According to the 2H13 edition of Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena report, real-time entertainment continues to expand its reach and impact on networks. Netflix and YouTube now represent more than half of North America’s downstream traffic loads. Only two years after launching in the UK, Netflix already represents 20% of the traffic on some British networks.
The CRTC’s 2013 Communications Monitoring Report shows that in 2012, more than 1 in 5 Anglophone Canadians subscribes to Netflix, versus just 5% of Francophones. This tremendous growth has driven the market capitalization of Netflix to more than $20B, its stock price quadrupling in the past year.
Sony has its own streaming video platform, Crackle, that has been available to Canadians since 2010. Crackle distributes content from Sony Pictures’ library of TV series and feature films across mobile and fixed internet connections and connected TV. The service is ad-supported, free to viewers. A Crackle App is available for Android, iOS and even the BlackBerry Z10.
Crackle has also been commissioning original programming, series and feature films, to supplement its growing library of full-length movies and TV series. Its latest series, Cleaners, includes Canadian actress Emmanuelle Chriqui.
Unlike Netflix, Crackle is free across all of its platforms.
As a further alternative, VMedia offers Canadians an over-the-top alternative to traditional TV, with a full range of channels and packaging.
As the CRTC continues its “conversation on the future of TV in Canada” over the next 10 days, it is important to recognize the ready availability of alternate choices for Canadians – subscription based or ad-supported. These have emerged without government intervention, without government measures for “Canadian families [to] be able to choose the combination of television channels they want”.
The marketplace appears to have been working just fine to create choices for consumers; if you don’t like what your TV provider is offering, it is unclear why the government believes it needs to intervene on the content delivery side of the business.
On the other hand, it is clear that competitive choice from unlicensed content providers is going to disrupt the cash flow for Canadian content production. Legacy providers of content fund the production system based on revenue taxes and a further tax on mergers and acquisitions; their new media competitors have no similar liabilities.
Promising government action to give consumers choice in programming is a distraction; consumers have lots of choice, if they don’t like the options being presented by traditional TV service providers. Like other recent actions, it is somewhat surprising to see a Conservative government promising such interference in a market that already has options. When did TV programming become so essential that such paternalistic intervention would be warranted?
How will government pick up the responsibility for funding media production? That may be the tougher issue not being addressed.