Annual Report 2017-2018

Looking ahead, getting ready

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2. Evolution of the media landscape

French-language-media viability in Ontario will be tested by the faster pace of technological change over the coming years. Some are already predicting that artificial intelligence will generate 90% of the information read by the general public by 2025. Less dramatically, it has been predicted that artificial intelligence will do the repetitive work required of journalists and reposition them to perform higher added-value tasks.106 Others claim that blockchain technology107 will transform the management of rights and residuals, facilitate participatory funding of content, do away with middlemen in the selling of digital advertising and help reduce content piracy.108 In short, the challenges raised by rapid technological transformations will be enormous. They will require repeated investments, ongoing training, and robust strategic and operational resiliency.

All the efforts deployed to improve Ontario‘s French-language-media content will fail to meet the hoped-for results unless demand is heavily stimulated. A major challenge over the next decade will therefore be to increase the size and engagement of French-language-media audiences in Ontario. These media will face unbelievably stiff competition from the English-language media of which Franco-Ontarians are so fond.

Furthermore, the face of Franco-Ontarian diversity is changing the very nature of supply and demand for content. Franco-Ontarians are no longer a homogeneous group in terms of their ethnic, cultural, demographic and regional diversity. Waves of immigration over the next decade will further accentuate this trend. Accordingly, Ontario Francophones will be increasingly segmented, and their sources of information as varied as they are global. Reaching them and getting them to engage in their multiplicity will remain a challenge. This Franco-Ontarian evolution will become a catalyst for innovation and could give rise to new French-language-media voices in Ontario.


  1. Télécoms, Média, Innovation & Stratégies Digitales par Sia Partners, L’intelligence artificielle bouleverse-t-elle l’industrie des médias ?, 1 December 2017. Available online: http:// telecom.sia-partners.com/IA-et-media
  2. A technology that can store digital information securely and transparently without a central control agency. All commuters in a blockchain have a copy of a general ledger that authenticates transactions.
  3. Forbes, How Blockchain Could Start To Make Waves In Media And Entertainment In 2018, January 4 2018. Available online at https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2018/01/04/what-blockchain-has-in-store-for-media-and-entertainment-in-2018/#5f57c93f71f4

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