The CRTC has released the results of a study on how Canadian audio and audiovisual content, including sports and news, is found, promoted and made visible.

Undertaken by Nordicity, which conducted 48 interviews and three roundtables across the broadcasting ecosystem last summer, the report identifies nine strategic approaches that could inform a new discoverability framework.

Nordicity found that the streaming shift in the audio sector, in particular, has resulted in intensified attention scarcity, driven by oversupply and algorithmic gatekeeping.

“With ~120,000 new tracks uploaded daily to Spotify and consumption highly skewed to a small cohort of top artists, emerging and mid-tier creators face rising barriers,” the report stated. “Canada nevertheless ranks among the world’s leading music exporters, even as domestic share on streaming lags regulated radio play. The result is a dual reality: global opportunity alongside structural pressures that demand better audience development as well as modernized funding and regulatory supports for discoverability in a highly competitive global environment.”

The report says across audio and audiovisual, the attention economy is resulting in the need to reframe strategy as audience time is increasingly scarce. In Canada, it says English-language domestic audiovisual content struggles for visibility relative to foreign titles, while French-language markets perform better at home but face scale limits. Technology now sits at the core of discoverability because data is the operating language of how works are indexed, ranked, and recommended, according to the study.

“Pre-installed apps, remote-control buttons, and connected-TV home screens determine which services (and therefore catalogues) audiences encounter first,” it states. “Where leading foreign services are ubiquitous on devices, Canadian services often require extra steps to find and install, which introduces friction that suppresses awareness and usage. Within services, a blend of personalization and editorialization guides choice: continuously trained recommendation models ingest thousands of signals while local programming teams create shelves, collections, and launch spotlights to surface Canadian and Indigenous titles. This intersection may be where prominence is won or lost.”

Considerations for Canadian policy and industry discoverability

Based on the results of the consultation and learnings from other jurisdictions, the report identified nine strategic approaches for the CRTC and broadcasting stakeholders to consider including:

1. Accelerate a sector-wide mindset shift from output-first to audience-first: The study suggests content producers move to a mindset of “make to connect/engage,” putting the audience at the centre of policy and practice when discussing content discoverability. It adds that historic “levers” to incentivize investment in Canadian content production, “remain necessary but are no longer sufficient and require adaptation for the digital space, which intrinsically brings global competition for audience attention within the Canadian broadcasting system. Creators and rights-holders must pivot from making content for services to making and selling IP with services and partners. Practically, an audience-first mindset means validating audience interest–IP fit and long-term financial opportunity early in the development phase. It also means treating export readiness as a design constraint, not an afterthought.”
2. Achieve Canadian policy objectives and global success through Canadian ownership and control of IP and content delivery services: The report says public funds, tax credits, and levy-based programs should recognize commercialization and rights retention as value. “This vision might mean better integrating audience development into production budgets and rewarding projects and companies that retain Canadian IP and demonstrate audience traction,” it recommends.
3. Leverage the contribution of all components of the Broadcasting Act to enhance Canadian content success at home and abroad: The study suggests avenues be explored to design more flexible conditions of service, such as focusing on an outcomes-based, case-by-case approach that would play to the strengths of various distribution platforms.
4. Define relevant indicators of success; regulate measurement and reporting; focus on improvements; adjust and correct: In a global, algorithmically-mediated marketplace, the report says flexibility is essential. It suggests the commission could work with services to identify how each can best contribute to enhance the visibility and success of Canadian content, set yardsticks, require credible reporting, and trigger corrective action when results fall short.
5. Incentivize strategic marketing investment with measurable impacts and data access throughout the lifecycle: Currently in Canada, support for the marketing and promotion of content represents a relatively small portion of overall investment in audio and audiovisual. The report says a practical policy response to current business models would see audience development as an eligible and incentivized spend across the content lifecycle. It recommends continued modernization of mandates, policies, and tools to reflect current market realities and financing structures to improve the potential of Canadian content to succeed locally and internationally.
6. Commit more resources to metadata infrastructure: The study finds that data is foundational to discoverability, promotion, and prominence, with any policy and measurement framework to consider investment in public metadata infrastructure at the national level. “To ensure that truth and provenance remain under domestic stewardship, especially as online information increasingly transits through foreign AI systems trained on (unverified) internet-scale data, Canada needs independent, interoperable registries and services for identifiers and descriptive/enrichment data,” the report states.
7. Build shared responsibility and collaboration: Nordicity recommends a nationally coordinated effort to bring together key public entities (CRTC; Canadian Heritage; Innovation, Science, and Economic Development; Global Affairs), national and provincial funding bodies and agencies, industry associations, Canadian companies, and foreign services operating in Canada to establish a standing forum to surface barriers, test collaborative solutions, and align policy and market practices over time.
8. Support capacity-building across the sector: To be effective, the study says a national discoverability performance framework must consider the capacity of the entire ecosystem to address challenges and capitalize on new opportunities, considering sector-wide literacy, especially among Canadian-content small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that struggle to access and retain specialized talent and resources associated with audience research, marketing, and promotion required to compete.
9. Consolidate efforts with strategic national campaigns: As Canada continues to experience geopolitical friction with the U.S., the report says  the current support around “Buy Canadian” messaging presents a unique opportunity for broad-based awareness campaigns in English- and French-language markets that highlight Canadian and Indigenous content and international achievements. It goes further to say targeted initiatives are warranted, starting with kids, families, and the K–12 education system. It additionally recommends more coordinated action in export markets.

The study will form part of the public record for upcoming proceedings implementing the modernized framework under the Online Streaming Act.