https://pressgazette.co.uk/podcast-future-of-media-explained/podcast-paul-deegan-2/
Transcription of Podcast 47:
You are listening to the future of media explained with me, press the editor in Chief, Dominic Ponsford, and this week we are talking about doing battle with the duopoly.
Joining me on the future media is Press Gazette associate editor Will Turvill. So, you have been on the frontline of the battle between publishers and the duopoly.
Will Turville: Yes, observing it with my press jacket on, yes.
Dominic Ponsford: So, when we talk about duopoly, we are talking about Facebook and Google or Meta and Alphabet, depending on your fancy and if you wanted to, you could also throw in Amazon, couldn't you? Which would make it triopoly or even more. You can gain further on the quintuplet, can't you?
So just before we came in, I have done some calculations literally on the back of an envelope.
Will Turvill: "Sounds dangerous"
Dominic Ponsford: and I will tell you what I found out. So just to set the scene a bit in terms of the sort of staggering decline of news media versus the tech giants. So back in 2007, which was the eve of the great stock market crash. News brands were making about £5 billion a year in advertising in the UK, so they were the biggest single segment and in today's money that would be worth about £8 billion. So, if publishers are still doing as well today as they were 16 years ago, they would be making about £8 billion a year out of advertising. Fast forward to last year and every national newspaper, regional newspaper, magazine, print and online combined was making about £2 billion. So, one-fourth of what they were doing 16 years ago. OK.
Will Turvill: Google and Facebook have gone in completely opposite direction and then some.
Dominic Ponsford: Now this is very much back of an envelope stuff will. So globally the Triopoly have meta, Google and Amazon, but mainly Facebook and Google make US$400 billion a year in advertising.
Will Turvill: Yes.
Dominic Ponsford: So that is about $4.00 out of every $10 that is spent on advertising anywhere in the world.
Will Turvill: Online advertising or all advertising?
Dominic Ponsford: On all advertising. I think you are nodding right?
Will Turvill: I think I am.
Dominic Ponsford: I think you are giving this your scent. Aren't you?
Will Turvill: Yes, absolutely, yes.
Dominic Ponsford: So, in the UK, if the UK advertising market was worth £35 billion last year, I reckon that Google and Facebook and a bit of Amazon took about £14 billion. Of the UK economy last year, do you reckon sounds right?
Will Turvill: Sounds about right, sounds like you should write that up into a story. I love that the back of that is literally on the back of an envelope.
Dominic Ponsford: But I think that is about right, isn't it?
Will Turvill: Yes, sounds about, I mean that those are the scales that we are talking and yes, in the interview to come, we have got similar figures from Canada, which sound very similar.
Dominic Ponsford: But that is staggering, isn't it? And if you think that, OK, there are a lot of newspapers sold in 2007 that are not sold now. But in terms of audience, there is so much more going on, isn't there an audience wise in terms of people's websites and yeah, and general digital impressions. As well, yes. We journalists are making a fraction of what we did then are all the cash is going to these US tech giants.
Will Turvill: Well, that is hell of a map of an envelope. I am impressed with that. I like it. Should get it framed.
Dominic Ponsford: And I am going to say one more thing, and then I am going to go over to you. But imagine if all our supermarkets were Walmart, or all our food was suddenly made by The Kellogg's company, or medicine was made by some US drug company? Maybe it is. But we have something to say about it, wouldn't we? Sort of quietly. Just sat by, haven't we? Like a frog being boiled in water?
Will Turvill: Well, I would not say you have been too quiet. About it done, but we have been hoping.
Dominic Ponsford: So, look, we are talking to who have you spoken to?
Will Turvill: Paul Deegan, the president and chief executive of News Media Canada.
Dominic Ponsford: So, look, you fill us up. In on where we are now, because there is a bit of a fight back going on globally, is not it, which you've been covering in detail. Canada is the latest kind of jurisdiction to stick its head above the parapet. What is going on? What is the state of?
