COMMENTARY: Are Canadian broadcasters worth $519 million (more) a year?

SHOULD BROADCASTERS RECEIVE a wholesale fee for their signals from BDUs? That will be one of the key questions for the industry and the Commission to answer in the coming months because while the CRTC's radio review is well under way – with public hearings in May – we can likely expect a TV policy review to begin late this year with hearings in 2007, sources told www.cartt.ca this week. The desire by broadcasters to be paid a fee for carriage, or for retransmission, is about as old as the cable industry itself. In the 1950s, broadcasters called nascent cable...