AFTER READING THROUGH a number of submissions to the CRTC’s conventional television policy review, I’ve got a few first impressions where I think the new policy will go.
Remember though, first impressions can be very, very wrong and really, I’m just guessing for fun, so here we go.
Impression #1: I think fee-for carriage for OTA broadcasters has a shot to win approval. Probably not at the 50-cent a sub per month level that CanWest has asked for and certainly not the $2 level the Canadian Media Guild wants (an earlier version of this story said CFTPA but was mistaken), but at some level. The two big questions to be worked out are: A) Will the fee apply to public broadcasters like CBC and TVO, too, which already get paid by Canadians through the tax base? B) What will the conventional broadcasters have to give up in return? Tough new spending conditions on the new money, perhaps, which could range from anywhere between $100 million and $500 million annually.
If I can speak strictly as a consumer for a moment, extra fees, in a word, stink. But at the same time, I do not buy the arguments that masses of people will start dropping channels and packages because a few more cents have been added to their bills. My cable company (along with most others, as well as both DTH companies) have been pretty aggressive with price increases (dollars, not cents, have been added) over the past few years since deregulation and I’ve dropped no channels. Beyond my meaningless survey of me, the basic sub counts of all BDUs have grown of late, not shrunken, even in the face of the rate increases.
Each fiscal quarter when they face the financial community the CEOs or cable heads often talk of subscriber fee increases, always saying that they lost few, if any, customers because of rate hikes and most of those executives believe we’re nowhere near the consumers’ breaking point on such increases.
Impression #2: DTH companies will have to carry all OTA broadcasters. There is no way to put the time-shifting genie back in the bottle and with so few local stations still not on DTH, Star Choice and Bell ExpressVu just might be made to carry them all. The punch in the gut (besides all the program duplication) is they will have it toughest dealing with any new fees for carriage. Fees for every local station will be applied across their varied, national customer base, which will be expensive to carry out.
Plus, when all these channels go HD, will there be room on the transponders for everyone?
Impression #3: I think we’re stuck with 12 minutes an hour of advertising. CTV wants more time. CanWest doesn’t. Quebecor wants more time, Rogers doesn’t. The CRTC wants to try and make their drama incentives (more ad time in exchange for Canadian programming) work and commissioners know that no matter how annoying it is for, say, football fans to see innumerable Global and CH promos during games, the four minutes an hour of promotional material the broadcasters have a chance to run during American shows which are built around 16 minutes an hour is important push-time for their programming, especially their Canadian programming (when it’s pushed, that is).
But I bet the new TV policy relaxes how ads are classified so that product placement and show sponsorship can happen.
Impression #4: Broadcasters won’t be forced to upgrade all of their transmission towers to digital. This is a matter of economics. It’s just too expensive for towers in the hinterlands to be upgraded when no one is watching the signal over the air. Nearly all rural folks have cable or satellite. Almost all of the people still using just an aerial to get TV signals are those in cities with enough OTA choice that they can avoid cable and satellite altogether.
That said, it’s too bad most people will never see uncompressed OTA-delivered HD, because it’s spectacular.
Impression #5: The CanWest Global regulatory folks, led by VP Charlotte Bell, must have bloodshot eyes, sore wrists and should probably be checked for carpal tunnel syndrome as their submission was the largest at 473 total pages, including appendices. Bell Canada’s appears to be next at a paltry 269 pages.
I don’t envy the reading lists of the commissioners and their staffers.
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