COMMENTARY: The right to negotiate seems ready to be granted. But the devil's in the details

IF YOU JUDGED BY the various ad campaigns, Facebook pages and Twitter streams, you’d be thinking that the hearing beginning today in Gatineau is only about whether or not conventional broadcasters should get a fee for their signal.Well, granting the broadcasters the right to negotiate a fee for carriage of their local TV signals is a foregone conclusion. I’m convinced this will happen. The term “negotiation for value” – which has begun to replace “fee-for-carriage” in the industry lexicon – was coined by CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein himself earlier this year and while I’m not necessarily opposed to the...