TORONTO – Faced with an onslaught of advertising and other messaging from Canadian cable, satellite and telco TV companies that began in earnest this week, CTV will play host to a press conference this morning to address what the broadcasters say is a whole host of misinformation being put out by the carriers on the fee-for-carriage issue.
“Both camps are out there trying to spread their message but we feel some of the issues being thrown out there by the cable and satellite companies are stretching the truth,” CTV executive vice-president of corporate affairs Paul Sparkes told Cartt.ca late Wednesday.
“They will say just about anything to distract from the real issues that are before the Commission and the government this fall.”
The CRTC, in two hearings in November and December, will examine giving Canadian conventional television broadcasters the ability to charge carriers a fee for their local station signals. Broadcasters say it’s about time they were paid for these signals while carriers say they are free off-air – and that with simultaneous substitution, mandatory carriage and low channel placement, broadcasters already receive substantial benefits.
Any new fee, say the cable and satellite companies, will be passed through to their customers.
Consumers – as evidenced by some posts and/or Twitter and Facebook feeds and exchanges fuelled by duelling web sites www.stopthetvtax.ca and www.localtvmatters.ca – are confused and don’t know who or what to believe. (But this guy went to a lot of work, creating a video, singing: “Meanwhile cable bills are flyin’ higher than a kite. Soon they’ll get ’em high enough to charge us for a space flight.”)
The carrier pitch is an appeal on behalf of the consumers’ pocketbooks (but as the broadcasters point out, the cable and satellite companies have been increasing regularly increasing rates over the past few years and are rich enough to absorb any new fee), while the broadcaster appeal is a bit more emotional in that they are threatening more local news cutbacks.
“We’re on the side of the consumer,” said Sparkes. “We don’t want them to have to pay any more and we want them to have choice.”
According to Sparkes, two events from the past six days (the closure of CKXand Canwest’s filing for creditor protection) point to how Canadian broadcasters are in dire need of new revenue. Mismanagement, overspending and a failure to adjust their business models to the new media realities are the real causes for broadcasters’ flailing, say the carriers.
But if you’re Joe and Jane Bagadonuts, regular Canadian, who do you believe?
“We are not threatening people with increases in cable rates. We’re not purporting we’re making piles of cash at the same time we’re closing stations and one of our major competitors files for bankruptcy protection,” said Sparkes. “It’s absolutely ludicrous what the cable and satellite companies have been saying and it’s important that we as broadcasters make sure that consumers get the real facts and unfortunately, they’re caught in the middle of this.”
What the fight is about, however, is a 40-plus-year old decision to allow Canadian cable companies to carry U.S. TV stations here and when Canadian broadcasters began buying the rights to American shows, simultaneous substitution was the creative solution deployed to get around the fact that the Canadian stations’ local copyrights were not being respected with the importing of American OTAs into the market.
Stateside, cable companies are not allowed to offer the signals of neighbouring broadcasters so, for example, residents of Rochester, NY do not see Buffalo TV stations. Both DirecTV and Dish Network use technology to let them broadcast local into local. Our DTH companies do not.
So, here in Canada, we have access to not only several Canadian broadcast signals, but also many U.S. broadcast signals, too. And consumers like the options, too.
“Our system, the way it’s been set up, hasn’t been that strategic in terms of protecting, or having a real Canadian broadcasting system. We’ve allowed the U.S. signals to creep in over the border so consumers can get whatever show they want,” added Sparkes.
“We don’t have any signal integrity. That wasn’t thought through properly and we now have a mish-mash of regulations that in today’s economic environment just don’t make sense and it’s got to change or we’ll see the end of over-the-air broadcasting as we know it,” said Sparkes.
“I think we need a complete overhaul of the broadcasting system and I think that’s what we’re looking at in the fall.”