Will Turvill: Right. Yes. So, the background is that it in 2021, Australia became the first country to pass the law that effectively forced Google and Facebook to pay for news. Lots of other countries have been talking about it for a while, including the UK and the US. Canada is basically second in line, so it is due to pass its online news act in the coming months. It has been on the cards in a fair amount of detail for around 2 years. We first brought it on it around two years ago when I was living in Canada. So, I wrote about that quite a bit, so it is very similar to the Australian law it's seeking to improve on it in some areas. It wants to be more transparent, but Google and Facebook's reaction to it has been very similar to their reaction in Australia, which has meant lots of lobbying in on and lots of threats basically. So, Google has been experimenting with turning off its new search capabilities in different parts of Canada. I think it's affecting up to 4% of Canadian users, so a large number of people, they're just experimenting with, which is a bit weird, and I think was a bit of a PR fail for them, Meta has said if this passes, I believe it must have been said, if this passes in this form, but it may have just said if this law passes, then we are going to just block news in Canada as we did in Australia, and you may remember the big hoo-hahs over Facebook blocking news in Australia back in 2021 didn't go very well. The Wall Street Journal around the year later published a big investigation showing that Facebook had deliberately, or possibly deliberately blocked lots of content that was not just news and was relating to charities and emergency services. Facebook in this case is saying we are going to do that again; except we're going to do it in a much better way, and we don't care about news basically as the message from them. So, there has been a lot of pushback and. This legislation politicians in Canada have seemed to suggest we are not going to be intimidated by you, Facebook or Google News publishers have said the same thing. So, it looks like this is going to be passing and it is going to be really interesting from our perspective, I think to be covering this battle and where this ends up, I think it's going to be really interesting time for us and for media and tech reporters covering this.
Dominic Ponsford: In terms of nuts and bolts for publishers, it is a lot of money, isn't it? You worked out having you in terms of the amount of money that publishers in Australia have got. And if you kind of extrapolated that to what publishers will be getting here, it is kind of a lot of money, isn't it? It is like covering a significant amount of newsroom costs.
Will Turvill: Yes, the figure we've always used from Australia, which has come straight from the horse's mouth. Ice Rod Simms, the former head of the Australia competition, and. Consumer Commission, he's always said the deals are worth more than 200,000,000 Australian dollars per year and if you look at the size of the Australian publishing industry and compare that with the size and the population of Australia and the size of the economy, you compare that with the UK. Then you have. If the same act passes and it has the same result, there is no guarantee of that. But if it does, then it is going to be a lot more than that for UK publishers and I think it's slightly more for Canada, according to my calculations on preset in June 2022, I said that Britain's largest news publishers could be in line for big tech payments worth £170 million a year. If the UK passes Australia style legislation and that was definitely because you know me, I am a cautious man. That was on the lower end of things, and I worked out that if its Broadcasters including the BBC and there would be a big, big question about that. Then it would be more than £250 million per year. A parliamentary watchdog in Canada calculated that it would expect Canadian publishers to be making 329,000,000 Canadian dollars a year. So, it is a huge amount of money for these news industries. And then also when it adds up and if this keeps spreading, then it actually turns into quite a significant amount of money, even for Google and Facebook, even as large as they are. So yes, big story.
Dominic Ponsford: I have put written down £250 million on the back of my envelope. It is better than poking in the eye with a dirty stick, isn't it? But it is not much compared to the 6 billion that I estimate news brands have lost from advertising over the last 16 years. Let us hear how they get on in Canada then and what we can learn in terms of our sort of battle with the duopoly over here in the UK, let us do it so.
Will Turvill: I started off by asking Paul. Just to give a bit of background on himself, where he came from, he's been in his news media Canada role for two years and I wanted to know a little bit more about his background, where he came from and how he came to be taking on the duopoly on behalf of Canadian news publishers.
Paul Deegan: I am Paul Deegan, I'm president and chief executive officer of News Media Canada, which is an advocacy group which represents about 560 trusted news titles in Canada. And prior to that, I led public and government affairs at a large Canadian railroad and also, at a large Canadian bank and then before that I worked in the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1996. I have always been interested in news and in terms of my own background leading public affairs, both at the bank and the railway, that I had a lot of interaction with reporters over the years. And then I became involved with an organization called the Canadian Journalism Foundation, which really supports excellence in Canadian media, and then also I have been involved in the Michener Awards, which is a public service journalism award. So, I have been involved with both of those for many, many years and really enjoyed it and so when this opportunity presented itself, it seemed like an interesting opportunity to advocate on behalf of a sector that really needed help in terms of public policy, especially with our federal government.
Will Turvill: And when did you start in the role?
Paul Deegan: I joined News Media Canada almost two years ago.
Will Turvill: An interesting time because as we will come on to discuss in a bit more detail, this seems like quite a crucial time for the new sector in Canada and I imagine Google and Facebook and the online News act have dominated a huge amount of your last two years with.
