WHO’D A THUNK THE first submission to the CRTC’s television policy review would come straight from the federal government.
Today’s Speech from the Throne, delivered by Governor-General David Johnston, followed up what Industry Minister James Moore told the media over Thanksgiving weekend – that the federal government wants to dismantle the bundling of specialty channels so that Canadians have the choice to purchase them one at a time. The speech, which traditionally sets out government priorities for the next session of Parliament, did not spell out how the federal government will make that happen, however. All the Governor General said was that it “will require channels to be unbundled, while protecting Canadian jobs.” Whatever concrete steps there are planned were left unsaid.
It doesn’t appear willing to crack open the Broadcasting Act for a rewrite, or it would have said so in the Throne Speech the same way it definitively committed to reforming or rewriting the Citizenship Act, the Public Service Labour Relations Act, the Temporary Foreign Workers Program and the respect for Communities Act. If it were going to start this type of media reform with the heavy lifting of updating the Broadcasting Act (last updated in 1991), it would have said so.
No, what we believe the feds have done with these few lines in GG Johnston’s speech is tell the CRTC just what it wants from the upcoming review of Canadian television policies, which CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais first announced in June. According to this CRTC video, that will officially get under way October 24 when the Regulator starts asking Canadians what they would like from their TV system. Of course, even without the federal government’s push, we all know the top complaint many Canadians have about their television subscriptions is that they can’t buy channels one at a time. Well, that and watching the American ads during the Super Bowl.
So, without a publicly stated plan of action to take us from what we have now to an a-la-carte subscription TV model, the federal government clearly seems to see an avenue to the Commission and has now outlined the number one thing it wants to see come from the CRTC’s TV policy review.
While the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance made its feelings known publicly and are backing the government, many broadcasters have not yet done that. However, Blue Ant Media (Aux, Bite, Travel+Escape, Cottage Life, and soon, the Smithsonian Channel, among others) CEO Michael MacMillan told Cartt.ca that pick-and-pay seems unavoidable at this point in time. “My view is that greater choice for viewers has been coming for a long time and is already available in some countries and on some distributors here," he said. "So I think, 'why would we want to stand in the way of what people want to watch or listen to?' So it sounds fine, but the devil may be in the details.”
Unintended consequence #1
THE NEW GROUP-BASED licensing regime is still pretty young, but as we noted in this exclusive story earlier this month, it appears to already be having an effect on Canadian producers. Cineflix, for one, has seen the writing on the wall and has said it will concentrate on the U.K. and U.S. markets. As broadcasters are now able to pool their Cancon expenditure requirements for all channels owned and concentrate the spend on a few, bigger budget Canadian productions if they wish, the fear is that smaller projects for some of the big broadcasters’ smaller specialty channel brands will be swept aside.
In a pick-and-pay world such moves could be fatal to some of the less popular brands. If all of the original content spending is directed towards a handful of shows on just the dominant broadcast outlets or specialty brands – leaving scraps and reruns for some of the lesser specialty brands of the big broadcasters – the consumer’s incentive to buy those smaller channels will flatline.
In a pick-and-pay world, Canadians will need a reason to pick, and pay – and the only reason to do so is original content.
Unintended consequence #2
U.S. CABLE CHANNELS DO NOT, ever, allow their brands to be sold in an a-la-carte marketing scheme. Even when Canadian BDUs have done limited market trials of such retail sales, the American specialties refuse to be sold in that fashion. They certainly do not allow it Stateside either, even though there is a renewed push there for pick-and-pay options.
Allowing Canadian BDUs to sell their channels this way is just not on, some of those channel executives have assured us this week. They can’t afford to be seen having allowed it by their much larger, much more lucrative, American cable and satellite partners and they do not want to be bullied into allowing it into a contract, even by the government of the day here.
So, if it does come down to it, will the American cable channels such as CNN, AMC, A&E, CNBC and others then refuse to distribute their signal to Canadian BDUs? None will yet say, but it’s certainly a possibility.
With files from Lesley Hunter.
