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CRTC hearings, House of Commons Committees and the future of Canadian TV

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Dan Say

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Apr 29, 2009, 8:01:48 PM4/29/09

It's early days in the hearings, and Von Finkelstein does appear
before the HoC until early May.....

Threats, confusion, accusations ... Reality TV, CRTC style
by JOHN DOYLE

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail April 29, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090428.
wdoyle0429/BNStory/Entertainment/home

Ah yes, the 100 Days thing. Tonight, President Barack Obama gives a prime-time
press conference to acknowledge the 100 days he's been in power. It's live at
8 p.m. ET, on ABC, CBS and NBC. Fox has declined to carry it on its main
channel. Instead it will air the drama Lie to Me. The reasoning, from what one
gathers, is that the press conference might not be the best lead-in for its
reality-TV show American Idol, airing at 9 p.m. But I digress.

My question is this: Could the President's press conference count as reality
TV? I ask because CanWest Global's senior vice-president of programming and
production, one Barbara Williams, recently told the CBC that Global would like
the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to change
regulations about Canadian programming and have reality-TV shows added to the
category of "priority programming," along with drama, comedy and those perky
little "entertainment magazine" shows. "We believe we should be able to have
the flexibility to do what our viewers want to see," Williams told CBC News.

Oh. My. God. We live in strange days, people. There is high drama in Ottawa.
The CRTC is holding the first stage of hearings into licence-renewals for the
major broadcasters. The Heritage committee is hauling in broadcast executives
to answer questions about the collapse of local TV stations. Bitterness
abounds. Accusations fly. At stake is the TV you'll see. Or not see, if you
live in certain small cities in Canada.

After a day-and-a-bit-of this surreal spectacle, I have a conclusion: The CRTC
sucks at this.

CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein has already created a fuss. He told the
Heritage committee that the broadcasters had not committed to supporting local
programming when they petitioned for the fee-for-carriage proposal. The
broadcasters got snippety and said, "Yeah, we did, actually." So, at some
point, he's being hauled back to the Heritage committee to clarify.

On Monday, though, von Finckenstein raised the matter of overnight success
Susan Boyle. Now it's good to know that the chair of the CRTC has heard of
her, calling her, "some unknown woman from Scotland." But von Finckenstein
appeared to labour under the impression that Boyle is an international
sensation because of, and entirely owing to, a video on the Internet.

It seems his point was that Boyle's fame stood as an example of the
diminishing impact of conventional TV and the dominance of the Internet. It
required Ivan Fecan, CTVglobemedia president and CEO, to point out that
Boyle's fame began � yes, began � on a British TV show, not on the Internet.
"The clip on the Internet is from a British conventional TV show," Fecan said.
"It's an incredibly highly produced show. That's what conventional [TV] does."

Me, I was obliged to wonder about CRTC vice-chair of broadcasting Michael
Arpin, famous for declaring, "I'm not that interested in televised fiction or
even feature films. I would prefer to read a novel." Has Mr. Arpin heard of
Susan Boyle, perchance?

Yesterday, representatives of Rogers Cable, the country's biggest cable
operator, appeared in front of the CRTC, and snarled. As the cable giant sees
it, those broadcasters are cruising for a bruising with this fee-for-carriage
proposal. I'm paraphrasing the Rogers honcho here, but it seems that Rogers is
suggesting that, if obliged to charge for conventional TV, then Rogers could,
you know, just remove those channels from the cable roster. By the way, Rogers
now owns the CITY-TV mini-network. You can bet your bottom dollar that Rogers
isn't going to threaten to drop CITY-TV channels.

In the Canadian cable racket, we're in private-jet territory. That's how cable
honchos get around. These companies are huge, enormously profitable and, yes,
protected by Canadian regulations. According to a recent report in the trade
publication Mediacaster, "Cable companies such as Rogers, Cogeco, Shaw and
Videotron saw profits climb to $2.1-billion last year from $1.5-billion, while
also realizing a slight increase in basic service subscriptions, up 2.9 per
cent to 7.9 million households. Direct-to-home satellite and multipoint
distribution companies, like Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice, saw revenues grow
to over $2-billion � up 10.8 per cent over 2007. As with cable, subscribers
for satellite also rose, but by slightly less, 2.6 per cent to 2.7 million."

