Justin Stockman is keeping his sights on the horizon as Bell Media navigates a turbulent time in the broadcasting sector.
The Bell Media content head, who assumed his current role as VP, content development and programming in 2021 after previously overseeing the broadcaster’s SVOD and OTT strategy, tells Playback that a contraction in the U.S. content-buying market and reduced ad spend has led to the “perfect storm” of trouble for traditional broadcasters this year, resulting in some deep cuts to the business.
Parentco BCE laid off 6% of Bell Media’s workforce in June, closing six radio stations, but Stockman says assets such as TSN and Crave have helped the company weather the worst of it. Crave subscribers hit 3.1 million as of BCE’s Q3 2023, with subscriber revenue up 2.9% year-over-year between Crave and TSN+. As a result, the content team has leaned into opportunities to grow Crave’s originals strategy, which Stockman says is “still in a ramp up phase.”
The broadcaster announced its originals slate had grown to 1,037 hours (up from 973 from the year prior) during the June upfronts, which has since expanded with additional greenlights and renewals, including Made for TV with Boman Martinez-Reid (Alibi Entertainment) and season five of Canada’s Drag Race (Blue Ant Studios).
Bell Media has also been able to grow its international partnerships. On top of securing a multi-year agreement to keep HBO and Warner Bros. Discovery content on its platforms, the broadcaster has a first-look deal with Lionsgate and an original content pact with Fox Entertainment. “We’ve never really been able to get to this final step where we’re going to commit to doing simulcast content together, and Fox is willing to try it,” he says.
As to what’s to come in 2024, he highlights the Jasmeet Raina-led Late Bloomer (Pier 21 Films; pictured right) as among some of the most promising upcoming Crave originals, and hinted that renewals on a number of its new series are on the way.
Justin Stockman: A lot of the activity you’re seeing is on Crave, which is a growing business. And there’s not a lot of growing businesses with legacy Canadian media right now. Because we’re growing, we’re able to invest. I think also, honestly, we’ve got a lot of great partners we’re working with.
The ancient history of Cancon was that people sort of viewed it as this obligation, and that would mean sometimes they would overpay because they’re like, ‘oh, I’ll just put my money here because I have to do it.’ We’re treating this as an actual asset. We’re working with partners who know that a concept will travel, so we’re getting international money into these productions, they’re distributing them in the U.S., and all these things mean we can do more.
That was the big deal. We were all waiting to figure out when it would get extended because it’s proven itself to be pretty core to Crave. I can’t tell you how long it’s for, but it’s for a good, long time. The originals on Crave drive a lot [of viewership], as do the films, but one of the tentpoles is clearly the HBO originals, and it’s a relief to go to bed at night knowing we’re going to have those HBO originals for the foreseeable future.
Yes, and it’s a key message we thought had maybe gotten a bit lost in a lot of the regulatory conversation. But with the [federal government’s Bill C-11] policy direction, it looked like someone was listening, because it encourages [foreign] partnership with Canadian entities.
One of the issues with what’s happened with the broadcasting system in Canada is that some streamers or studios are not actually selling content to Canadians anymore, and it is a fact that Canadian content is funded by the high viewership of people watching those American programs. English Canadians like their original content, they want to watch Canadian stories and we are happy to serve them, but they also like American stuff, and if you starve us of American shows, we have less money to spend on Canadian.
The Traitors is one we were watching, because it was one of the first Peacock shows that seemed to be getting some real buzz out of the U.S., and so we were able to do an international deal with All3Media where we could get all the English-language versions, and with that came the format rights.
We would usually wait for it to be a massive hit before we pull the trigger on doing a Canadian version, but it was sort of right place, right time because of the writers’ strike. The production company Entourage were convinced they could get us a show for the fall, so literally, on the day we bought the American shows at the L.A. screenings in May, we decided in the room – the French and English team were there together – that let’s just go for it and greenlight it. The next day we were casting the show at the airport on our way to fly back to Toronto. And we couldn’t be happier with how well it’s doing.
We are sometimes risk averse, and it showed us we could take an occasional swing. That franchise has not yet realized, I think, how big it could be. We have season two of the U.S. show coming to Crave early next year and it has done some major stunt casting. We think season two or three is where the international formats are going to really take off.
Photos courtesy of Bell Media
The story originally appeared in Playback’s Winter 2023 issue