Paul Deegan: Exactly. So, a little over a year ago, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-18, our Online News Act, modeled on the Australian News Media Bargaining Code. And just backing up from that – when I first joined News Media Canada, we were looking at a number of ways to tackle this issue in terms of the uneven playing field between publishers and platforms, and so we looked at a few things. One was we looked at copyright and we determined that in Canada, it would probably take 10 years or so to deal with that. So that, just given the dire situation, that was not a workable solution. We also looked at a fund. It really came down to sort of a fund or something similar to the Australian News Media Bargaining Code, but with the idea of a fund, we just thought that was getting government too much into the business of news, into the business of picking winners and losers, so that really was not preferable. And then around this time, we could see that the News Media Bargaining Code in Australia was in place, and it was working, and it was working very effectively. So that really became the preferred option and during the election campaign in Canada almost two years ago, the Liberal Party, which was the governing party at the time, and they were since reelected. But they proposed the Australian model, and we had other parties either proposing the Australian model or something similar to it. We really had agreement across the political spectrum in terms of first of all recognizing that there was a problem and then recognition on what likely solutions were. So, it was a very interesting time, and we are getting close to the finish line. We believe now on getting this legislation passed which will really make an enormous difference for publishers.
Will Turvill: I will be asking you for a bit more detail about how exactly it differs from Australia's News Media Bargaining Code in a little bit. But before I do that, I just wanted to ask if you could set the scene for us slightly on the Canadian news media. What did it look like at the peak of its powers and the peak of its revenues? When was that, and how has it changed and why?
Paul Deegan: So, about a decade or so ago, revenue for the sector would have been roughly five billion Canadian dollars. Today, we are in a situation where revenue for news publishers is closer to a billion dollars. During that same period, the revenue for Google and Meta in Canada would have been about a billion dollars a decade or so ago, and then today it is at roughly $10 billion. So, we've seen a dramatic change in terms of revenue for publishers and that's driven really by the advertising ecosystem, how it's changed and evolved over the years and we're now in a situation where two companies are scooping up roughly 80% of ad revenues in Canada. We understand there's a change in the way the business is done, but we want a level playing field between publishers and platforms, and when it comes to negotiation, we just felt that we were not in a strong position.
We also have issues and this is something that's a global issue in terms of antitrust and looking at these companies and their dominance, particularly Googles in AD Tech and where you have basically a situation which is akin to a Stock Exchange, but you've got a company that is scooping up, and this is according to the US Justice Department based on numbers that they received from Google, that Google was, you know, scooping up roughly 30% commission on advertising and representing both buyers and sellers and in most markets, one entity doesn't represent both the buyer and seller, so that's a longer term issue that needs to be addressed. In Canada, we have to make sure that our competition watchdog has the tools it needs to address those issues. But in terms of the negotiation over remuneration, based on the value of the content we provide, as we look at it, the Australian model is really what makes sense from our perspective.
Will Turvill: Canada is a vast country, which I know because I used to live there. I do not know how many time zones there are in Canada, but it's a lot. I just wondered from your perspective how difficult it is to coordinate a membership across all that space.
Paul Deegan: We have essentially 4 1/2 time zones. Newfoundland is 1/2 hour off from our Atlantic time zone, but it is, as you point out, a massive country where a huge land mass and our population is roughly forty million. It is a massive land mass without a huge population and these small community papers which are scattered across Canada, they're vital to those communities. So, those communities would have the local community paper, which is a weekly paper which would have a website typically as well. And then you have the public broadcaster, but that is it and news is so important. But in these small communities, in a country as large as Canada, it is absolutely vital that they're able to cover city hall, cover the courts if there is a courthouse in town, cover the police. These are really important issues, and it's up to really the local newspaper, typically, covers those issues. That is the primary source of local news.
Will Turvill: Back to the Online News Act. You have been in your job for about two years, but I imagine that this has been in the pipeline for a bit longer. Can you tell us a potted history of how the online news act came into being in its current form, where it stemmed from, and how long it has been a possibility, or how long this has been coming down the track?
