CBC/Radio-Canada could double its value to Canadians, if only it stopped resisting

To prevent this waste of money, I’d travel back in time to the beginning of the streaming era and write a persuasive column arguing that the technology was now possible for CBC/Radio-Canada to create a single online TV service – one with a bilingual interface that offers the choice of viewing its French content with subtitles in English and vice-versa (or with dubbing should that be more politically palatable).

I’d write: “Believe it or not, in a few short years, some of the most popular international TV shows in Canada will be Scandinavian noirs and Korean gorefests – and a significant chunk of the audience will even watch shows in their own language with the subtitles on. For a small cost, CBC/Radio-Canada could vastly expand the reach and value of its content to Canadians.”

In the actual past, however, the two sides of the Crown corporation launched Gem and TOU.TV separately, years apart, and did so with each operating on different technology supported by separate engineering teams.

That costly error took a costly multiyear harmonization project to fix. But even now that the back ends are in sync, CBC/Radio-Canada still does not automatically secure the rights to subtitle or dub their own shows in the other official language.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/article-cbc-plan-b-french-english-subtitles-netflix/