CRTC plans to register streaming hosts
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
184.65764
Summary
In the early 2000s, Howard Stern was one of the most popular shock jocks in the United States. But when he moved to Canada in the late 90s, he found himself in hot water with the Canadian Radio-Television and Communications Commission (CRTC) over his use of profanity.
Transcript
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I'm going to talk about what used to be one of my favorite radio hosts, Howard Stern.
00:00:04.640
Howard Stern's show, it was a radio powerhouse in the 1990s.
00:00:08.520
I mean, he gored sacred cows in the United States in his shock-jock style of performing.
00:00:13.560
I mean, it changed the way radio morning shows were done all the way around the world.
00:00:17.720
I mean, while opponents were trying their hardest to cancel him in the U.S.,
00:00:20.380
it only brought him more attention and made his brand even more powerful.
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He crushed competing DJs across the U.S.A., and his show syndication seemed unstoppable.
00:00:28.740
He would just absorb fines for profanity from the SEC, and he'd just keep expanding his reach.
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Things changed, though, when he brought his show to Canada.
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Yes, in 1997, some people might not remember it, particularly out west,
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but two radio stations in Canada, one in Montreal and one in Toronto,
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picked up his show and started broadcasting it.
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And Stern's brand of humor, which included everything from, yeah, fart jokes
00:00:51.280
to having women simulate orgasms over the air, was welcomed by many listeners and reviled by many others.
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The ratings and market share for both of those Canadian stations expanded quickly.
00:01:02.500
People wanted something fresh in radio, and he brought it.
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It doesn't matter how many dildos or odd things you might want to talk about on his show.
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Complaints from thin-skinned Quebecers flooded into the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council
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and, of course, further to the CRTC, the Canadian Radio Television Commission.
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Stern was threatened with a cancellation, of course, if he didn't back down.
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And in typical Stern fashion at the time, he offered a middle finger to the Canadian regulators in response.
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So despite the high ratings on the radio stations hosting his show,
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they were forced to drop him under threats of CRTC action.
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See, in Canada, the concept of letting consumers decide what they want to watch or hear all by themselves
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The Canadian way is to have the state carefully cultivate and control what our eyes and ears are exposed to,
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The CRTC, see, they didn't go after Stern himself.
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They would have targeted the platforms that hosted him.
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but they could pull the broadcast licenses for the stations that gave him airtime.
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The CRTC, they've long wanted to control the internet.
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I mean, the organization is authoritarian by nature.
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As the digital world of communication has expanded,
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the CRTC has desperately wanted to find a way to get the internet under its grasp.
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Well, Bill C-11 from the Trudeau Liberals has finally given the CRTC that tool they seek.
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Now, the CRTC is a dinosaur of an institution, but it did learn some things.
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Canada has tens of thousands of content creators,
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and many of them are saying things that the government would rather they didn't, like me.
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It'd be impossible, though, to try and register and chase down every one of those podcasters, streamers,
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So what the CRTC is doing is the next best thing.
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You see, podcast audiences for the individuals can range anywhere from a few dozen listeners and viewers to millions of people.
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But one common analogy among the podcasters is they have their content hosted by large internet service providers.
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It's the only way, really, to attain broad reach,
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and the content creator doesn't have to do the technical investment of self-hosting
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and trying to get the algorithms and get out there.
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So basically, the CRTC is doing the equivalent of what they did with Stern.
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And if the host gets pulled and a podcaster loses hosting services, the podcast dies on the vine.
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Liberal apologists are dismissing the latest regulations from the CRTC, you know,
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to register streaming hosts and saying it's irrelevant because it only applies to hosts with over $10 million in revenue.
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The problem is, though, almost every podcaster is dependent on being hosted by providers who have over $10 million in revenue.
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If the provider is later compelled to regulate the content to the creators,
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there would be little that either party is going to be able to do to stop it.
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I mean, if the platform has its license pulled in Canada, it can be blocked from broadcasting in the country.
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If the creator, of course, loses their platform, they're out of luck, too.
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My show is already under the CRTC regulations, as we're broadcast on a couple of cable channels.
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But a large portion of our audience finds the show, of course, through streaming services such as Spotify, Rumble, iTunes, etc.
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If the Western Standard lost the ability to put content on those platforms, this show is finished.
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The new regulations from the CRTC put streaming services under their thumb and puts the job of policing the content into the lap of the platforms.
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It's an insidious backdoor way to control content.
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And what problem is being solved with these new regulations, anyways?
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How have unregulated podcasters and streamers disrupted society so much that we needed new legislation for government to control their content?
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Of course, independent content pursuers haven't disrupted society.
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They have been a thorn in the government's side, though,
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as they'll focus on issues that the subsidized, cowardly legacy media outlets are afraid to touch.
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The government can't buy the love of independent media as it has with legacy media,
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so it's resorting to try and control it instead.
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The government's attempt to shake down Meta and Google with Bill C-18 backfired,
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and it harmed Canadian media, at least independent media.
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They're just going to subsidize the rest of them otherwise.
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Their attempts to control content through C-11 and the CRTC, though, might succeed,
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and the loss of freedom is going to be immeasurable.
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The Trudeau liberals have always had an authoritarian streak, and this move isn't surprising.
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These kind of controls can be difficult to remove even when governments change.
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The next one coming in might kind of like having that control over what people can say or can't say when they get in there.
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We can't let this sort of thing entrench itself.
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Canadians need to stand up to this creeping control of their ability to communicate while they still can,
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because, of course, the harder it gets to communicate, the harder it gets to organize against it.
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And rest assured, the registry, as with firearms, is just the beginning.