Paul Deegan: Sure. This would have started 7-8 years ago as publishers looked at their business model, they looked at how they were losing ad revenue to not just Google and Meta, but other companies as well. Classified ads for example like that, that whole business has changed. And as we looked around in terms of how to address this, it was complicated and frankly it was not really until we saw the success of what Rod Sims had put in Australia with the Bargaining Code that we decided on a on a solution and thankfully the government believed that was the right way to go as well essentially, and its relatively simple legislation. What we are dealing with here is collective negotiation, backed up by the teeth of baseball style final offer arbitration. Currently under our Competition Act, publishers in Canada cannot get together to negotiate collectively and what we've had over the last sort of two years or so is in advance of legislation and seeing that the government was going to take action, both Google and Meta started doing deals with select publishers. Typically, these were larger publishers and effectively what has happened is we've got a situation where Google and Meta are really picking sort of the winners and losers in the Canadian media landscape and that is a problem we wanted to get to a situation where I guess just backing up, we've got sort of this uneven playing field between publishers and platform and once they started picking winners and losers, you got this uneven playing field between publishers. And that is not right, that is not fair to the smaller publishers who typically were not getting Google and Meta knocking on their door. I will tell you a little story. I know when you lived in Canada, well, you lived in British Columbia, but one of our members is the Gabriola Sounder, which is Gabrielola Island, which is an island off Vancouver Island, and the publisher of that publication, Sarah Holmes, is we were going through this process. She said to me, we must make sure that the small publishers like her also benefit from that and that really stuck with me. So as this legislation advanced in the initial draft of the legislation, there were some criteria related to who was eligible and in the initial version of the bill, Sarah and her husband, the publication that they put out, was not eligible, so you had to have two employees. But those employees in the initial version of the bill were at arm's length, so it could not be family members. So, we got an amendment into the legislation that ensures that small publishers like her and that is a lot of our members, we're 560 titles and of those titles, I would say roughly a third of them are owned by large corporates. There is another third which would be owned by let's say mid-tier companies that have multiple titles, but then there's another third or so which are truly mom and pop style independent publications where a family you know is putting up a newspaper two, three and fourth generations and again to what I said earlier, like these are vital publications to those communities. That is the source of news in that community, and it is essential that they survive. So that was an important amendment in terms of getting that through.
Will Turvill: Could you explain briefly how Canada's act will differ, what differences they'll be, what similarities they'll be?
Paul Deegan: The similarities, the two big ones are the ability for publishers to come together and negotiate collectively with the big tech platforms, and then the enforcement mechanism, the fact that there's baseball style, final offer arbitration where both parties come together, they put their best offer forward and an arbitrator chooses between them. Those are the central tenants of the legislation in Canada and of the Australian Code, and that is really the, I guess the big similarities in terms of differences there is a number, and I think they're important and I think we've built on the amazing success of the news media bargaining code in Australia. So first of all, the determination in terms of who is in and who's out on the digital news intermediary side, meaning the platforms that's made in Australia essentially by the Minister in terms of designation.
In Canada, that's arm's length from government, so that is from our perspective, a really crucial difference. We have also got a specific exemption from our Competition Act in our legislation. So, there are a number of things that are, I guess, technical in nature, but very important from our perspective. We have also got height and transparency so, there will be an annual report which is produced by our radio and broadcasting regulator, which is independent, or arm's length of political calls and there will be transparency in terms of the aggregate value of deals. So, in Australia, Rod has said the value to publishers is north of $200 million, but there will be more detail from government rather than more anecdotal. There will be at this annual report which we think is good. Obviously, publishers see these as commercial deals. We want to make sure that those deals are confidential. The actual specific deals, but in terms of the aggregate value of deals, we think that it actually serves the public interest to have that information public.
Will Turvill: How have Google and Facebook reacted to the online news act? I think people will be familiar with the threats that have been made. Facebook just last week said we will be blocking news in Canada, and we will be doing it in a most successful way than they tried to do in Australia. That is kind of an oversimplification, but it would be great if you could just give us an idea of how they have reacted in general when they started reacting, what kind of lobbying activity you've seen behind the scenes?
