The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that BCE chief executive officer Mirko Bibic is calling on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to help Canada's media sector cope with a challenging advertising market and competition from foreign giants. The Globe's Alexandra Posadzki writes that on Thursday Mr. Bibic said "more needs to be done by the CRTC, faster," to ease the pressures on the industry. He said: "The ecosystem in Canada is under severe stress and requires urgent government assistance. When massive U.S. companies with global scale and global footprints are having extreme difficulty contending with the difficult advertising markets, you have to ask how Canadian broadcasters are expected to navigate" them with such an unfair regulatory playing field. Mr. Bibic is encouraged that Ottawa is "trying to help out on the news side of things" with Bill C-18, the Online News Act, and that the industry is "pushing back against the very aggressive moves by Meta and Google." The tech giants have announced plans to block news content for Canadians in response to Bill C-18, which forces them to pay media organizations for that content. Meta has already begun rolling out the change.
© 2024 Canjex Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.