TORONTO – In two submissions on separate files, independent broadcaster High Fidelity HDTV has asked the CRTC to allow more open competition among Canadian specialty service operators, or to perhaps clamp down harder on the foreign channels permitted to be carried here.
A letter filed by the company on March 13th supports Rogers Broadcasting’s application to expand what sorts of programming Outdoor Life Network may carry. Rogers has asked the CRTC to let it add some pro sports and other shows, such as comedy, to its license terms.
Even though a changed OLN might compete somewhat with HiFi’s Rush HD service, “if the application is approved, OLN will have a greater ability to compete against all television services made available to Canadian audiences,” reads the letter from HiFi HDTV’s senior vice-president David Patterson.
Another letter, sent yesterday, says the Regulator should let the CBC’s digi-net Bold, alone. Formerly Country Canada, the Corp re-branded the channel and altered the programming focus in 2008. The Commission, saying the service is no longer true to license terms that called for the channel to be aimed at rural Canada, has called the CBC on the carpet to explain itself and how the new version of the channel doesn’t render “the integrity of the licensing process” moot.
HiFi acknowledges that it sure doesn’t think Bold is adhering to its license conditions, but so what? “The key issue to examine is why the Commission wishes to continue to impose on the CBC for Bold (and for all specialty services for that matter) restrictions that limit Canadian specialty services from freely competing in the Canadian marketplace.”
(Ed. note: And as someone who grew up as a rural Canadian in a resource town, to try to tie what mining, farming or fishing families might want to watch on TV to what they do for a living or where they live, was always a pretty ridiculous undertaking.)
Anyway, what really fries HiFi’s bacon is that while Canadian specialties are subject to all sorts of rules as to whose sandbox they can play in – or in how much or little sand they can take from various programming sandboxes, not to mention mandatory spending on that sand – American cable channels have no restrictions and can plunder the beach at will.
“The fact is that non-Canadian programming services are competing on a daily basis against Canadian specialty services such as CBC’s Bold, and that this competition is taking place on every level imaginable (e.g. program rights, branding, advertising sales, bandwidth allocation, terms of carriage),” writes Patterson.
“It is also a fact that, unlike the CBC’s Bold, the non-Canadian programming services are not making any meaningful contribution to the Canadian broadcasting system (including, without limitation, failing to serve in their originally intended role as packaging supporters for Canadian services), while at the same time they continue to extract from Canada on an annual basis hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.”
So if the Commission lets Bold be Bold and OLN show pro sports? Fine, says HiFi.
And if not?
“(W)e believe that the next step in the process should be for the Commission to re-examine its own policies with the point of view that the Canadian broadcasting system should be a system primarily for Canadians and about Canadians and one which provides Canadians with a level playing field to compete against the non-Canadian programming services that the Commission has authorized for distribution in Canada,” writes Patterson.
“(W)e request that the Commission immediately investigate the unconstrained activities of such non-Canadian programming services, and we further submit that for Canadians this would be a much more valuable use of the Commission’s limited resources than to use those resources against the CBC for what it has accomplished with Bold.”
– Greg O’Brien
