TORONTO – At a media conference today in Toronto, Rogers Communications vice-chairman Phil Lind will go on the attack once again against the conventional broadcasters’ goal of gaining a fee for carriage – and against his fear the CRTC might create such a fee and tie it to the production of local news.
Rogers, the recent buyers of the Citytv network and owners of the OMNI group of conventional stations, has asked for no such fee and fears the Commission may be thinking about poking its nose too deeply into the inner workings of the industry.
“Canada’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, has recently demonstrated an appetite for micro-management that may have dangerous implications for how television news stories are chosen and focused,” warns Lind in the speech he’ll read today at the Canadian Media Research Consortium’s Future of News Summit, a copy of which was released to Cartt.ca on Wednesday.
“In 1999, the CRTC released a revised television broadcasting policy which, among other things, required each conventional, over-the-air, television station to air a specified amount of local programming. That is, programming reflective of the area where a station is located. Fair enough. After all, if a broadcasting company is to receive exclusive use of spectrum, a valuable piece of public property, giving something back to the public– in this case some local reflection – seems a small price to pay. In that 1999 TV Policy, the CRTC, wisely in my view, did not stipulate that any of the local programming had to be local news. The Commission took the position that such decisions are best left to the professionals,” explains Lind, providing some background.
But, “(n)ow, there are disturbing signals emanating from Ottawa that the regulators are toying with the idea of taking a far more hands-on approach to local news programming,” he continues, pointing to April’s three-week-long hearing into the policies governing broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services, which really was so large in scope, it seemed like everything TV was on the table, including the demand from CBC, CTV and Global that they receive new fees from cable and satellite customers for their free-to-air broadcast signals.
Then, “(v)irtually without warning, and long after the written record preceding the hearing had closed, the Commission introduced a brand new question: How would it be if the CRTC tied fee-for-carriage to local news production? In other words, the Commission might allow conventional broadcasters to charge consumers a fee for the receipt of their signals – say 50 cents per subscriber, per month – if the money collected were spent on local news programming,” says Lind.
“All of the revenues from this source would have to go to local news, though nowhere is a local, as opposed, for example, to a regional perspective, defined. The money cannot be spent on international or national news, only local. If that idea does not qualify as government interference on a grand scale, I don’t know what does,” he adds.
Lind has been very clear his company’s position on any such fee: It’s an unjust tax on consumers,” he says.
“Broadcasters don’t need it, they don’t deserve it, and forcing customers to pay it will succeed only in driving them away from the Canadian television system to the Internet or illegal satellite dishes. Tying fee-for-carriage to local news doesn’t legitimize it; it just converts one bad idea into two.”
Plus, Lind continues, how would such a new regime be policed, anyway? “Will the Commission set up a monitoring and enforcement division to reward the sort of news coverage it prefers? Will broadcasters get the full 50 cent per month fee if their news team covers City Hall, but only 25 cents if they concentrate on fires, local beauty pageants and dog-at-large stories? The mind boggles at the scope inherent in such a scheme for unfairness and interference.”
“This is supposed to be the age of deregulation, of empowering industry participants to respond to market forces and consumer demands,” adds Lind. “This is the age of innovation, of technology-enabled journalism bringing us news and views from around the globe and carrying our voice to the world in return. Do we really want a group of grey regulators stepping in to direct and control this process?”
– Greg O’Brien