Paul Deegan: So, they've actually, I would say, taken a different approach to the two companies. Meta has been very quiet. We have a public registry of lobbyists in Canada, and you know, assuming people are reporting the meetings that are taking place, which they are required to by law, they've had very little activity like surprisingly few meetings with government. Google, on the other hand, has had many meetings, as have we. I think Google has been very active on the lobbying side and that's certainly their right and I think that's actually good in terms of stakeholders who engage. I guess the issue is in terms of some of the tactics that we have seen. I would say they have been heavy-handed, and I think to many Canadians, these tactics are new. So, Google actually a number of weeks ago blocked access to news via Google Search. For something like 4% of users and I think many of our parliamentarians were taken aback by that. They held separate hearings, not into the online news act, but into these tactics. And I would say in terms of Google's own reputation was not a helpful exercise, and I do not think it would be helpful in terms of getting amendments to the legislation that they might be seeking. Meta has already come out and said if the bill passes in its current form that they would block news and I think from our perspective, this legislation is not across the finish line yet. There's still opportunity and for your users, especially in the UK, so we have a bicameral parliamentary system in Canada. So, we've got an elected House of Commons and then we've got an unelected Senate and the bill is right now before the Senate, and it's with a committee of the Senate who is hearing from witnesses literally as we speak and will also be looking at specific amendments to the bill. They'll be going through it, clause by clause. And then there'll be a reconciliation in terms of the House version of the bill and the Senate version, we would hope that this legislation would pass by the end of June. So, I think these companies would be well advised to focus on having good, productive conversations with parliamentarians. It was interesting when Meta appeared before the House committee into some of these tactics last week. One of the parliamentarians said we've never met with me and so I think it is important to engage with Parliamentarians. I think everyone involved in the process should want to make the legislation better and that's what we're committed to. I think the parliamentarians are committed to that. I know they're committed to that, and I think for the platforms for them to basically push for productive amendments and again from our perspective, if there's specific suggestions to make the bill better. We're all leaders, but back to the central tenants in terms of collective negotiation, backed up by the teeth of final offer arbitration. From our perspective, those are nonnegotiable.
Will Turvill: And so how do you expect things to play out over the? Next month and 1/2 until the end of June.
Paul Deegan: So, I think the Senate will continue to have hearings. I'm guessing that these hearings will continue up until end of the first week of June or so and then they're going to get into sort of the hard work of essentially taking amendments that the parties have proposed, looking at the language, making sure that these amendments are workable and don't have unintended consequences and then having back and forth between the House and Senate on that. So, from our perspective you can never predict anything in terms of outcomes with Parliament, but at this point it is looking like the legislation will pass before the end of June and we're excited about that. And then looking forward to, you know, the work of sitting down forming our collective sitting down with Google and Meta and negotiating fair compensation for publishers.
Will Turvill: And is it possible to guess how Google and Meta, Google and Facebook will react initially? Should the legislation be passed or in the weeks leading up to it when it seems inevitable?
Paul Deegan: It's hard to predict what they'll do, and these are businesses they're going to have to make business decisions on how they're going to deal with it.
From our perspective, we've had in the past very good and productive relationships with both companies. These companies are amazing in terms of the technology that they've brought. I know there's been a lot of criticism but they've also done a lot of good. But, and so from our perspective, we're extending our arm to them, our hand to them and saying listen, we want to sit down with you. We want to have good legislation, so we're working through that process right now and then once the legislation passes at that point, you know, we want to have fair negotiation. So, we believe there's, still opportunity for if they have specific concerns, and again, without gutting the central tenets of the legislation, there's certainly opportunities for both companies to make their points and get them across, but we believe it's in their self-interest to have news content on their platforms. If you think about search, there's all sorts of lousy information on the internet and on social media and these companies are really a plumbing of both search and social and with that plumbing going through those pipes, you've got trusted news, which we would see is the clean drinking water. But you've also got a lot of sewage, all the misinformation and disinformation and if you take news off those services, you're essentially just left with a bunch of garbage. And so, you know, we think it's important for them to have trusted quality information on their sites. It's better for their business. Their businesses are more valuable with our content and so we believe that we should be able to get to a point where we can work together and come up with something that's fair for all sides.
Will Turvill: I'm sure if I had Facebook or Meta on the podcast, they would say our platform is not about news. It's certainly not about written news and links to professionally written news. If you pass this legislation, as they've said, we're just going to switch off news in Canada. Do you just not buy that then?
Paul Deegan: So, I don't know what they'll do, but from our perspective, news is valuable content, right? These companies are essentially in the advertising business, right? So, people who are consuming high quality news are great consumers and they want those consumers on their platforms and services and from our perspective, it's in their self-interest to continue to have news on their services. So, they'll have to make their own decision but at the end of the day, their businesses are more valuable to their shareholders with quality content on their sites. To suggest that you can't just substitute news with cat videos or whatever, it's a different consumer who's looking at the Globe and mail or national newspaper versus someone who's just looking at random content.
Will Turvill: And how concerned are your members by the threats that have come from Meta in particular?
