LEAVE IT TO SHAW to not only demand genre protection go away, but to use a lovely incendiary word that broadcasters have long used against cable: monopoly.
When Shaw Communications’ submission to the CRTC on its upcoming policy review on broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services addressed the Commission’s policy on genre protection (which means there’s only supposed to be one comedy specialty, one short film channel, one preschool channel, and so on), it refers to the protection as a genre monopoly.
“I’m not going to be lectured to by Jim Shaw about being in the monopoly business,” said Paul Sparkes, CTVglobemedia’s executive vice-president of corporate affairs to Cartt.ca in response.
The Commission’s cumbersome policy has led to some historically goofy genre splitting that has involved such things as counting the number of music videos that air on certain channels to make sure a youth-oriented station doesn’t show more than 10% music and therefore stepping on the toes of the youth station that holds the music genre as its own.
Or like allowing headline sports service The Score to show live games, as long as it cuts into those games every 15 minutes with news updates. Those updates, a nuisance if you’re watching a game, are, in fact, a condition of the channel’s license.
Silly stuff that has forced some programmers and regulatory types to dance like a football player through a tire maze their whole careers.
Many of the folks we’ve talked believe genre protection is all but gone anyway. TSN holds the license for a sports channel. It was the first one. But when The Score came along, that niche was sliced so that it could be a sports news channel (which was terribly unprofitable and caused the Commission to soon okay a small percentage of live games). Then came Rogers Sportsnet, which sliced the sports pie again because it was a regional sports channel, and didn’t violate TSN’s national sports channel license.
Then we have Fox Sports World Canada and Gol TV and The Fight Network and The Golf Channel and RDS and NFL Network and the various league pay packages and, and, and…
Then there’s OLN, which can show sports, so long as they’re not “stick and ball sports”. Want to watch someone laugh? Try to explain this genre protection thing to someone outside the industry. The “no stick and ball sports” makes ‘em giggle every time.
“The CRTC ties itself in pretzels,” says Rogers Communications’ senior vice-president, regulatory, Ken Engelhart.
Genre protection, actually, is one of the issues heading into next week’s hearing where there’s a little common ground. To put it bluntly, those we’ve talked to have said Canadian specialty services must to be allowed to change with the times and shouldn’t be shackled to conditions of license that are, in some cases, decades old. Plus, established specialties have had more than enough time to build their brands. If a newcomer can kill them off, well, maybe they did a lousy job establishing their brand.
What no one hopes to see (and that many have referenced) is a massive programming alteration along the lines of what took place with American cable channel Spike, which not that long ago was the country music-focused, line-dance in prime time, The Nashville Network.
“If somebody wants to start off a new sports service to compete with Sportsnet and go out and sign up basketball and hockey and football and if they succeed, given the head start that Sportsnet has had, then shame on Sportsnet,” says Engelhart, whose company owns the regional sports channel. “So, I don’t think there should be genre protection to protect Canadians against Canadians.
At High Fidelity HDTV, which owns and operates four all-high definition category two digital channels (Rush, Treasure, Oasis and Equator), it’s a broadcaster that has no such protection. Its views on genre protection are unequivocal. “We think it should be history,” said John Panikkar, the company’s co-founder and COO.
“We don’t think that in this day and age that the genre protection is needed anymore and can see no rational reason for maintaining it. I wonder if you can name one specialty service that would need to keep that kind of protection in place? It would be hard to do. And you might think that’s a surprising answer from a company that is still only just growing and has nowhere near, say, Discovery Canada’s 7 million or however many million subs it has now,” he adds.
“We actually would like the freedom to compete more and be less in the straight jacket of CRTC regulation of what we can and can’t show.” As category two channels, Panikkar has to make sure the beautiful looking content on his four high def specialties stay in certain narrow silos so as to not infringe on category one channels or older analog legacy services.
Engelhart points out the unfairness of the system, where these nascent cat two digi-nets have no protection while the far more mature services earnings millions in revenue, are under a nice umbrella. “The funny thing is the people who need the help the most are the cat twos and they don’t get any,” he explains. “They’re told ‘you’re on your own pal.’ Meanwhile the guy who’s had 15 years of protection and guaranteed access is told you get all the help in the world. It doesn’t make any sense.”
However, even the proponents of maintaining the policy (they call it “genre integrity” vs. Shaw’s “monopoly” quip) recognize the need for more flexibility.
“I think the issue with genre integrity, is that we’re saying there might be some relaxing within the system so that you could have sort of general buckets of genres,” said David Goldstein, CTVgm’s vice-president government and regulatory affairs.
“I think most of the people who are making serious comments on the subject are talking about fine tuning as opposed to getting rid of it,” added Paul Temple, senior vice-president, regulatory and strategic affairs at Pelmorex. “Some of the comments are that every time (programmers) want to make a slight adjustment to some of the restrictions on their programming, they have to re-file (with the Commission), so there’s not the flexibility.
“The discussion is moving more towards making it a policy that’s easier to operate as opposed to something we just get rid of,” said Temple.
Well, not according to the folks in Calgary. “The carriage of all Canadian and non-Canadian services should be determined in the marketplace. There should be no ‘genre monopolies’ granted to Canadian services that restrict the ability of BDUs to offer non-Canadian services,” reads the reply comments to the Commission from Shaw Communications.
This is where Shaw hard line differs from other distributors. “I think we’re always going to need some protection of Canadians from Americans,” says Engelhart. “We’re probably not going to bring in ESPN and the American History Channel and others because there are Canadian services which have been built up in those genres.
So, while it plays really well among Shaw’s Western Canadian customers to make it seem as though only the big, bad CRTC stands in the way of the glories of having ESPN and HBO in Canada – and that their cable company is fighting hard for them, it’s unlikely the U.S. cable channels that aren’t here yet, will ever want to be.
HBO rakes in millions selling its programming rights here to Showcase and The Movie Network and Bravo! And Movie Central and others. It wouldn’t be able to replace that revenue simply being a new pay channel in our small, Canadian, digital universe, especially when it doesn’t own the rights for most movies in Canada, which it would then have to pursue. Those issues would face just about any American cable channel wanting entering Canada.
And as for ESPN? They own 30% of TSN and are unlikely to want to impact its long-term investment here by entering Canada.
“I don’t even know if the American services want to come to Canada because then they’d have to acquire all the programming rights for Canada,” adds Engelhart. “Secondly, I’m not sure it makes sense given that the Broadcasting Act does seem to say something about having a Canadian system.
“So, what we’ve said is the rules are too restrictive on when American services should come into Canada. Right now, you go through this funny process of asking ‘well do they compete with each other?’ Everything competes with everything at some level.
“The question to us is does it threaten the viability of the Canadian service? That’s the test,” continued Engelhart. “If it doesn’t threaten the viability, let them in. If it does, keep them out. But don’t ask these sort of strange philosophical questions about whether they compete on some level.
“Now, as between Canadians competing with other Canadians, I think the time for genre protection is over.”
WELL, THAT’S A TOTAL of seven times “Canada” or “Canadian” was mentioned by Engelhart in those last three paragraphs, which dovetails nicely with tomorrow’s feature on the Canadian-ness of the industry, from Canadian content on screen to Canadian content in the channel lineups.
