Talk about your brou-haha.
If nothing else, the move has galvanized
the Canadian comedy community like never before. One of the most vocal on
social media is former Vancouver comic Dave Nystrom, who recently moved to
Calgary after a decade in Los Angeles.
“We were given no notice on this,” he said.
“The main point for me and for a lot of the comics is they’re not adhering to
CanCon. I mean, they are kind of adhering to CanCon rules but they’re
circumventing it by airing American acts.”
On Monday, the public relations department
of Just For Laughs passed on to me several prepared comments, saying representatives from both
Just For Laughs and SiriusXM couldn’t speak with me due to the volume of requests
they’ve been receiving. I have since submitted a list of 30 questions I had
planned on asking the representatives. Until such time as they’re answered, we’ll
go by the official comments. “SiriusXM has no CRTC obligation to keep a comedy
channel,” one comment reads.
Another comment says, “We have asked
[SiriusXM host, producer and standup comic] Ben Miner to curate new content for
the channel that will feature Canadian releases from establishing and emerging
Canadian comedians who produced content independently of JFL, as well as
performances for Just For Laughs from the past to today.”
Miner, a beloved figure on the scene who
also runs the yearly SiriusXM Top Comic competition, couldn’t be reached for
comment so as of press time, we don’t know what percentage of airtime will
feature the independent releases.
Before the official comments, Nystrom said
of Miner, “He’s been the biggest champion for Canadian comedy. Everybody loves
Ben. He’s been the one who’s fought for us all along to get our albums in
there.”
Residuals from airplay has ranged from a
couple thousand dollars to $60,000 US a year, says Nystrom.
“It was always our intention that the new
channel would be majority Canadian and that comedians would receive royalties
on both independently produced albums, as they always have, as well as Canadian
performances from the JFL library,” another official comment reads. So while that's positive, it still is less than the 100 percent it was up until now.
One thing that galls many of the comedians
is how this all came as a total surprise.
“If 50 percent of your income is about to
disappear, that’s something anybody in any profession would want to know,” says
Nystrom. “If we were informed, maybe we could have had conversations with them
on how to find a better option. Or something. I’m sure we’d put our heads
together and instead of having this fight, we would have had a discussion to
try and figure out a better approach that works for everybody.”
On their end, JFL says, “Together, both
companies regret not notifying comedians earlier of the decision.”
According to the official comments, and to
a video new JFL owner Howie Mandel released on Sunday, SiriusXM was looking to
attract a larger audience for the channel and approached JFL about partnering.
JFL comments, “In preparation for the new channel, SiriusXM removed more than
25% of their original talk programming to open up 30 hours of additional
airtime to program comedy clips.”
“If it wasn’t working before for them from
their end of it,” says Nystrom, “I don’t know what that means exactly but I
don’t imagine they’re just going to go back to how it was, but we would like to
be part of the conversation, we would like there to be some sort of compromise.
And something that is truly Canadian, not American acts recorded in Canada.”
While preparing this story, I streamed Canada Laughs. It's a small sample size, but out of 17 tracks, 11 were Canadian (or 65%): Debra DiGiovanni, Ana-Marija Stojic, Brent Butt, Jeff McEnery, Ron James, Winston Spear, Dave Merheje, Jeremy Hotz, Tim Nutt, DeAnne Smith, and Rebecca Kohler, while six were non-Canadian: Marc Maron, Jimmy Carr, Colin Quinn, Jim Jefferies, Ed Byrne, and Dylan Moran. And all appeared to be from JFL recordings rather than independent albums released by the comedians themselves.
The final comment from the JFL publicity
department reads, “Our goal with the channel is to increase audience which will
provide greater exposure for Canadian talent that should translate into more
and more opportunities.”
It’s unclear now how playing less than 100
percent Canadian content will provide greater exposure for Canadian talent but maybe they feel drawing listeners in with famous international names will expose them to the Canadian names they might not otherwise be familiar with.
As hot under the collar as the comedians
are today, maybe the situation will resolve itself. Maybe it won’t. Maybe the
public perception of Just For Laughs will erode. Maybe this will just be a
blip. For the sake of the country’s comedy industry, we can hope the two sides
will soon look back at this ugly bit of business and, well, laugh.
“I want Just For Laughs and Canadian comedy
to have a great relationship,” says Nystrom. “I would love it if this was the
spark for some kind of change that lifted Canadian comedy up and Just For
Laughs was a part of that. I’m not trying to paint them as an evil empire or
anything like that. I think they’re not handling things the right way and I
just want that to change.”
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