few episodes of each and provide a quick review. Some probably aren’t your cup of tea, and that’s okay, but if some sound interesting to you, and you have access, maybe give them a shot.

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What Bill C-11 means for online media

It’s done, Bill C-11, Canada’s new Online Streaming Act, has passed the House of Commons and Senate, received royal assent, and been made into law.

Welcome to the end times.

Or maybe not.

A few people have asked me to write about C-11, because they weren’t sure what it would mean. I don’t blame them. But on one hand I was a bit busy with stuff, and on the other hand, reading the bill it became clear that it’s designed not to be very specific about a lot of the things people actually care about. Instead, a lot of the details are just kind of left up to the CRTC, or to the government’s instructions to the commission. The law just establishes a legal framework for regulating online media, and corrects or updates various elements of the Broadcasting Act.

On May 12, the CRTC took the next step in this process, launching a formal consultation process for new regulations on broadcasting. It’s a long process, with a hearing in November, and they expect to actually have new rules put in place in 2024.

Here, I’ll explain a bit of what’s actually happening (and what’s not happening) with this new law and how it’s being implemented. In short: you’re probably not going to notice that much of a difference.

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