Paul Deegan: So, we are concerned obviously, but again our belief is it is in their self-interest to have our content on their site. So, while we're concerned, we're also of the view that you know for their own brand and for the value that their shareholders derive from their companies, that they should continue to surface news.
Will Turvill: Final question, Paul, taking this more global, there are lots of other countries around the world that have talked about introducing similar legislation. Australia has done it, Canada's looks set to do it. Soon the UK will be talking about it. There's talk about it in the US and many other countries. Where do you see this heading eventually and what do you think publishers can learn from the Canadian Experience so far.
Paul Deegan: We certainly have learned a lot from the Australians, and we've spent a lot of time talking to people in Australia who have negotiated deals. So, in terms of some of the tactics that we've seen whether it's around use of third parties or threats or divide and conquer among publishers, all of that, so we've seen that coming from Australia and so, I guess the advice that we would give to others is to learn from other publishers and publisher organizations around the world. Don't be intimidated. Stick to your guns. Always stick to principle. Always tell the truth in terms of your dealings with parliamentarians and government officials and when you see statements that are not accurate coming out of some parties in this debate, call them out on it. We do that constantly and it's important for parliamentarians around the world to really have a sense in terms of what these issues are all about and the Australian example is a great one. We believe that we build on that and look at both countries and look at where else this can go. We speak very frequently with publishers throughout the Americas and they're very excited about this. They believe that if Canada can adopt the Online News Act and if the US can get the JCPA done, then at that point this will continue throughout the Americas and around the world. So, I think it's an exciting time, definitely a challenging time for news publishers. But it's an exciting time as well and I guess the last thing I would say is this type of legislation is not a silver bullet. This is not going to solve all of the problems facing news publishers and ultimately publishers have to invest in quality content that is going to drive subscriptions and advertising revenue and that's really, I think the key for this is the monies that will flow from legislation like ours and in Australia you got to reinvest in quality content. That's the name of the game, it's quality journalism that is going to attract readers. It's going to keep them coming back for more and that's really what publishers around the world have to do.
I think governments themselves have to look at other things too. For example, labor tax credits are really quite vital, things like we have a local journalism initiative in Canada, which basically funds reporters in areas of news, poverty, or news. Digital subscription tax credits. These are all important in Canada. We have got recycling fees on printed newspapers, which are basically a job killing tax. So, I think for regulators and governments around the world, it is really looking at what else can be done. But the real take away, I think for publishers everywhere is, you cannot rely long term on monies from these companies, you have really got to be investing in content and so to use these funds to reinvent your business, to invest in journalists, hire the best newsroom, and that's ultimately what's going to drive your business.
Dominic Ponsford: Thanks for that. It is always good to hear a Canadian accent on the show. Yeah, I am quite proud of having it.
Lived on the West Coast of Canada where? So, it is kind of the same as the West Coast of America roughly I believe, but I'm always proud of myself when I can recognize an accent that's from eastern Canada, which is a little bit different.
So, what do?
Do you think in terms of what's going on in Canada? What do you think are the implications? Are for the UK and the US and what and what do you think? Gonna perhaps happen next?
I am going to cop out and say I don't know currently, but I think as Paul says, he's expecting this legislation to pass by the end of June. So that is a month and a half away and I think this is when the big lessons we learned from Canada. So, is Google's threat serious? Is it going to do big deals with publishers, as it did in Australia? Is Meta really going to pull out of the news? Is it going to block news in Canada? How long is that going to last for? Is it going to be the couple of days or was it around a week that it blocked news in Australia? Or is it not going to do it at all? Or is it going to stick by and just keep blocking you, so that will be really interesting. It is a big test for meta to find out whether their bluster over the last couple of years about it, it's loss of interest in news and how news is not important for Facebook as a platform. It is a big test of that and depending on how well that goes. Goes it will be interesting because Australia that's kind of done. For the next couple of years, Canada, we will see and then then the UK is probably next. So, I am sure there are some other jurisdictions that are trying to force through similar legislation sooner.
OK. Well look, thanks for that, will. Fingers crossed will be getting something in our in our stockings from Google and meter.
Yes, that would be nice.
You have been listening to the future of media explained with Me, Press Gazette editor in Chief Dominic Ponsford, Press Gazette associate editor. Certainly, an expertly produced by Misha Frankel Duvall. We will obviously be covering the duopoly battle in detail on the Press Gazette website, so check us out on pressgazette.co.uk to read more about this and the other issues we discuss on the podcast. Thanks for listening.
