Media Beat: October 15, 2020

By David Farrell

Canada’s copyright laws limiting opportunities for creative industries to recover income

A ruling from the Federal Court of Appeal that escaped most people’s notice highlighted just how broken copyright in Canada actually is. The court ruled that tariffs approved by the Copyright Board are not “mandatory” for those who use unlicensed content, even though that has been the practice for the past several decades. Until now, the practice has been that if the board approves a tariff, it applies to all users of the content whether or not they are willing to enter licensing arrangements with the collective. The effect of this ruling undermines the fundamentals of copyright collectives in Canada that license content on behalf of their members. – Hugh Stephens, The Globe & Mail

CNN’s Anderson Cooper goes ‘Full Circle’ with smartphone production

Since August, Anderson Cooper has been producing his Full Circle program thrice weekly via smartphones in his Hudson Yards office. The remote production was “quick, simple and cheap,” says CNN’s Jason Holterhaus, and signals that CNN is starting to take its digital-only shows as seriously as its linear broadcast. –   Michael Stahl, TV News Check

Station groups bulk up with streaming options, national newscasts 

After years of buying and selling, the nation’s largest TV station groups have become local leviathans that own dozens of outlets across the country. At an unsettled time for broadcast TV, the biggest independent groups — including Nexstar Media, Sinclair Broadcast Group and E.W. Scripps — are increasingly trying to generate new profit sources by using local news and programming assets in innovative ways.  –  Variety 

Nets aim for election credibility, not speed                

In preparing for election night, some top U.S. television news executives see a cautionary tale in a notorious November evening two decades ago. After major networks projected Vice President Al Gore the winner in Florida, they pivoted in the wee hours to calling his Republican rival George W. Bush the next president. The margin was so slim, Gore conceded, then took it back an hour later. The election wouldn’t be decided for more than a month. The only loss that night was the networks’ credibility.  –  Reuters

Fox News pushing ‘Brain Room’ to lend cred to Trump’s voter fraud paranoia       

A seemingly innocuous project to chronicle “election irregularities” feels like “an attempt to push more baseless conspiracy theories” for Trump, according to insiders. –   The Daily Beast

Amazon acquires podcast domains

In a blockbuster domain acquisition which indicates strategic purpose, Amazon has acquired the domains podcast.com and podcsting.com, we learned from Podnews. The DomainInvesting website is a source for this news, and notes that the domains lead to the Audible landing page for podcasts. Podnews rightly observes that Audible trafficks in original podcasts only, not public ones, which stretches the conception of podcasting outside of the usual definition of RSS distribution. – Brad Hill, RAIN News

The New Spotify format allows podcasters to place songs between talk segments in shows

Shows using Spotify’s new format rely on the platform’s music catalogue licenses, which means that musicians and songwriters are compensated “just like any regular stream of a music track on Spotify”. – Music Business Worldwide

How do you predict the next TikTok hit?

Songfluencer has a very specific pitch — and an appealing one for a music industry increasingly obsessed with data: The company has built and continues to perfect software that collects data from TikTok, allowing it, in theory, to quantify the value of influencers on the app and analyze the paths of a host of TikTok hits. – Elias Leight, Rolling Stone

Zoom launches marketplace for paid events and new third-party app integrations

Videoconferencing app Zoom is trying to keep its lockdown success rolling with two big new features: a marketplace called OnZoom that will allow users to schedule and monetize virtual events, and new ways for business apps like Asana and Box to integrate their wares directly into your next Zoom call. – James Vincent, The Verge

YouTube testing e-commerce tools that turn creator videos into product

The goal is to convert YouTube’s bounty of videos into a vast catalogue of items that viewers can peruse, click on and buy directly, according to people familiar with the situation. The company is also testing a new integration with Shopify Inc. for selling items through YouTube. – Mark Bergen & Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg

Global Podcasting Market by genre, formats, region

The Global Podcasting Market size is expected to reach $41. 8 billion by 2026, rising at a market growth of 24. 6% CAGR during the forecast period. Podcasts are a series of verbally expressed word audio documents that can be downloaded by means of the internet on playback devices. – GlobeNewsWire

The NYTs, WSJ and Washington Post decline travelling with Trump

Newspapers and networks are wary of exposing their staff members to the president and his aides, saying they do not have assurance that basic precautions will be taken to protect reporters’ health. – The New York Times (subscription)

James Murdoch, rebellious scion, on “pulling the rip cord” with his family over Fox News

“I reached the conclusion that you can venerate a contest of ideas, if you will, and we all do and that’s important,” Murdoch told Dowd. “But it shouldn’t be in a way that hides agendas. A contest of ideas shouldn’t be used to legitimize disinformation. And I think it’s often taken advantage of. And I think at great news organizations, the mission really should be to introduce fact to disperse doubt — not to sow doubt, to obscure fact, if you will. – Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

Stern’s SiriusXM salary negotiation could see him earn $20M more per year

Howard Stern, the radio shock jock who’s maintained his star power in the podcasting era, is nearing a contract renewal with Sirius XM Holdings Inc. that would boost his pay to about $120 million a year, according to people familiar with the matter.

Stern’s contract with Sirius expires at the end of December, and the 66-year-old has been negotiating a fresh deal for the better part of the year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are ongoing. His previous five-year contracts, which cover production and staff, topped out at roughly $80 million to $100 million. – Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg News