YEARS BACK, IT WAS EASY to pick on VisionTV. Its programs were old, appearing only on the specialty channel in their second or third (or fourth!) window.
Much of its original “Mosaic” programming looked and sounded terrible – and violated the channel’s Canadian content requirements, it turns out, causing CRTC sanctions. Preachers and traditional religion dominated the channel. 
However, when current president and CEO Bill Roberts (left) came on board in 2000, he set out to drastically alter VisionTV. More original, interesting, programming – about faith and spirituality and not necessarily organized religion – is the key, along with a wholesale rate increase the CRTC granted to the channel which pays for that programming.
As Vision changed, Roberts also worries about the TV industry’s future of digital and the multiple, cross-platform ramifications that has, especially for a small broadcaster.
Below, in an edited transcript of a conversation with Roberts and cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, Roberts talks about his own channel’s transition – and the industry’s digital transition.
Greg O’Brien: Religion, or spirituality, is front and centre in a lot of the world’s problems… so I’m wondering how Vision is adapting to the changing world and how religion plays into it all.
Bill Roberts: In the last five years or so, Vision has been very much focused on exploring and celebrating faith and spirituality. It’s not as focused on religion per se – religion being interpreted by me as something which is a structure or an organization or a bureaucracy. What we’re trying to do with television and obviously with our web site, is to give Canadians an opportunity to challenge themselves and to celebrate their own personal faith and spiritual experiences – and what they might want as a faith or spiritual experience.
So, that seems to have translated into something that resonates with Canadians.
GOB: How have your ratings or web site traffic improved?
BR: We’re talking about double-digit increases, year over year with regard to both our AMAs and our prime time audience and our web site. The last number I saw last week, we’re up 12% over where we were last year in our audience numbers and that’s a trend for the last four years.
GOB: From a viewer looking in – it seems as though Vision in some of its programming and documentaries, is tackling some issues in different ways than it had before. The one that springs to mind for me is your recent one about priests and their trysts with women in their congregation. That seems to me to be a little more challenging in terms of the subject matter than Vision had historically offered.
BR: There are two things. Six, seven, eight years ago, in the past, Vision was often coming in as the second, third, fourth window even – the last five or ten percent (spent) on projects, primarily documentaries that were driven by the CBC or by another major broadcaster in Canada.
I decided that wasn’t a very good business proposition for Vision so we now take first windows on such projects, which means we spend more money than ever over fewer projects – and we’ve also increasingly sought to control the distribution of those projects.
The second thing is that the nature of the programming that was offered by Vision was in some ways, very eclectic, in the past. What we have done is refocused around faith and spirituality, but not always in an intense or earnest way, but with some fun and with some entertainment and with new and different approaches.
GOB: You’ve done away with the fire and brimstone preachers that Vision had on a lot in the past.
BR: Yes. What we’re doing now is our 360 Vision has a mandate to create breaking news and we have done that with same-sex individuals in the priesthood, with refugees seeking sanctuary in churches, so I think Vision has actually broken four or five stories in the last year that have been subsequently been picked up by the Toronto Star or Global TV or whatever.
GOB: Can you pick what might have been the biggest story?
BR: Most recently when we provided an opportunity for a gay priest and also a woman of the priesthood to express themselves and challenge the conventions of Rome, that made the major papers and was picked up in the over-the-air news as well.
I think the other thing that we’ve done is look at original documentary programming like The Naked Archeologist (about blowing up certain myths) or The Secret Files of the Inquisition, which was a pretty spectacular four-part co-production that we did. And, we’re just about to go to air with another on freemasons – and the interesting thing about this is these are all international co-productions. We’ve grown up to now find ourselves co-venturing and co-producing with international broadcasters like the BBC to PBS to TV One in the U.S., to S4C in Wales to the French, Italians, we really have gone to another place in terms of the kinds of partnerships we’re now doing.
GOB: Fair to say the rate increases granted in recent years have helped this?
BR: They were specifically intended to create new programming and that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We’ve also looked at the lifestyle format as well and have had some tremendous success. We did Divine Restoration, which was a joint venture with TV One in the United States and we’ve done Gospel Challenge, a lifestyle program which will be a lot of fun.
