Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / Who Owns the Canadian Story? A Leadership Lens on Streaming, IP, and Sovereignty

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Who Owns the Canadian Story? A Leadership Lens on Streaming, IP, and Sovereignty · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

• 0:22
  Hi, I'm Nola Simon.
• 0:24
  I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast.
• 0:27
  Thank you for tuning in.
• 0:28
  Like I'm a radio announcer.
• 0:30
  Listen to that.
• 0:31
  I wanna talk about intellectual property and the adaptation of Canadian stories.
• 0:39
  So whether that's individual scripts that are being created by showrunners
• 0:44
  and screenwriters who are Canadian, or the adaptation of books and articles
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  or whatever who happen to be Canadian.
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  Examples would be, Sterling Point was developed for Prime Video.
• 0:59
  Every Year After was based on a Carley Fortune book.
• 1:04
  There's another one coming out that's being adapted next year, I think.
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  And then A Heat of Rivalry was an book series that's developed by a, a woman
• 1:13
  named Rachel Reid in Nova Scotia.
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  Now, there's also a Netflix series, which again, is an
• 1:22
  original creation called Below.
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  And it's starring Josh Hartnett and set in Newfoundland.
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  It's currently number one in fifty-three countries, and the production has
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  said that ninety million dollars was invested into the Canadian economy
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  as a result of that production.
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  So that sounds great, right?
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  What's the true value of the intellectual property involved with that?
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  So the ninety million dollars, a lot of it is actually coming from
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  the Canadian government to stabilize and make the investment in Canada
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  attractive to fund tourism, to fund jobs.
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  We understand that making it easier and facilitating the investment in Canada
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  instead of elsewhere brings jobs and, has that, that short-term payoff in
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  terms of what's getting invested into the Canadian economy and that local area.
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  They're sourcing props, they're hiring people to build sets.
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  It-- it's all a local benefit.
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  But that ninety million dollars is the smallest piece of the whole puzzle.
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  The true value is the intellectual property.
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  If you look at the Rachel Reid books, Harper Collins is crediting as of first
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  quarter of twenty twenty-six her-- the sale of her book, Heated Rivalry, plus
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  the other books that she has in the series with a eight percent rise in the sale of
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  books for Harper Collins that quarter.
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  And if you do the math, that's forty million dollars.
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  Now, Rachel Reid didn't get all of that, obviously.
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  It depends on what her contract is that she has.
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  I have no idea.
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  But HarperCollins is American, and
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  HBO is American, so it was developed initially, Heat of River was
• 3:22
  developed for Crave initially, and then it was licensed to HBO.
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  How much has that made?
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  What's the true value of that above and beyond the twelve million dollars
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  that it cost to produce initially and the three million dollars
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  they were paid to license to HBO?
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  These are all the reported figures.
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  I have no idea if they're true or valid.
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  That's just what's coming up in the, the industry reporting.
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  The true value long term in terms of licensing and, additional
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  series and… It has to be higher.
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  It has to be much, much higher than the original investment, right?
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  So we're probably looking at hundreds of millions.
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  But who owns that?
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  That's Americans.
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  Even though it's originally a Canadian story produced by a
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  Canadian in Canada, the value of that storytelling is now American.
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  They own it.
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  Now, again, I don't know the details of the contract.
• 4:26
  I don't know if she can renegotiate this as more and more books come
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  out and, hopefully she's got good agents and lawyers and everybody
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  to support her on that side.
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  But same with Below.
• 4:40
  That ninety million dollars is a fraction of what it's truly worth.
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  I've noticed in the industry reporting they report what things cost to make,
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  what the salaries of the actors are, how much they've invested, how much
• 4:52
  is going back into the local economy.
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  They do not talk about what the overall arching value of the project is.
• 4:59
  I can't even find numbers on Stranger Things, which has been around for,
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  what, a decade, and is like the premier flagship Netflix show.
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  You would assume it's in the billions at this point, but
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  there is actually no number.
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  I could find numbers on how much it costs to produce the last season,
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  and it was like f- crazy with all of the CGI and special effects and,
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  the actor salaries at that point.
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  It was like four hundred and five hundred million dollars of
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  rough reporting that I could see.
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  So in terms of profit, it has to be in the billions.
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  There is no number to show that.
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  So all of these things are tied up in non-disclosure agreements.
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  It is top secret.
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  So how does that help us understand what the true value
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  is when we're negotiating, right?
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  And even as a government, how are streamers required to actually disclose
• 6:00
  to the government how much they're earning from these Canadian stories?
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  And this is where it actually has become a trade issue with the current geopolitical
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  situation between the U.S. and Canada.
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  The U.S. Has decided that our online streaming legislation, which requires a 5%
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  investment of profits back into Canadian content, Indigenous content, French
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  language content as a trade irritant because they don't wanna have to pay that.
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  They don't want to invest in our discoverability for different languages.
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  They like the deal as it stands currently under the legislation that
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  existed prior to 2023, and that's something that is bothering them.
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  And I find this so interesting because if you look beyond the normal period
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  of 18 months to three years that it takes to actually develop this
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  intellectual property, we're really only now seeing the value of these
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  Canadian things that started being filmed back in 2024, 2025, 2026 since
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  that legislation came into effect.
