CABLE AND SATELLITE COMPANIES say Ottawa has forced them to stick customers with a fee increase – a “tax”, as they like to call it – to help subsidize local programming. Their spokespeople say viewers should be “vigilant about how much governments are imposing on you.”
Canadians have good reason to be skeptical.
Canada’s cable and satellite industry is in robust good health. Its profits exceeded $2 billion last year (on revenues of more than $10 billion). Not coincidentally, the average customer’s monthly bill has gone up more than 20% since 2002.
It’s hardly onerous to propose that the cable and satellite companies – who make those profits by piping American entertainment into our homes – should put aside a modest 1.5% of their revenues so that we, as citizens, can occasionally see programming that speaks to who we are and where we live.
But then, this fee hike isn’t really about that. It’s an opening salvo in what promises to be a bitter war between the cable and broadcast industries over “fee-for-carriage,” aimed at mobilizing viewers to complain to the CRTC.
It’s a tactic that could backfire. Many of us question why we now pay $50 or more a month for television, and consumers who’ve seen their monthly bills go up nearly $4 in the last year alone may start to wonder what they’re really getting for the money.
The cable companies are right about one thing: it really is time for Canadian viewers to become more “vigilant.”
Bill Roberts
President and CEO, S-VOX