Another change for us is to look for strategic partners who bring value-added to the table. For example, we decided we needed a production distribution arm for Vision TV. So, we went out and canvassed every single production and distribution company in the country and came to the conclusion that Ellis Entertainment was the partner we’d like to have.
We have basically a 50-50 joint venture with Ellis Entertainment, which we call Vision TV International. For the first time in Vision’s history, it brought 150 hours of original programming to MIPCOM this year and we’ll be doing the same thing at NATPE in January.
We’re just finishing up a series now called Lost Gods with VTVI, and that’s another example of an international co-production which we’ve done with an Irish broadcaster.
GOB: Have you moved into DVD sales or anything with your programming?
BR: We have. We are looking at new revenue-generating opportunities such as DVD sales of Vision TV programming.
The other thing we’re doing is – a lot of Canadian entities are looking interestingly at the relaxation of ownership controls in Canada so that they can anticipate their retirements plans with Americans buying them out – we have decided to go aggressively into the US market.
I am just back from New York for example and we will shortly be making a major announcement with a cable entity in the United States that has a lineage that goes back to AOL. And that’s important for us.
GOB: So, you’ll be carried in the States, you mean?
BR: Programming (only). But I wouldn’t actually dismiss that question. On December 5th, I am invited by the president of WNET, which is basically the largest producing PBS station in the United States in terms of original production. They are chairing something called the interfaith broadcasting Commission and part of that agenda is looking at VisionTV as a model for presenting faith and spirituality programming content to the U.S, market and we’ll se what comes of that.
GOB: Has it been difficult to change your image among those in the TV industry in Canada, in that Vision isn’t what it used to be. It’s ratings are better. It’s programming is better. It’s viewership is better,
BR: No. Amongst our peers in the television business, I’d like to think we’ve been very successful in communicating that sea change. For the past four years, Vision has won the Canada Award at the Geminis for our contribution to cultural diversity programming.
I get comments all the time from people remarking we have a higher profile at things like the Reel World Film Festival and Innoversity. We are very engaged with the National Film Board’s diversity project and are heavily committed to, the National Screen Institute to fund and encourage young directors and producers and writers about diverse cultural backgrounds.
So, we’re stepping up to that plate.
GOB: What about the distributor point of view? The reason why I ask this is that recently Shaw Communications – when it added Turner Classic Movies, did sort of “the usual” when it comes to a channel realignment and bumped Vision somewhere, from channel 24 in Vancouver to in the 80s, I heard, along with APTN and others. Does that speak to the need to better educate the distribution community that Vision doesn’t deserve such a move?
BR: I’d like to look at that in the context of the overall relationship between smaller, independent broadcasters and BDUs. I think that the particulars of that case have a lot to do with certain processes before the CRTC at the moment, dealing with new pay applicants and also with BDUs wanting to – especially cable entities – shore up their audience offerings against threats from their satellite competitors.
So, I don’t take it as a personal thing but in the generality, your question is extremely relevant.
As we look at this digital tomorrow, entities like Vision, which are small, independent, mission-driven, and in most case, not for profit, they are very vulnerable to the impact of what I consider to be very dramatic shifts taking place in the business right now.
There’s going to be $11 billion – U.S. – worth of commerce going on on the planet in VOD by the year 2010. That’s 350 million households, or a third of the world’s households, will be interactive in that environment. That’s going to cost a lot of money.
The CRTC has a report right now that it’s looking at that says we are single-digit years away from eight megabit bandwidth accessibility for the vast majority of Canadians. So, if you think now we’re operating in that three to four megabit world – which looks pretty darn good to me – what’s that world going to mean in terms of choice and regulation or deregulation and proliferation of services.
High definition television – again by 2010, could be in close to 110 million homes around the world and that, too, is not an inexpensive venture. So, what are we going to do that’s pro-active north of the 49th parallel to assure the success and future of those things which are indigenously and uniquely Canadian.
GOB: What does Vision have in mind?
