GATINEAU – On November 19th, the day after the CRTC is set to wrap up its look at the DTH satellite TV policies, the Regulator will hear Quebecor Media’s request for a SunTV News category two digital specialty service license.
With much fanfare back in June, the company made public its plan for a new news channel featuring “hard news” during the day and “straight talk” at night. In its original submission to the Commission, QMI proposed to shutter its money-losing SunTV station in exchange for a category one digital license, which would make the channel a must-offer across all BDUs in Canada (and if it doesn’t get that part, it won’t go ahead with it).
However, the CRTC had said many months earlier that it would not be considering any new such licenses until the fall of 2011 and reiterated that stance in a letter to QMI in July denying the original application (it also told the company nothing was standing in the way of remaking its Toronto OTA station into a news channel, since it had must-carry status as a local station across Southern Ontario).
Back to the drawing board Quebecor went and Wednesday the CRTC made public the company’s latest request. It still plans to shutter SunTV (although we hear the company is still trolling for offers to try and sell the station first), but this time it has asked for a category 2 digital license – but one that comes with category one benefits, must-offer, for three years.
The Commission issues cat 2 approvals pretty quickly these days with non-appearing hearings. The rules are pretty simple and a license can be had relatively quickly.
But the request for a must-offer period of three years – not to mention the publicity this proposal has garnered and the sheer level of gossip that the Prime Minister’s Office is twisting CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein’s arm on this one (with no facts at all to back any of it up) – means the proceeding will be an open and public one.
Because it plans to be “different”, as it says several times in its application, SunTV News says it deserves to have mandatory distribution on all cable, satellite and telco TV carriers in Canada for three years. “The proposed service will serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the political, social, cultural and economic fabric of Canada, with a schedule offering a wide range of programs that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas and values by displaying Canadian talent as well as by offering information and analysis concerning Canada and other countries from a Canadian point of view,” reads its supplemental brief.
“STN will offer news with attitude,” adds one of the application’s appendices, a study done for the company by Carat Insight (STN stands for SunTV News). “The most comparable channel to STN is located in the USA, Fox News. Both channels’ strategy is to focus hard news and commentary that raise public debates and reactions on different topics.”
Customers would have to pay for the station during those first three years, too, should they opt to take it, but the company says it can be profitable in five years with a $0.25 per customer subscriber fee (expect some deal-making here though as the new channel will push hard to be part of the carriers’ various news theme packs). The application says the channel can get ratings in Canada similar to what Fox News gets Stateside, where that channel gets an average minute audience of “10 per 1,000 subscribers,” and leads all news channels there, reads the application.
Besides, says the application, the existing national news channels, CBC News Network and CTV News Channel had 21 and 13 years, respectively, as must-carries (complete with a guaranteed must-pay wholesale rate) so it’s only fair that SunTV News have three years to build an audience and a business.
“Sun TV News requires short-term and time-limited mandatory access for a maximum period of three (3) years by BDUs in order to effectively expose and promote its programming to viewers across Canada. We do not ask for mandatory basic distribution, but only to be available on cable and satellite distribution undertakings allowing the public to have access to Sun TV News without any obligation to choose it,” says its application.
That application derides the existing national news channels and decries the fact the top-rated news service in Canada is Atlanta-based CNN. “When the number one all-news channel in Canada is a struggling cable news laggard from the United States, CNN, it is time for a change; it is time to shake up the current players of the Canadian broadcasting system. It’s time for a new choice, a new voice, a new all-news specialty service for Canadians,” reads the brief. “A new information specialty service committed to leading its American rivals, not following them. A new specialty service that is given the same fair chance to succeed as the two existing, national all-news specialty services – specialty services that, taken together, merely match their top two American rivals in viewership.”
As we have reported before, that statement isn’t quite right. While not a national news channel, Toronto’s CP24 often leads the news channel ratings race in Canada.
But what if SunTV News doesn’t get the three years of mandatory carriage? “If mandatory access for a maximum period of three years is not granted to Sun TV News, one or more major cable or satellite providers might decide to not offer this service. This would be fatal to our business case… and would likely result in the cancellation of the Sun TV News project.”
– Greg O’Brien
