Don't be surprised if a lifeline is thrown to Corus while Rogers flexes its muscles before a worried and weak CRTC
Plus! CTV and CBC taking hits for Gaza coverage, PM in waiting Mark Carney remains bubble-wrapped by media and some exciting news about The Rewrite's Big Plans for 2025
If you bought and sold Corus Entertainment stock over the holidays, you could have made some money.
The share price of Global News’s owner bottomed out at $0.075 on Dec. 27 and, a week later, closed at $0.10, which equals a 33% return on your investment if you had the nerve to make that play. Not a lot of regular people do, or did, which is why speculation is rampant that a bailout will be coming for Corus, which owns and operates 15 conventional TV stations, 37 radio stations and 30 specialty TV services. In the past year, the once robust company has been desperately shedding staff in an effort to stay alive.
Big news media companies in Canada, in their relentless campaign to pick other people’s pockets for subsidies, have regularly equated failure on their part to the death of democracy. Outrageous as the assertion is, the government has bought into it, making it difficult to imagine it would allow Global News to disappear in an election year. Hence the bailout speculation.
In the meantime, Corus’s best hope is that it gets relief from the regulator - the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) - as it struggles to survive as an independent broadcaster without its own cable network like Bell, Videotron and Rogers have. But even if the CRTC were to rule in Corus’s favour in its complaint that Rogers has weaponized its market muscle inappropriately, there’s every indication the latter would just ignore the decision until Corus is dead.
Yes, the Competition Bureau has opened a case against Rogers. And yes, the CRTC has already ruled against Rogers in one undue preference case and is nervously watching as the fully vertically integrated telecom, cable, broadcasting, you-name-it giant prepares to politely but firmly ignore it. Companies such as Bell and Telus may still choose their regulatory hills to die on, but Rogers’s hyper aggressive approach these days is being interpreted by some people in the industry as “they either own you or they kill you.”
Rogers appears to have figured out that it can drag matters out for years or just shrug off the regulator’s rulings and trust there’s not a damn thing the CRTC will do about it.
The amendments to the Broadcasting Act made through the Online Streaming Act gave the CRTC the power to impose administrative monetary penalties, or fines, for a number of bad behaviours, including failure to negotiate in good faith. The maximum is $15 million per violation but, so far, what appears to be a very timid group of CRTC commissioners has shown little indication it has the will to use its new authority. If it maintains that pose, there will be no joy for Corus and other unaligned broadcasters but plenty of encouragement for Rogers shareholders who must be feeling a little low, having seen their stock lose about a third of its value in the past year. It closed Friday at $44.54.
There have been times when it has been tempting to defend news platforms such as CTV and CBC when they have been criticized for stories and headlines that did not originate with them.
But I’m glad I didn’t. Platforms are responsible for the content they publish and if they choose to run Canadian Press, Associated Press, Thomson-Reuters or CNN news service content as is, it is fair to assume they approve of it.
I don’t want to go all back-in-the-day on everyone but back in the day when there were copy editors, stories weren’t just auto-placed with pre-written headlines by someone in another country. They got a domestic edit. Often local context was added to make the story more easily understood and relevant.
There are endless examples, but here’s one that caught the eye last week for a couple of reasons. Over the holidays, CTV used a story by Associated Press from its reporters in Gaza that reported “Fourth infant dies of winter cold in Gaza as families share blankets in seaside tents.” The source for the story was the father of premature twins, one of whom had died because, despite warnings, the father said it was impossible to keep them warm as the family lives in a tent with only four blankets for eight people and the overnight lows at this time of year get down to 10C (daytime highs are 18C-22C). A further story on CTV’s site - provided by CNN - refers to the “severe cold.”
Obviously, the loss of a child and the plight of innocent victims of war touches the heart of anyone who has one. But this story cried out for more context on hypothermia, particularly for Canadian audiences. Where I live, people go jogging in shorts and t-shirts at this time of year if they are lucky enough for it to hit 6C, which CNN interprets as “severe cold” and might very well feel like that for people in hot climates. The lack of context, or further explanation which CTV should have written into the story, led many people to respond on social media with disbelief, seeing the story as contrived propaganda.