BR: Hold on to that question for a minute. Don’t lose that question, I think the issue of digital migration – not just for Vision, but for the APTNs for Newsworld, for RDI, they just – in a truly unregulated environment – I don’t see them having the resources and economies of scale that are currently enjoyed by Canadian multimedia giants, let alone the international multimedia giants that will be operating here within single-digit years from now.
So, we need some kind of level playing field between BDUs and in a way that addresses the packaging and offering of unique Canadian services that are not going to come form Biloxi Mississippi or from Brussels or from Singapore. And, those are largely the APTNs the CPACs the Visions, our news services, our educational broadcasters, our national public broadcaster.
Those entities which are uniquely us – and which we created for a purpose – pursuant to the Act and to the Commission’s understanding of what was needed within the Canadian mosaic of broadcast offerings.
The Lincoln Report makes a suggestion that we should have some kind of foundation tier, a mandatory all-Canadian tier, which is required in this digital tomorrow. Whatever it is, we need some kind of pro-active initiative which addresses the reality that reduced penetration and diminished revenue stability in favor of giants who have essentially no interest in our civic future, is required.
GOB: So do you envision U.S. media companies buying the CTVs of the world or are you talking more of the distribution end?
BR: I think once you get to relaxed ownership on telcos, you tell me the difference between a telco and a cable company and a broadcaster and in many cases, a program producer-distributor now. There is a fine line and there’s a whole other subject in there as well.
It’s not just about Vision. The CBC is a very important institution in this country.
GOB: What do you think Vision’s role is? You’ve seen the digital migration deal that Rogers and the large broadcasters have put together. Where does Vision fall in that relationship?
BR: Vision should be a basic service. Vision should be, as the Lincoln Report said, widely available to the greatest audience possible. And, if there is something identifiably Canadian about our civic space, it is that it celebrates and explores and values diversity and that’s what this entity is about. It’s about diversity and about looking at faith and culture and politics inherent in those things.
That is us. That is being Canadian.
GOB: Have you done any video on demand deals yet?
BR: No. But, we are in discussions with two BDUs representing different delivery mechanisms.
GOB: What about a transition to high definition for some of Vision’s programming. If you’re selling Vision’s programming around the world, the demand is going to be that it’s in HD.
BR: We are shooting now – selectively – in high definition. The co-production I mentioned, Lost Gods, was shot in high definition.
GOB: Will you be able to air it on Vision in high definition?
BR: Vision is not an HDTV facility. We are looking at April of next year moving our shop here on Bond Street to a new purpose-built facility on Liberty Street. We are anticipating a fairly significant investment in digital asset management and in new business systems which will give us that capacity after April of next year.
GOB: When you look out to the future – and like you said, single-digit years away – is it a frightening thing for Vision or are there opportunities there?
BR: I think it’s a really exciting time. Of course, there are challenges and those challenges for us, I think Vision as an entity will be able to address… The larger question is “what exactly is going to happen to the Canadian broadcasting system?”
If the president of the CAB can unfold his cell phone and watch Newsworld in his Chicago hotel (as CAB president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell told delegates about at this month’s convention), if a Verizon subscriber in Toronto can access HBO, when will that little cable be created and marketed that connects your iPod video to your wall-sized plasma HDTV screen and completely bypasses our Canadian BDU system?
GOB: TiVo announced this week they will be experimenting with the distribution of programming from the TiVo box to the iPod and Playstation Portable.
BR: There you go. That is the more sobering prospect if we don’t do something about it. And, we need to do something about it in a coherent way and a far-sightful way. Some people have been calling for that with a focus around the CBC… I think the Lincoln Report deserves a lot more… implementation. But even since 2003 there are elements of it that now sound a little anachronistic.
GOB: How can you build a regulatory framework around an industry that is so malleable going forward?
BR: I’m neither a prophet nor the son of one, so I can’t offer an answer. But… maybe it’s not so much about creating barriers or protection, Maybe it’s more about assuring the opportunity of choice, in a way that is not dependent on the amount of resources you put into your brand marketing, where Canadians are going to have a pretty tough time going up against the Microsofts and Time Warners of the world.
