Written by Catherine Léger, Director of Performance Marketing, & Mathieu Therrien, Director of Products, at Radio-Canada. They'll also be speaking on the topic at Audiencers' Festival Montreal on June 25th 2026.
Let’s talk about the fear that keeps product managers tossing and turning at night: the soul-crushing fear of alienating your audience. There’s nothing quite like the stress of watching users churn because you dared to put a barrier in their way.
Yet, a little over a year ago, Radio-Canada decided to stop holding its breath and start taking risks. We did the unthinkable for a public broadcaster: we implemented a hard registration wall across our entire app suite. It was a global first for a public news entity—a move driven by equal parts boldness and strategic necessity. We realized that if we wanted to remain relevant and maintain a long-term relationship with our audience, the “status quo” was no longer an option; it was now or never.
In this article, we share the results of this “high-stakes gamble” one year on. From transforming our internal digital maturity to seeing a massive +83% surge in monthly active accounts, we’ve proven that you don’t lose trust by asking for an account—you lose it by pretending you can build a future with anonymous visitors.
What we feared
Like everyone else in the industry, we had the same fear: if we block access, we block the audience. We worried that users would become discouraged, that the most impatient would leave, and that the trust we had built up over decades would be undermined. Internal skeptics argued that people would never create an account just to listen to the radio or read a quick news story, noting, “we’re not Netflix.” In short: the wall was supposed to cause people to flee.
The tipping point
And yet, we had to go for it. A wall was deployed on July 3, 2024. We launched on iOS, Android, and connected TVs, followed by a partial web rollout ahead of the Paris Olympics. On that day, we took the risk of frustrating our users in the name of long-term relationships.
What really happened
Spoiler alert: Not only did people not leave, but they came back in greater numbers and with accounts.
- +83% monthly active accounts in one year.
- +14% engaged visits to our platforms (excluding the Olympics).
- Peaks of over 800,000 active registered visitors per month.
- Stable engagement: No collapse in reading time or listening, and no abandoned applications.
Regarding user reaction, comments related to mandatory authentication accounted for less than 2% of user tickets, and the majority of those were simply requests for assistance.
Key lessons
We learned that registration is not perceived as an obstacle when it is justified, clearly explained, and respectful of the user experience.
Internal surveys show the impact on our organization:
- Nearly 90% of internal teams believe the initiative advanced the company’s digital maturity.
- 75% have a better understanding of the potential of authenticated data.
- 9 out of 10 already see concrete uses for this data in the coming year.
Why we must persevere
The wall is not an end; it’s a foundation. You can’t build lasting relationships with strangers, and you can’t personalize blindly. Mandatory authentication is an act of digital sovereignty that allows Radio-Canada to better understand, serve, and activate our audiences.
TLTR: Trust is not lost by asking for an account, but it can be lost by pretending that we can build the future with anonymous visitors. For a public media outlet like Radio-Canada, the status quo was and is impossible.
Written by Catherine Léger, Director of Performance Marketing, & Mathieu Therrien, Director of Products.