One source of revenue for cable, of course, is pornography. If you've got
digital cable you've seen the endless list of porn-only channels that cost a
lot of money to access. People do. They don't talk about it, but they do.

Meanwhile, back at the CRTC hearings, our-man-at-the-helm von Finckenstein has
raised the issue of how much money broadcasters spend on acquiring U.S.
network shows. Like, say, Desperate Housewives, I guess. Desperate Housewives
is not a porn movie.

The upshot is this � there is chaos in the Canadian broadcasting industry and
the CRTC looks hopelessly unable to deal with it, let alone recognize the
reality of the situation.

== 2 ===================
Short URL for this post: [55]http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=5239

CRTC roundup: Deciding the future of TV

April 28, 2009 - 10:20 pm | Posted in [13]TV |

The CRTC continues to dominate be a footnote in the headlines as
conventional television operators appear in two hearings - one for the
CRTC itself in Gatineau to discuss license renewals, and another for a
House committee in Ottawa to discuss the future of local television.
And [14]those discussions are heating up.

Last week, [15]CTV and Global pressed their fee-for-carriage idea,
where cable and satellite providers would be required to pay
broadcasters to carry stations that already transmit their signals
over the air for free. [16]This would give broadcasters a $350-million
lifeline, which is why they're continuing to press for it even after
having gotten rejected twice. They say local news simply can't pay for
itself, and [17]it needs to be subsidized.

[18]Even TQS jumped on board, despite the fact that it doesn't produce
local news.

Rogers, which owns CityTV and OMNI but gets much more of its revenue
from its cable distributor, argued in front of MPs that CTV and Global
were exaggerating their financial troubles to get a handout.

This week, [19]Rogers repeated the accusation to the CRTC, saying the
networks want money for local stations but also want to shut down
small stations that don't rake in money. It tempered that by saying
that if the CRTC approves such an idea, it should be temporary until
the recession goes away and a revenue goes back up. It also said
fee-for-carriage means [20]they shouldn't be required to distribute
conventional TV channels if broadcasters demand fees that are too
high.

(This brings up an issue: Isn't Rogers in a conflict of interest here?
On one hand, OMNI and Citytv would benefit from additional fees, but
Rogers is silencing those voices because the corporate parent has
decided it would have more to lose from these fees through its cable
provider than it would gain through its television stations. The same
applies to Quebecor, which owns the TVA network and Videotron. In all,
[21]distributors showed revenues of $10 billion in 2008, with over $2
billion in profit.)

Pierre-Karl P�ladeau, who speaks on behalf of TVA and Videotron,
[22]gave a more nuanced, have-your-cake-and-subsidize-it-too answer to
MPs, saying fee-for-carriage should be allowed, but that the rates
should be subject to negotiation between broadcaster and provider (no
doubt the negotiations between TVA and Videotron would go amicably).

Leonard Asper of Canwest [23]argued the problem is a regulatory system
that allows distributors to flourish while broadcasters falter. He
said debt and the recession are problems too, but they're not the
whole answer.

Ivan Fecan of CTVglobemedia said the Local Programming Improvement
Fund, a special fund setup by the CRTC to subsidize local television
stations in small markets, [24]would need to be tripled, and that even
then this would only protect the status quo and would not result in
any increase in local programming. That angered Rogers and CRTC
members.

CTV and Canwest also pointed out that cable and satellite providers
are [25]constantly increasing their rates without the "revolt" that
the providers say would happen with a fee-for-carriage.

The Globe and Mail's Grant Robertson, who has been covering this issue
better than anyone, [26]has a list of some of the issues that may come
up in discussions about the future of television in Canada.

Why not just shut them down?

An interesting point was made in discussions of license renewals: If
CTV and Global are so jealous of specialty television channels,
[27]why don't they just become specialty channels?

It's not quite so simple, but with 90% of Canadian television viewers
having cable or satellite service, the added expense of setting up
transmitters and local news stations isn't worth the added viewership
and ad revenue that comes with it. (Not to mention the cost of
transitioning to digital television, which has caused broadcasters to
decide to [28]shut down dozens of retransmitters across the country.)

CRTC chairman Konrad von Finkenstein asked if CTV would prefer the
specialty channel model to the conventional TV model. Conventional
stations require a certain amount of local programming, while
specialty channels are required to spend a certain percentage of their
revenues on creating original programming. CTV suggested it would
prefer the latter, though it wanted some recognition that having local
stations is much more expensive than rerunning old Seinfeld episodes.

