OTTAWA – The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. is recommending the establishment of a small, low-priced all-Canadian basic service and fee-for-carriage for the over-the-air TV signals of broadcasters.
Speaking on the opening day of a three-week-long CRTC hearing on distribution and pay TV, CBC executives told the commission that a small basic service would give Canadians more choice in selecting the additional Canadian and foreign discretionary services they want.
Fee-for-carriage would provide conventional broadcasters with subscription revenues to allow they to “continue to play their cornerstone role in the system and to maintain or enhance the quantity and quality of their Canadian programming offer,” stated a CBC media release.
“It’s time to rebalance the regulatory regime to properly support conventional broadcasters,” said Michel Tremblay, VP of strategy and business development at CBC. “That, in our view, means doing two things: giving Canadians access to a basic, all-Canadian package of core services, and giving conventional broadcasters access to subscription revenues.”
The only channels that should be included in the smaller basic package are Canadian, local, over-the-air TV services and channels deemed of significant importance, recommended the CBC.
Other TV channels, such as the U.S. networks, time-shifted channels, specialty TV channels and audio channels – which are now included in large, expensive basic packages – would all become part of discretionary packages.
CBC executives said that by reducing the size of the basic package, consumers would have more choice, their basic service would be less expensive, and a core set of Canadian programming channels would get priority distribution. [Note: Since the CBC’s Newsworld has been deemed of importance under section 9 (1)(h) of the Broadcasting Act, the public broadcaster can make this recommendation without fearing that its own news channel, which receives significant wholesale fees, would be dropped from a slimmed down basic package].
“This approach would best fulfill the cultural, social and linguistic objectives of the Broadcasting Act, while at the same time being very consumer-friendly, much more so than is the case today,” said Sylvain Lafrance, executive VP of the public broadcaster’s French services.
The new money for conventional broadcasters from fee-for-carriage would be used for new programs and to sustain programming initiatives that are currently at risk due to shrinking ad revenues in an increasingly fragmented TV market, noted the CBC.
“Our proposal would remedy a long-standing inequity and establish a level playing field,” said Richard Stursberg, executive VP of CBC English Services. “Conventional broadcasters have long been the cornerstone of the Canadian broadcasting system, but financial realities – especially the steep decline in ad revenues – are putting the system at risk. Access to subscription revenues is one way of ensuring that the cornerstone doesn’t erode…”
