OTTAWA – Those in charge of the digital television transition have dropped the ball in informing Canadians on the impacts of the change to DTV, said some MPs during The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting this Monday.
The Department of Canadian Heritage, which has taken the lead on the digital TV transition file, has set up a web site (www.digitaltelevision.info.gc.ca and www.televisionnumerique.info.gc.ca) and a toll-free number that are supposed to provide Canadians with information on how the transition may affect them.
Despite these initial efforts, committee members questioned why a broad public awareness campaign has yet to start when there is fewer than six months remaining before the analog TV shut off.
In response to a question from Pablo Rodriguez, the Liberal MP from Honoré-Mercier, Jean-Pierre Blais, assistant deputy minister at Canadian Heritage, said there is a risk that consumers may forget the key messages of a DTV transition awareness campaign if it starts too soon. Besides, he added, broadcasters can’t start communicating until the rules have been set by the CRTC and they know which channels are going to be broadcasting in digital.
The Canadian Heritage ADM (and former CRTC executive director, broadcasting) also noted that before broadcasters can begin broadcasting in digital they need licences from the CRTC and broadcasting certificates under the Radiocommunications Act.
Other MPs wondered what the financial impact of the DTV transition would be on consumers, asking what the cost of a digital conversion box would be. Several members tried to pin down Blais on the actual cost of the devices noting that the CRTC said it would be approximately $30.
Liberal MP from Mississauga Bonnie Crombie recounted her experience in trying to find out the cost of a converter box and get additional information from the new 1-800 number. She wasn’t satisfied with the service or the prices quoted from a number of retail outlets including The Source ($89) and Sears ($69.99) and in excess of $100 from the government help line.
(Ed note: According to Zayn Jaffer, director home solutions, Best Buy Canada, the retailer is currently planning on listing one product – branded Access HD and retailing for $49 without an antenna – that should be available in stores and online by the end of March, with the possibility of adding a second later in the year. “Best Buy is also considering establishing a Geek Squad service to help these customers convert their existing TV from analog over to digital,” he said. Future Shop, which is the same company as Best Buy, already carries this model.)
“There are a lot of numbers floating around,” she said. “I’d like some more consistency with what we’re telling the consumers. We’ve got a million people that are going to be out there attempting to purchase a digital converter and I don’t know what to tell them, where they should go, where they should turn, and what this will cost. I don’t understand the decision that the government won’t try to assist these people to offset these costs.”
Blais welcomed Crombie’s feedback, but noted that it’s still early days.
He acknowledged that very little is being done to inform Canadians about the potential impacts of the DTV transition, reiterating the fact that the CRTC has yet to finalize the rules regarding public service announcements. And, adopting a U.S.-style coupon program to ensure Canadians who will lose their over-the-air TV aren’t left watching blank screens, is a non-starter said Blais.
“If you take a per capita approach of what they spent in the States and just converted to the size of the Canadian population, it would be a program of over $200 million in Canada. I would fear that the administrative costs would be even higher because we did not have the sort of food stamp process that the American government had to deliver the coupons.”
(Ed note: The CRTC’s last estimate for such a program was $80 million.)
While some estimates peg the number of households at about 850,000 that will be affected by the transition to digital, Blais played down those figures as inflated. He pointed to the CRTC’s own figures which suggest that fewer than 35,000 households will face with a complete loss of over-the-air TV signals. The discrepancy results from those who subscribe to black market satellite services, watch TV programming over the Internet or simply don’t watch TV, he added.
(Ed note: It should be noted that while the number of estimated Canadian households who only have over-the-air TV is about 850,000-900,000, many have multiple TV sets, some of which are not tied into the family subscription video service. The U.S. experience shows the number of people affected by the switch away from analog OTA was severely underestimated.)
Marc Dupuis, director general of the engineering, planning and standards branch at Industry Canada, appeared along side Blais to answer any questions related to the 700 MHz band, which the analog TV broadcasters are vacating. Committee members wondered how much the government expects to receive from the spectrum auction, expected to be held late next year.
Sticking with government policy of not predicting specific amounts, Dupuis noted that the amount generated from the auction of the 700 MHz band will depend on certain economic conditions. (What he didn’t say is that auction revenues are also highly dependent on aspects of the licensing framework such as whether they will be spectrum set asides for new entrants, whether the government will institute limits on the amount of spectrum each participant can acquire, commonly known as spectrum caps, or whether it will be a completely open auction special rules for certain classes of carriers, all of which we analyzed here.)
The amount of money received in the auction could vary quite a bit, he said, noting it could be greater than a $1 billion or in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
(Ed note: Talk about a severe underestimation.)