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  And my concern with the other part of the storytelling is, especially like Sterling
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  Point and the Carley Fortune series, they actually changed that story so that
• 7:27
  not all of the characters were Canadian.
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  There's an aspect of cross-border relationships the, the one character
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  in it every year after comes up for the summer only and then leaves.
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  She's actually American.
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  In the book, she was Canadian 'cause Carley Fortune is a Canadian writer.
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  And Sterling Point has a similar type of thing.
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  It's, s- somebody finds out that, their mother was Canadian.
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  They didn't know she was Canadian, and there ends up being an estate issue.
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  They have to come to Canada to sort…
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  to resolve the estate issue and end up owning premier property in Muskoka.
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  So what's the benefit of a company who's based in a country
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  who keeps spewing the 51st state narrative has a history of manifest destiny and
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  American exceptionalism, selling the value of Canadian real estate and close
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  relationships, what is the long-term value of that type of storytelling?
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  And is that something that we need to really address long term if
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  we look at five, 10 years worth of the storytelling to normalize
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  that ongoing perception of the value that exists in Canada
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  Rather than supporting separate and sovereign identity, what does that-- when
• 9:00
  does that cross the line into propaganda that's used to persuade politically?
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  You may not know this about me, but my parents are German and Scottish.
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  My mom was born in Scotland, in Glasgow, and my dad was born in
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  Duisburg in Germany in the 1930s.
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  So they grew up, they were children when the war started, World War II, and so
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  my entire childhood, and life really, has been understanding the perspectives
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  from different sides of the war.
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  And a great deal of my childhood was spent watching war movies.
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  Now, obviously they were in English.
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  I don't speak German.
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  But
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  essentially a lot of those movies that came out of Hollywood about World War II
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  were propaganda after the fact, right?
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  And honestly, they never presented Germans well at all.
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  And to the spoils go the… To the victor go the spoils.
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  The victors are the people who actually write the history, the story.
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  It wasn't necessarily reflective of what it was like as a normal German
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  family who wasn't supporting Nazism what their experience was like
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  They were trying to survive.
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  They did what they had to do.
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  I actually don't know the full story.
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  But I do know that what I learned is that there's always nuance, and th-
• 10:31
  whatever side of the story you happen to be on, there's something that you're
• 10:35
  talking about that you perceive to be true, and that there's always a
• 10:40
  way to reach a compromise in terms of w- what story actually serves either
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  side, and how you reach consensus
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  So storytelling has always fascinated me because
• 11:00
  It's such a tool of influence.
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  It's such a tool of propaganda.
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  And when I see this come into play, when I see these strategic changes
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  made in multiple different shows, it starts to make me wonder what
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  the overall intention at the company level of investment it actually is.
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  And I'd love to say that, these are individual companies that are
• 11:31
  strategically apart from the government, but we know that these billionaires are
• 11:37
  invited into the White House regularly.
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  It's not out of the realm of possibility that it's politically motivated.
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  So again, I'm speculating.
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  This is critical thinking.
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  I'm asking questions.
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  What does this truly mean?
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  And what are the long-term impacts if we allow it to continue?
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  And are we at a stage where we can really renegotiate how we authorize
• 12:09
  The licensing of Canadian intellectual property, how we negotiate access
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  to our resources to film, how we invest in filmmakers who are
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  Canadian, how we support artists, because there's all kinds of artists
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  involved in making of movie and TV.
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  How do we fund those in a way that's sustainable once
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  that company leaves, right?
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  So it's great that they do the individual investment, but those
• 12:38
  projects come in, and then they go.
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  Projects come in, then they go.
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  So it's unemployment in between there unless you're lucky, and you get
• 12:47
  onto the next project right away.
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  But what's the continuity?
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  What's the plan for stability?
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  And do we have any kind of government support that is going
• 13:00
  to allow us to recreate this
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  without involving the United States?
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  So how do we develop a film industry, a TV industry that's developing
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  quality content at world-class level
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  without actual involvement of the United States to respect our sovereignty?
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  These are all questions I have.
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  I love to hear from people in the industry.
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  I'm obviously a consumer.
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  I'm not an expert at all.
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  These are just things I've noticed while I'm watching TV and reading books
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  and, everything else that I absorb.
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  The questions are where it really becomes a futurist scenario play, right?
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  What world do we wanna wake up in 10 years from now, 20 years from now?
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  What does this look like if we make different choices and
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  negotiate in different ways?
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  And I think that could be really fascinating.
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  Anyways, thank you for tuning in.
• 14:05
  Again, send me questions, nola@nolasimon.com.
• 14:08
  You could put a comment or review on any podcast, and you
• 14:11
  can honestly just subscribe.
• 14:12
  I'm just testing out what the impact is of having people subscribe.
• 14:16
  So whatever player you listen on, just subscribe and that, I'm told,
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  actually drives me to the charts.
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  And again, this is an experiment to say, does charting actually increase
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  visibility, which gets more people to ask these questions and to consider
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  how we live our future lives and work?