CRTC wants more transparency from big guns

The CRTC is [29]seeking comment on new rules that would require large
broadcasters and distributors to disclose more information about their
finances than they currently do.

Currently, the CRTC collects lots of information but only releases
"aggregate information" to the public. So we know how much all
broadcasters spend on U.S. programming, but we don't know how that
breaks down per broadcaster or broadcasting unit.

Since broadcasters are arguing that they need more money because their
business model is broken (and the distributors are arguing that the
can't spare fee-for-carriage payments without raising prices), it
makes sense that they should let us see their books.

[30]The CEP labour union certainly agrees with that reasoning.

Broadcasters want changes on the air too

In addition to fee-for-carriage, television broadcasters are asking
for a relaxing of regulations about how much Canadian content they
have to air and what kind of programming they must create. One of the
proposed changes is to [31]include reality programming in the list of
"priority programming" (scripted comedies and drama shows) that the
CRTC gives special attention to because it costs more to produce. This
would go against the entire point of distinguishing expensive from
cheap programming, and encourage private broadcasters to cancel
expensive dramas in favour of cheaper reality shows.

Meanwhile, [32]Bill Brioux wonders if CTV and Global will be reducing
their big-budget U.S. programming purchases in light of their apparent
financial woes.

StarChoice really dislikes CBC Regina

Last year, the CBC got all up in StarChoice's face because of a
decision by the satellite distributor to remove CBC Regina (CBKT) from
its channel lineup. The CBC complained to the CRTC, saying that the
removal meant StarChoice had more CTV channels than CBC channels, and
this represented a violation of one of its conditions of license.

In November, [33]the CRTC ruled that CTV's main network and its A
Channel network should be considered separately for the purposes of
this rule, and that StarChoice was still in compliance. It dismissed
the complaint.

But the CBC pressed on with its case, arguing that the CRTC got the
numbers wrong and that even excluding the A Channel network,
StarChoice has more CTV-owned stations than CBC-owned stations. These
include CTV-branded stations as well as [34]CJCH in Halifax (formerly
ATV, rebranded as [35]CTV Atlantic) and MCTV's [36]CICI (rebranded as
[37]CTV Northern Ontario).

What followed was a war of words betwen CBC and StarChoice, with the
latter accusing the former of using incendiary language.

Now, StarChoice is [38]asking for an exception to be made to its
license to allow it to continue not distributing CBC Regina but still
distribute all its CTV stations (including CTV Regina). I'm going to
go out on a limb here and suggest the CBC will oppose this request.

In other news

* The [39]Soci�t� nationale de l'Acadie has [40]released a survey
showing that [41]the amount of coverage of Atlantic Canada is
three times higher on CBC's The National than on Radio-Canada's Le
T�l�journal. It uses that statistic to argue that Radio-Canada is
too focused on news from Montreal and Quebec.
* The CRTC [42]issued some streamlined decisions this week. Most
were for extensions or minor changes that didn't require a full
hearing. The only denial issued was for a request from Canwest for
a second extension on [43]a license it had been issued in 2005 for
a specialty channel focusing on reality television unimaginatively
called Reality TV. They had been given three years to launch the
channel, and got a one-year extension in 2008, but the CRTC
refused to issue another extension as per its policy, and the
license expired on Feb. 3. Canwest will need to reapply for the
license (which it said it would do as it intends to launch the
channel).
* The Family Channel has been [44]granted a license to setup a new
specialty channel called Family Extreme, which will have
programming marketed to children age 6-17.
* Fairchild Television has been [45]given a license for a specialty
channel called Fairchild Television II, which will have
predominantly Cantonese programming that couldn't fit on the main
Fairchild network. Ditto [46]Talentvision II in Mandarin.
* Another new channel is [47]Music India 2, which will feature
Hindi-language music videos. Awesome.
* [48]Canal �vasion has gotten authorization for a companion HD
channel, and [49]Oasis HD and [50]Treasure HD have gotten
authorization for standard-definition versionf of their channels,
to take advantage of people like me who haven't switched to HD.
* [51]The Walrus's Chantalle Oliver suggests the CRTC should be shut
down and that the government should impose its cultural will on
the populace through identi.ca.