Roundup: Bell Media’s plea to the CRTC

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We’ve been talking a lot about the state of media in Canada lately, and the awfulness hasn’t stopped as Bell Media is now asking the CRTC to let it get out of its local news requirements citing that they are losing money. But this isn’t a surprise—news is generally money-losing for broadcasters, but it’s content with a lot of eyeballs that they can charge a lot of advertising dollars for.

But let’s also be up front—Bell is making money hand over fist because they are part of the telecom oligopoly in this country, and are an extremely profitable company. Their local news obligations are part of the price of admission, and the CRTC is not being shy about this. With the Rogers-Shaw merger, one of the conditions they imposed was the creation of a certain number of hours of new information programming from their stations, which basically amounts to a new one-hour documentary per week, for nearly every week of the year. And this is a condition of their broadcast licence, so they can’t get out of it.

With this in mind, I’m pretty confident that the CRTC is going to tell Bell Media to get stuffed, and possibly even impose more news obligations as part of their licencing requirements because they’re aware of the state of news media. And the fact that the new CRTC Commissioner was a competition lawyer gives me some added confidence in this because she gets the problems associated with centralized news production and how local markets suffer as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

At least three people in Ukraine were killed by Russian attacks, two of them on a trolleybus that came under fire in Kherson. There were also reports of heavy Russian missile attacks overnight. Ukraine has also signalled that the main thrust of its counteroffensive has yet to happen, which is obvious from the fact that they haven’t yet committed the bulk of their forces. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also ordered an audit of the heads of military draft offices after allegations of corruption.

https://twitter.com/kyivpost/status/1672148522488016897

Meanwhile, things are blowing up in Russia, quite literally, as the head of the Wagner mercenary group has turned on the Russian military, and has so far seized the military command in Rostov, and allegedly plans to head to Moscow in order to confront the military leadership there. Thus far, it’s hard to say if this is a mutiny or a military coup, and it’s hard to get any accurate information without an independent press in Russia, so everything should be taken with a shaker full of salt, but it’s going to be an interesting few days.

Good reads:

  • Mona Fortier continues to insist that she’s working on changing the administrative process for the Access to Information system, rather than asking for legislation.
  • One of the bills that received royal assent this week is one which reforms the disciplinary process for judges.
  • Changes to competition law around wage-fixing and no-poaching agreements are now in effect.
  • CBSA has arrested an Indian education agent as part of the scandal involving fake college admission letters.
  • The Royal Canadian Air Force has identified its two members who died in the helicopter crash earlier in the week.
  • Reporters got a look inside the Centre Block and the state of the renovations, which are “on track” for a 2032 reopening (which is beyond the original timeline).
  • The Harrington Lake official residence needs a new roof ahead of schedule because of ice damming, even though it just had $5.7 million in major renovations.
  • Here is a look into why the Conservatives suddenly all voted for the child care bill that they objected to all the way through.
  • Conservative Senator Victor Oh posted a Mandarin-language video calling on Chinese Canadians to fundraise to sue the “messy” reporters.
  • Another New Brunswick Cabinet member resigned and four past party presidents want Blaine Higgs to resign. (This is about Higgs, not Policy 713).
  • There are a few more clues as to what happened with the rapid hiring/firing of Dr. Deena Hinshaw and the subsequent resignations at Alberta Health Services.
  • My weekend column looks at this government’s continued inability to make timely appointments, particularly with regards to judges and senators.

Odds and ends:

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