Quiz question… Who recently wrote on Radio-Canada: “There are always many limits to stretching the rubber band! ‘, ‘We have to set the bar straight away’ and also: ‘This has to stop’?
Is it:
A – A cheeky columnist from the Quebecor Empire or…
B – A nice columnist from La Presse?
In fact, on February 11, in the non-profit La Presse, we were able to read a vicious editorial entitled Payer deux fois pour Radio-Canada.
That must be due to the double financing of tou.tvs Extra.
ICI Tou.tv is an entertainment web television offering a video-on-demand experience provided by Radio-Canada and approximately twenty partner stations and producers. It is the largest French language entertainment web TV in Canada.
tou.tv outraged many people in the media.
PAY FOR THE MAN AND THE GIRL
On March 9th, all French-speaking Canadians can see the new version of Un gars, une fille. In fact … not ALL fans of the cult series. Only those willing to shell out $6.99 a month for the Tou.tv Extra.
Marc Pichette, Communications at Radio-Canada, was unable to tell me last Friday when the series would be available for free on general television.
They’ll tell me, “There’s no point in paying twice for the same content. We already pay for it with our taxes! “. And you would be right.
In fact, you already fund all of Radio-Canada’s productions from your federal taxes at a rate of $1.5 billion a year.
Paying for a subscription to get access to a production you’ve already funded is like paying once for a cake at the patisserie and a second time for the right to eat it.
It is this injustice that the editor of La Presse has denounced (and which Guy Fournier and I have denounced for years).
But he went further: “We need to raise the bar immediately because the public broadcaster is in the process of adopting other bad digital business habits. We broadcast advertisements on OHdio while there are no advertisements on traditional radio. We make promotional content (lyrics, podcasts, TV shows) with Tandem. All of this is not in accordance with the spirit of the mandate.
In exchange for a few advertising dollars, Radio-Canada is about to lose a key part of its identity in digital technology: free content. It has to stop. »
WELCOME TO THE CLUB!
Last Thursday, the day that Quebecor’s cuts were announced, Marc-François Bernier, professor of journalism (ethics, deontology, sociology) at the University of Ottawa, wrote on his social media: “Radio-Canada competes unfairly way with all the private media (print, radio, TV and internet) with which it competes for advertising revenue on its various platforms. That should be clarified one day… My point concerns not only Quebecor, but above all the competition of a largely subsidized state corporation (perhaps too diffuse?) with private media and cooperatives for revenue-restricted advertising (on air and on the Internet)”.
Dear Mr. Bernier, you are right, “we should settle that one day”. Dear La Presse columnist, you are right, “it has to stop”.
I am very pleased that you are also denouncing what I regularly write in Le Journal. It was time.
