To face down the disruptions in Canada’s television industry, Bell Media’s Mary Ann Turcke and Corus Entertainment’s Doug Murphy both stressed during a panel at this year’s Content Industry Connect conference that broadcasters must follow and grow their audiences across multiple platforms, and hyper-focus on new and changing distribution opportunities.

During the panel, moderated by eOne Television president and CEO John Morayniss, Bell Media president Turcke said the company continues to focus on the importance of the TV audience and the reach it still delivers to advertisers. However,  technological advancements – such as the growing prevalence of 4K and VR content – and the distribution challenges they present has also become top of mind.

“There is 4K, there is virtual reality – there are so many cool technological things coming to the industry. The challenge is the distribution challenge. There is so much uncertainty in distribution – is it completely over the top? Is it tethered over the  top? Is it conventional? Is it speciality? Is it pick-and-pay? We think about that,” Turcke said. As such, she said Bell Media’s philosophy has become “pick a screen and fill it with goodness – which means you have to have the best content and the most flexibility.”

A focus on audience growth was also one of the “fundamental pieces of the merger of Cours Entertainment and Shaw Media,” Corus president and CEO Murphy said during the panel. Despite the frequent alarm bells being rung about the declining television industry, Murphy said the television market in Canada is still worth about $2.2 billion dollars, with “a lot of share” for competing broadcasters to chase.

Taking that market share is still about winning the content game, Murphy said, adding that he hopes international content sales will contribute “significantly more” to the revenue mix of the newly merged Corus Entertainment/Shaw Media entity (shareholders approved the acquisition earlier this week, but the merger is still subject to Competition Bureau approval.)

He alluded to a shift already well underway at Corus, which is seeing the broadcaster not only own more content, but acquiring rights to distribute indie content internationally.

“We want to get to this spot of being a content company, but we don’t want to get hurt on the way. We are going to keep doing the Nelvana animation, we are going to increase our production there,” Murphy said. He said Corus remains “excited about lifestyle and reality” for its current channels, thanks to the genre’s ability to travel well internationally, but said the company isn’t going to take “a hard swing” at “one-hour procedural.”

When Morayniss asked the panelists what producers can expect in a post Terms-of-Trade world, both Turcke and Murphy dodged slightly, stressing future deals must be good for all parties involved. Both also acknowledged the death of some channels in the post pick-and-pay world, but Murphy noted he expects original content dollars to be focused on the smaller suite of channels. However, with Let’s Talk TV now in the industry’s rearview mirror, Turcke said she thinks the future of the Canadian TV industry “is very heavily dependent on the strength of the broadband networks in this country.”

“As more and more video gets consumed by broadband, whether it is over-the-top or through IPTV, you have 4K, VR [content] – these are all bandwidth hogs. So the strength of the infrastructure in our country will drive the capability of these new kinds of technology and assets to [get to] Canadian viewers,” Turcke said.