GATINEAU – Canadian feature films, along with some big-name filmmakers, took centre stage at the CRTC’s 9(1)(h) hearing on Thursday when Starlight: The Canadian Movie Channel, armed with a panel of noted Canadian film personalities such as Paul Gross, Denys Arcand, David Cronenberg and others, appeared to defend its application for mandatory carriage on digital basic.
Describing Canadian feature films as the “orphans in our broadcasting system,” well known TV and film producer Robert Lantos argued that the CRTC has to fix this imbalance where Canadians “have been denied affordable access to them” by granting Starlight the requested 9(1)(h) status and the $0.45 per subscriber per month wholesale fee that would go with it.
Commissioner Stephen Simpson, who did much of the questioning, acknowledged that there may in fact be a desire for Starlight on the Canadian dial, but wondered about the need for such a channel.
Actor and director Paul Gross noted that determining the need for this type of service is a difficult endeavour because people may not know they need it unless it’s shown to them.
“To a great extent we’re really talking about access and whether the need would present itself or prove itself or manifest itself,” he said. Gross pointed to the Quebec market as proof that people there didn’t know they needed to see Quebec films until they saw them. “If you look back 20 years ago there wasn’t an enormous amount of demonstrated need to see Quebec film, but they took the films out into the regions, made it go into all of the smaller communities and that need expressed itself to the point that today they have built a really formidable star system,” he said.
According to research done for the company, Canadians would like to have such a channel and are willing to pay for it. Research done by Anderson Insight and Vision Critical showed that more than 90% of survey respondents would support the licensing of service such as the one proposed by Starlight and 70% would pay the retail rate of $0.03 per day to get it.
Starlight’s proposed a wholesale rate of $0.45 per subscriber per month was called into question by Simpson, however. He wondered if the company could operate with a lower rate of perhaps $0.25.
“We could run a service with a lower subscription rate but we would not be able to accomplish both of these objectives,” said Lantos, referring to the playing of Canadian film inventory and investing in the development of new films. “At $1.00 a month, it would essentially triple the number of Canadian films being made today. It would be a Godsend to the Canadian feature film industry,” he noted, speaking of the assumed retail price distributors would likely charge Canadians.
Video on demand is not the solution for Canadian feature film either, the company argued during its appearance. Despite the requirement for regulated VOD services to have Canadian films, they simply get lost among the vast number of popular Hollywood titles.
“Our experience is, with the exception of one or two films, that most films do get lost in that VOD jungle,” said Hussain Amarshi, owner and president of independent film distribution company, Mongrel Media. “Two weeks ago Django Unchained came out and if you have a Canadian film that’s coming out that week…there’s no chance that you will get noticed. That’s the constant reality.”
Conventional wisdom of the past was for Canadian films to be successful on TV, they need to be aired right after Hollywood blockbusters. CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais wondered why putting Canadian films on a single channel with no other movie content – in a ghetto, as has been said – is the best strategy.
Lantos argued that concept is out of date and that this kind of colonial mentality should have been left behind long ago, he said. That a Canadian film “needs to hide somewhere, somehow behind the Incredible Hulk or Mission Impossible and then just as that movie is over spring on the unsuspecting Canadian consumer before he can change channels” isn’t a concept Starlight believes in.
Lantos said that the importance of having Starlight carried on a mandatory basis on Canadian airwaves can’t be underestimated.
“Feature films are the emissaries of a nation, they are the emissaries to our own population and to the rest of the world. When Denis Arcand’s Barbarian Invasions wins the Academy Award, when Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter wins the Grand Prix in Cannes, that is something that all Canadians take pride in and … it’s akin to one of our athletes winning the gold medal at the Olympic Games. It is the highest achievement of a mass culture,” Lantos said. “The Canadian broadcasting system simply makes no room for it, private sector and public sector alike.”
APTN was on the stand on Thursday to defend its request for a $0.15 increase to its wholesale rate to $0.40. It would cost Canadians a small amount, only about 1% to 2% of their monthly cable bill, and is “a fair price for our service,” said Jean LaRose, CEO of APTN, said in his opening remarks.
The fee increase is reasonable, proportionate, affordable and “it is essential to ensure the meaningful reflection of Aboriginal People not only the basic service – but in the broadcasting system as a whole,” he added.
Canadian TV pioneer Moses Znaimer was last on the docket on Thursday with his firm ZoomerMedia Ltd. arguing that its multifaith VisionTV service deserves mandatory carriage on digital basic, a designation it once held. The company is also not seeking an increase to its wholesale rate.
In his opening remarks, Znaimer spoke about the pressures the channel is under from the vertically integrated distributors which therefore requires the Commission to step in. In fact, he told the CRTC that it has a “duty to protect and the simplest way for you to do that is to add us to that list of exceptions that speak to Canadian values, not just VI BDU profits.”
Commissioner Candace Molnar asked the company to clarify the meaning of duty to protect.
Monique Lafontaine, corporate general counsel, VP of regulatory and business affairs with ZoomerMedia, said that because the Commission has an obligation to protect the interests of consumers it must ensure that its viewers, who are largely lower income Canadians, older and from immigrant communities, continue to have access to the service.
“These individuals need and want to have access to our programming and the only way they;’re going to have access to this programming is if the Commission regulates and by extension protects their interests,” she said.
