IT’S FUN TO PROGNOSTICATE. To try and read the tea leaves and make educated (or not) guesses about certain things. Sports (pro and amateur) is utterly built around such predicting, thanks to the billions of dollars bet on the games every year.
Similarly enormous amounts of money and the fate of our industry are collectively at stake beginning this week when the cable, satellite, telco and specialty broadcasting community take their turn in front of a panel of CRTC commissioners who will largely determine how the broadcast distribution undertaking and specialty services industries will be run for perhaps the next decade.
Cataloguing how much has changed in the last decade is a mug’s game, because absolutely everything has. To come up with regulations that will have enough forethought and flexibility to handle what will change in the next 10 years is a monumentally difficult task.
So to predict how the policies will shake out before even one minute is spend in Gatineau? Impossible. But, here’s our top 10 predictions anyway.
* These hearings, scheduled for three weeks, will move along at a brisk pace, despite the many days set aside. Konrad von Finckenstein, the chair, seems imbued with an excellent BS detector and has no trouble at all interrupting and telling people to either answer the question they were bloody well asked, or to move on.
* The as-yet-unfinished spectre of the CRTC’s review of New Media, as well as its report due to Canadian Heritage on the Canadian Television Fund will hang over these hearings more than a little bit. Certain questions will go unanswered and certain issues set aside because there has yet to be a final decision on the funding of Canadian content or on what the Commission plans (if anything) to do about – or with – the challenges presented my new media and its multiple platforms.
* I don’t think broadcasters will get their fee-for-carriage of local over-the-air signals. At one time, I thought they might. But no longer.
* I do think they will get their wholesale fee for distant signals. Cable companies treat them and sell them like specialty services for the time-constrained, and the broadcasters should get a piece of that action.
* Genre protection will be weakened. It won’t be tossed out and the borders won’t be thrown open for the likes of Nickelodeon and other American cable channels, but it appears from the people I’ve talked to and submissions I have read that specialty services need the ability to alter what they show as times change. No one wants to see a change along the lines of The Nashville Network becoming Spike, or granting a large Canadian broadcaster the ability to squash an independent like a bug, so I’d expect some genre rules to remain.
* Ted Rogers will be fun. He gets the ball rolling as the first out of the gate tomorrow morning and will likely be at his bombastic best, I would expect. And having to face Commission questions is when it will get most interesting since Mr. Rogers is just so darn quote-able when he’s forced off-script.
* Shaw will get a rough ride. The company has happily been acting as the stick in the eye for the industry for quite some time now, poking broadcasters and producers and regulators and anyone else who disagrees with the free-market absolutism rhetoric they have been espousing (to the great delight of their customers, we hear). When it comes to be their turn though (scheduled now for April 23), I expect some sparks as we have a chairman and some commissioners who are ready to poke back.
* The independent broadcasters idea of re-classing all channels into Category A and Category B services merits – and will get – serious consideration. It’s a neat idea that directly addresses the issues being faced by current category 2 digital specialties and the required Canadian-ness of the system which the Broadcasting Act speaks of. As for their insistence that 66.7% of channels delivered to consumers be Canadian? I’m afraid that horse won’t run, especially since the big ‘casters are asking only for 50-plus-one.
* The under the radar issue that will make the biggest splash? Dispute resolution. Some broadcasters have no power in a fight with an MSO (What can WildTV force Cogeco to do, for example?). Others have such strong channel brands that they hold many of the cards (Hello, TSN). The big ‘casters want the right to pull their channels as a tactic in a fight. The smaller brands want the locks on the cable and satellite gates to be a little looser – as well as a better way to battle back when negotiations die.
* In that airless room in Gatineau, we’ll be able to spy at least a handful of less-than-interested folks nodding off during the less-than-riveting sections of questioning (Ed note: What? Surely there’s none of that!?).
Comments? Kudos? Let us know at editorial@cartt.ca.
