The big streamers are in court today fighting the CRTC about funding Canadian content.

Global streamers–Apple, Amazon, and Spotify, along with reps for Netflix and Paramount–are back in court this week whining about having to contribute to Canadian content development and new coverage. Bill C-11 requires that if a streamer takes more than $25 million in revenue out of the country, they have to kick back 5% into Cancon support.

Traditional terrestrial broadcasters, both radio and TV, have to sink a lot of pre-tax revenue into Cancon. With the streamers siphoning so much money out of the country away from radio and TV, it doesn’t seem fair that they get a free ride.

Here are the streamers’ positions:

• Spotify says this amounts to a tax, which they say the CRTC doesn’t have the authority to impose. The CRTC is requiring payment without figuring out what “Canadian content” will be going forward.
• Amazon says that the levy is “inequitable because it applies only to foreign online undertakings and only to such undertakings with more than $25 million in annual Canadian broadcasting revenues.”
• Apple complains that the CRTC “acted prematurely” and whines about radio stations paying only 0.5%. (Note: Large English-language broadcasters have to hand over 30% of revenues to Canadian programming.)
• Because the streamers have nothing to do with news production, they shouldn’t have to pay into any news fund. From what I understand, these multi-billion and multi-TRILLION-dollar companies are pissed off by having to pay $1.25 million into news.
• The Canadian Association of Broadcasters says that the CRTC DOES have the authority to demand money. “For decades, traditional broadcasting undertakings have supported the production of Canadian content through a complex array of CRTC-directed measures … By contrast, online undertakings have not been required to provide any financial support to the Canadian broadcasting system, despite operating here for well over a decade.”
• The government said that if the streamers are left off the hook, the result would be “an inequitable circumstance in which domestic broadcasters — operating in an industry under economic strain — shoulder a disproportionate regulatory burden.”
• Overshadowing all this are trade tensions between Canada and the US. If a levy gets imposed, Trumpy is going to go ballistic.

Let’s see where all this goes.