Further complicating credulity was the throwaway reference to “local health officials” without noting that those officials work for Hamas, which is a designated terrorist organization in Canada. Most people would agree the story would read much differently were it sourced “according to a spokesman for the local terrorist organization.”
Later on, the story also errs by expressing skepticism towards one version of events, which is fair, in Gaza but not another (bold emphasis mine) which is unfair:
“Israel’s offensive has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. They say women and children make up more than half the deaths but do not distinguish between militants and civilians in their count. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.”
That compares with this phrasing used by Epoch Times:
“. . . according to the Palestinian news agency, a mouthpiece for the Palestine Liberation Organization, previously designated a terrorist organization in the United States.
“It is unclear at this time how many people have been killed as a result of the war.
“Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza claim that more than 45,500 Palestinians have been killed, but they do not distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties. Israel, meanwhile, says that around 17,000 terrorists have been killed and that about one civilian has been killed per terrorist killed.”
OOK. “Mouthpiece” is harsh (if accurate) but the rest is much more clear on who is saying what so that readers could draw their own conclusions on the credibility of sources. I could not find any reporting in Canada on a UK study indicating the war’s tragic death count was inflated by Hamas, noting the inclusion of natural deaths, the listing of men on the list of dead women and other factors. But, regardless, that’s a lot of people.
CBC was condemned for its carriage of similar reports by the likes of Warren Kinsella, Alan Fryer and Terry Glavin, the latter of whom recently penned a devastating report in The Free Press on the 670 percent rise in antisemitism incidents in Canada over the past year.
It is now three weeks since the resignation of Chrystia Freeland as Finance Minister following reports prime minister wannabe Mark Carney had agreed to replace her. Neither Freeland nor Carney has responded to any questions from reporters regarding this matter, although Carney did pen a very weak oped for the Globe and Mail last week that, in my view, failed to live up to the Globe’s usual high standards. As I posted on X, had I submitted a piece that vapid to the editors there, whom I admire, they might very well have initiated a wellness check.
One more cleanup item. I was able to confirm through Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge’s staff that while her social media accounts are still active for political purposes, she remains on parental leave until Parliament resumes - assuming it does - at the end of the month and that the plan is still to announce a new mandate for the CBC at that time. If, of course, the government still exists then.
And, I have news. Going forward, this commentary is only going to appear on Substack once every two weeks instead of weekly as it has been - more or less - since it was launched last April.
That’s because my friends at The Hub have enlisted me to write exclusively for them once every two weeks. So, this week I am writing here on Substack, next week I will be writing for The Hub and then alternating back and forth. Delighted as I am with growth here - more than 100 new subscribers signed on in the past week thank you all very much - The Hub garnered 6 million views last year and the opportunity to reach a broader audience is an offer I can’t refuse. Here’s hoping you continue to find me here and there. Or there and here. There will be more news soon about another Hub project. In the meantime, please watch for this column there next week. And then back here the week after. Then there . . . .
And to my friends at The Line, thanks for inviting me to write for them last week on the beauty and wonder of independent media. Also, thanks to Epoch Times for carrying my piece on how Liberal MPs now clamouring for Justin Trudeau to step aside as their leader and Prime Minister have voted not once, but three times, to deny themselves the power to prompt a Liberal party leadership review.
(Peter Menzies is a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, former vice chair of the CRTC, current Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a consultant and commentator on media and regulatory affairs)
The simplest way to bailout Corus is to make Global a mandatory carriage channel at a cost of $1 per month. That would raise over a $100M per year for Corus and wipeout Global's loss. Of course, CBC and CTV would want the same treatment.
A brief comment on Trudeau resigning. He exceeded my expectations. When he was first elected, I thought he would be terrible, but he turned out to be f'ing terrible. Good riddance.
Hub subscriber and look forward to reading your articles there.