The Future of Canadian “TV”

Here’s the situation with Canadian television and streaming, super briefly:

Netflix and Amazon Prime are already offering streaming in Canada, as does DAZN, terrible name notwithstanding.

CBS All Access is coming next year. Disney and ESPN streaming soon thereafter. Holdouts HBO and Hulu will eventually follow.

Traditional television is entering its end of days. Pretty soon, everything will be available to Canadians via streaming. Contrary to what some are saying, this is good.

Sure, if you subscribe to every service, you’ll pay more than cable, but no one will want to do that. Most people will subscribe to a few, get exactly what they want — without ads — and save a pile of money.

Lots of people will probably hop around too, binge-watching one service before moving onto the next one.

Choice! What a crazy concept in Canada.

Bell’s CraveTV is also doomed. It relies almost entirely on CBS/Showtime and old HBO content. That stuff will be gone soon.

The only way CraveTV survives is by Bell making lots of original, exclusive content. Read: Canadian content.

And maybe then it still doesn’t survive. Netflix et al will want to buy good CanCon, right? Either way, it’s a potential jackpot for Canadian creators.

And yet, creator groups have convinced the government that the old system of subsidies and taxes is still the way to go.

That ship is going down, it’s way past time to abandon it.