Obviously COVID-19 has put a stop to large gatherings of people, and this has also meant that for now, all major sports events have been cancelled. Originally some of the sports were playing played behind closed doors without spectators, but now all sports have either cancelled their competitions or suspended them indefinitely.

The sports broadcasting industry is worth a staggering amount of money and obviously it has been completely turned upside down by the current situation. The vast majority of people who pay subscriptions to sports broadcasting services, do so to see live sport. As of right now – there is none.

Sports broadcasting services such as DAZN and Canal+ have informed rights holders that they will not be paying fees for any content that has not yet been delivered. The two main British sports broadcasting channels Sky Sports and BT Sport are both losing large numbers of subscribers with no live sports to show. There is also concern in these companies as to how many of those customers will return when play eventually resumes, with a smaller subscriber base likely resulting in reduced bids for future rights cycles.

It is certainly something that could have a lasting effect on the sports broadcasting industry for years to come.

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/dazn-tv-rights-payments-coronavirus
https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/canal-ligue-1-france-tv-rights-payment-report

(For a tweet-sized take: https://twitter.com/sanchom/status/1250508266171437056)

Apple and Google have collaborated to create specifications for tracing COVID contacts using Bluetooth and cryptography (
https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ContactTracing-BluetoothSpecificationv1.1.pdf, https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ContactTracing-CryptographySpecification.pdf).

These protocols look like they would actually preserve privacy.

Your phone would generate a unique key each day.

Your phone would also generate and transmit a unique ID (based on the daily key, but that changes every fifteen minutes) over Bluetooth. It would also be recording IDs broadcast from nearby. Given that this ID changes every fifteen minutes, and that the contact IDs are stored on each device individually, the risk to privacy here is low: someone could follow you for fifteen minutes to confirm that a particular fifteen-minute ID was you, and they’d know where you went during those fifteen minutes, but they would have had to physically follow you in order to discover that anyway.

Later, if you happen to be diagnosed with COVID, you can voluntarily release your daily keys to a publication server, which would recreate and broadcast the associated 15-minute keys to the world. Then anyone whose phone was close to one of your 15-minute keys would be told that they were in contact with a person who had been diagnosed with COVID. They would also know whether this was a somewhat prolonged contact or just in passing.

I can’t imagine a way to use this information to determine the contacts or locations of any particular person, given that the actual contact events are stored on the contacts’ phones and never uploaded to a central server.

Following up on Tristan’s post from a few days ago, it seems that one person’s crisis is another’s opportunity. As Netflix seems to be outperforming the market (at least in the short term), brick and mortar movie theatres seem to be looking into the face of oblivion. Already struggling to remain relevant in a world of online subscription-based entertainment services, theatres now face the prospect of remaining closed for months on end, with no clear idea of when they will be able to reopen (and if/when they do, if anyone will show up). AMC entertainment (the largest movie theatre chain in the world), recently had there credit rating downgraded from B to CCC-, with credit rating agencies citing a lack of sufficient sources of liquidity to cover the company’s negative cash flow throughout the summer.

To add to these problems, the recent decision of Disney to release summer blockbuster Frozen 2 three months ahead of time on their exclusive online streaming service Disney+ does not bode well for movie theatres’ futures. As of February Disney+ had 28.6 million subscribers, and I would guess that this has increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the movie industry continues to consolidate into a few large studios (Last year’s merger of Disney and Fox means a single company controls 35% of the market) and physical movie theatres face an uncertain future, one wonders if mega-corporations like Disney will have the ability to completely forgo traditional movie theatres.

This could mean trouble on the horizon not only for theatres but for Netflix as well. If Disney could shift to a majority (or perhaps exclusively) online platform, how will much smaller companies like Netflix, who, as Tristan mentioned, are increasingly building their image around original content, be able to compete with the production capabilities and intellectual property rights that behemoths like Disney posses? This is not a new concern for Netflix and other online streaming services, as Disney has already established itself as a competitor in the market, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the possible collapse of physical movie theatres could make them a whole lot worse.

