(Continued From Cover) (Continued on Page 42) 40 VideoAge had reconnected with Cohan on the Fox Studios lot during the L.A. Screenings in May, with a commitment to meet in New York City during the summer, before his move to Toronto. The commitment couldn’t be kept and the in-person interview became a videoconference talk from Toronto in late August with his assistant Sara McLaren recording the proceedings. The 50-year-old Cohan assumed the Bell Media presidency in November 2023 after a stint as Chief Growth Officer & President at Nielsen, the global measurement and data analytics group. Before moving to Nielsen in 2020, Cohan had left the position of president, International and Digital Media, A+E Networks, toward the end of 2018. Ten years ago, the issues facing Cohan were how crowded the TV channel business panorama was, how costly it had become to enter, how competitive it was, and how unclear the digital future was. He also had issues with local hurdles in the form of a country’s rules and regulations for content requirements, protection of indigenous channels, ownership limitations, and other obligations. Examples of restrictions were provided by Canada’s regulatory agency, the CRTC, and Chinese regulators. At Bell Media, Cohan’s challenges will instead be aided by Canada’s CRTC regulations. According to Cohan the regulator will “level the playing field in Canada and global streamers will be required to contribute to the Canadian broadcast system.” Indeed, starting September 2024 foreign streamers must contribute five percent of their annual Canadian revenues into a fund devoted to producing Canadian content, including local TV and radio news, as well as Indigenous and French-language content. In June, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said that streaming companies that are not affiliated with a Canadian broadcaster — and that make at least $25 million in Canadian revenue — would be required to pay into the fund, which is expected to inject about C$200 million into the system every year. Meanwhile, global streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ are challenging the CRTC’s regulatory directive, which is an Online Streaming Act approved by the Canadian Parliament that is meant to contribute money to Canada’s broadcast sector. However, Cohan will still be facing many of the other hurdles that he faced a decade ago, if only under different circumstances. Plus, he has to survive the tech mentality that wants to manage creative businesses inside utility businesses, and which helped turn other Telcos that made tech-related inroads into the content business into failures. Examples of that include the ill-fated Japan-based Matsushita’s acquisition of Universal Studios in 1990, the disastrous take-over of Argentina’s Telefé by Spain’s Telefonica in 1999, and the fatal AOL-Warner Bros. merger in 2000. The bad examples continued with AT&T acquiring Warner Bros. in 2018. As The Wall Street Journal reported in its August 24, 2024 edition, “If you’re working at a utility company, maybe the CEO doesn’t matter much, but if you’re working for Apple CEOs matter a lot.” Cohan is the fifth Bell Media president, the second American, but the first with TV content experience. Kevin Crull, an American who came from the Internet, mobile, and satellite TV side of the industry, was president from 2011 to 2015. Mary Ann Turcke, an engineer, served as president from 2015 to 2017. Music executive Randy Lennox was president from 2017 until early 2020. And Wade Oosterman came from the Internet and mobile phone side of the business. He was president from 2021 to 2023. Cohan tackled the Telco-content question head on. “Yes, there are two separate cultures,” he said, but “my job is to cultivate those two cultures and create a cultural bridge.” After all, he explained, “both sides have consumer knowledge, and we’re collaborating on new forms of marketing and advertising.” It helps that Cohan is also an officer of Bell Canada (BCE), and he’s grateful that there is BCE appreciation for someone like him who has experience in content and data. Plus, he said that BCE is not new in the content business “since they owned Bell Media for over a decade.” Bell Media began when Bell Canada fully acquired the national CTV television network in 2010. While BCE is headquartered in Montreal, Bell Media’s main office is housed in the former CHUM building in Toronto. Today, CTV comprises 20 O & O stations and two privately owned affiliates. CTV competes with Global TV Network, owned by Corus Entertainment, a media holding of JR Shaw. Bell Media also operates CTV-2, comprised of Bell Media’s Sean Cohan and Fox’s Rob Wade at the Fox Studios in Hollywood Cohan’s primary challenge is to “drive a transformation from a legacy broadcast model to a digital content media leadership position.” VIDEOAGE October 2024 Sean Cohan
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