Sources:

AMC credit ratings downgrade: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amc-entertainment-gets-ratings-downgrade-covid-19-impact-1288300

Frozen 2 early release: https://globalnews.ca/news/6682664/frozen-2-disney/

Disney+’s subscribership: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/04/disney-plus-subscribers/

Disney and Fox merger: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/03/disney-fox-merger-and-future-hollywood/585481/

After the government of Ontario announced that it would shut down all non-essential workplaces as part of the effort to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus, it became necessary to define which workplaces were and were not “essential”. On March 25th the government of Ontario released its official list of essential workplaces. Included were two categories that are central to this course: “Telecommunications and IT infrastructure/service providers” and “Communications Industries”.

The first category is described by the government as follows:
– Businesses engaged in providing or supporting Information Technology (IT) including online services, software products and related services, as well as the technical facilities such as data centres and other network facilities necessary for their operation and delivery
– Businesses providing telecommunications services (phone, internet, radio, cell phones etc.) as well as support facilities such as call centres necessary for their operation and delivery

Nothing above is very controversial. We have seen how important ensuring the continued operation of telecommunications infrastructure is as work, school, and even socializing with family and friends has moved almost completely online as the world begins to shelter-in-pace.

What is more interesting is how the government chose to define the second category. Only three short bullet point elaborated what “Communications Industries” consisted of:
– Newspaper Publishers
– Radio & Television Broadcasters
– Telecommunications Providers

Given what we discussed throughout this class about what constitutes “communications” (i.e. almost everything) I would guess that you would all agree with me that this list represents a fairly limited conception of what “communications industries” consist of. This is yet another example of an official government definition that includes only the most traditional forms of media.

The publication of the Public Policy Forum’s “Shattered Mirror” report in January 2017, which found that one-third of journalism jobs in Canada had disappeared over a six-year span, led the Liberal government to eventually respond with a $600 million media bailout in the form of a tex credit for “journalism organizations”. The 2019 budget stated that an “independent administrative body” be created in order to determine eligibility criteria.

This eventually took the form of the Journalism and Written Media Independent Panel of Experts, who, in there report for Finance Minister Bill Morneau, outlined there proposed interpretation rules. eligibility for the tax credit would require accreditation as a “Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO)”. The definition of a QCJO is extensive (I encourage you to check out the report linked below), but the main gist of it is that the organization “must devote its time primarily to the production of original written news content for Canadian audiences”. This definition leaves many non-traditional news platforms, especially freelancers and online video-journalism organizations, unable to access tax breaks that will save giant foreign-owned legacy media operations like Post Media millions of dollars a year.

We increasingly rely on non-traditional media as sources of news and entertainment, but we continue to see both federal and provincial governments fail to include them in their considerations of media or communications industries. the Ontario government’s limited definition of communications industries in their list of essential workplaces is yet another example of this and does not indicate that things will change anytime soon.

Sources:

Ontario Government’s list of essential workplaces: https://www.ontario.ca/page/list-essential-workplaces

The Public Policy Forum’s 2017 “Shattered Mirror” Report: https://shatteredmirror.ca/

Excerpt from the 2019 Federal Budget (page 173):

Supporting Canadian Journalism
A strong and independent news media is crucial to a well-functioning
democracy. Recognizing the vitally important role the media play in helping
citizens make informed decisions about important issues, in the 2018 Fall
Economic Statement the Government announced its intention to introduce
three new tax measures to support Canadian journalism:
• A new refundable tax credit for journalism organizations.
• A new non-refundable tax credit for subscriptions to Canadian digital news.
• Access to charitable tax incentives for not-for-profit journalism.
As previously announced, the Government will establish an independent panel
of experts from the Canadian journalism sector to assist the Government in
implementing these measures, including recommending eligibility criteria.
Given the importance of ensuring that media outlets are able to operate with
full independence, the Government proposes to establish an independent
administrative body that will be responsible for recognizing journalism organizations as being eligible for any of the three measures.

Report of the Journalism and Written Media Independent Panel of Experts: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/corporate/transparency/open-government/report-journalism-written-media.html

Kieran Delamont, “Canadian Media Is Getting A Bailout. Its Freelancers Aren’t.”: https://www.canadalandshow.com/no-media-bailout-for-canadian-freelancers/