IN QUEBEC, YOU HAVE TO GO DEEP into a conversation with a private TV network manager before you’ll hear even a hint of excitement about the visual and audio pleasures that await viewers of HDTV.
“Sure, we’re anxious to see all that,” finally confesses Richard Baril, Operations Director for RDS, the all-sports network and sister station of TSN. “For viewers, especially if they’ve ever seen an HD broadcast, they’d like to have it tomorrow.
“But as a manager and administrator,” he quickly adds, hearing the adding machine toting up the bills, “there are enormous costs, and I understand the financial impacts of a decision like this very well.”
Baril’s refrain is echoed by senior managers at the private TVA and TQS networks, and at the Quebec government-owned Télé-Québec, as they try to plan their way to a new era without fully knowing what’s in it for them.
HDTV is a wonderful technological progression, says TVA’s head of engineering and network operations Sylvain Jeannotte. “But it serves who in the end? It serves the companies who are making the equipment. People watch TV, not for the technology but for the content. A program like ‘Star Académie’ (TVA’s top-ranked star-search show) works, not because it’s in 16:9 HD or in 4:3, but because of the content.”
“What’s the return on investment? That’s what we’re always asking ourselves,” said Richard Roy, TQS’s Operations Director. “Will we really have more advertisers? What will it bring? Will it bring in more revenue? Or is it at least going to prevent us from losing revenue?”
Enthusiastic about HDTV? Not these people – at least not yet, and not until they see armies of viewers plugging in new HDTV sets, buying the required decoders from cable or satellite distributors, and demanding their local news in brilliant HD with astonishing Dolby sound.
Until then, they’ll get ready for it, build for it, and eventually start broadcasting in it, while not totally convinced this is actually a good thing for a generalist private over-the-air TV network already competing for market share with an ever-growing list of speciality and pay-TV networks.
Michael McEwan, president of CDTV, whose job is to help ease the industry’s transition, has heard the complaints about costs, especially during this transitional stage.
“Sure, to be completely honest, I have to say I haven’t met a broadcaster yet who says, gee, I’m really happy about spending all this money on converting to HD. There are some in the industry like me though who see the new technology as an advancement and will provide better quality and better value.
“But it all has to be paid for, and it’s a challenge for them. But once you start down that route, and our strategy has always been to lag behind the U.S. by a couple of years, then in a couple of years time, equipment prices have fallen, a lot of production costs have fallen, so it becomes more affordable.”
At the moment, here’s how the HD world looks in Quebec:
RADIO-CANADA – The French-language Société Radio-Canada (SRC) is a few steps ahead of the private networks in Quebec.
It began HD broadcasting in Montreal in March 2005 and is producing the popular weekly drama “l’Auberge du chien noir” and the daily “Coup de pouce”. With the HD mobile unit shared with CBC, it has produced one special, the Quebec music industry awards show, and on election night, it will at least provide visual – if not political – clarity to the results.
To date, one studio has been converted for HD production, as have three editing suites and a sound studio. All other programs are up-converted.
Early in the new year, the Quebec City region will have its new HD transmitter up and running; in other areas, HD programming is available, or soon will be, through Vidéotron or Bell ExpressVu.
Diane Normandin, SRC’s director of post-production and broadcast services, says the network will break out more shows in high-def for the 2006 fall season. Among them are public affairs programs such as “Zone libre” and “Enjeux”, the science show “Découverte”, and the consumer show “L’épicerie”, along with variety shows “Tout le monde en parle” et “La Fureur”. Work has also begun on a big-budget series on the history of hockey.
“We’re the first with HD in the French language in Canada and we’re ahead of the privates in Quebec,” Normandin said. “But for Radio-Canada to do a complete conversion of all our installations across the country, it’s immense in terms of costs. So it will be spread out over many years.”
TVA – Quebec’s top-rated network, TVA, expects to receive its transitional digital licence any day now for the Montreal region. However, it faces an additional problem of having to switch to UHF for the transition, and place its new transmitter in another location, because the broadcast tower on the top of Mount Royal in the middle of Montreal simply can’t take the weight of any more structures.
TVA has five other sites across the province and each one, said Jeannotte, requires a slightly different transmission solution. “So it’s quite the strategy we have to put in place, but in 2006, we’ll apply for licences for all our regional stations and we’ll clarify the HD standard that we’ll use,” he said.
Meanwhile, two studios and a control room have been converted, with a 5.1 audio environment. But when precisely TVA will produce its first HD program is up-in-the-air.
TQS – At “le mouton noir de la télé” (“the black sheep of TV”), as it brands itself, progression to high-definition has been slowed by a management shake-up and re-structuring over the past year. But Richard Roy says he’s targeting Dec. 2006 as the start-up date.
“Right now, we’re preparing the plan for the coming year, what the next steps are, what the equipment needs are, which program we’d like to see on the air in HD first.”
TQS has not yet applied for digital licences for its four other transmitters across Quebec, Roy said, nor has any timetable been set. But once Montreal is operational, he said, the regions should follow soon after.
TÉLÉ-QUÉBEC – The government-owned network has its digital licence for Montreal, but director of broadcast services, Guy Dupont, says the network feels snookered at the moment by the Mount Royal transmitter dilemma.
Unlike Radio-Canada, whose downtown building is high enough for its new transmitter, Télé-Québec doesn’t own a skyscraper and so has yet to find a solution to its transmission problem.
Dupont said he’s also looking at his 17 other transmitters across Quebec and trying to calculate the costs, which he said could be between $300,000 and $2 million, depending on the site.
Further behind than the rest, Télé-Quebec has yet to purchase any HD equipment and has not set a target for HD broadcasting.
RDS – Unlike its English counterpart TSN, which bills itself as “the leader in HD”, the French sports network does not expect HD broadcasts until 2007 and has yet to finalize its business plan.
TÉLÉ-ASTRAL – With seven cable speciality channels (Canal Vie, VRAK-TV, Canal D, Séries +, Ztélé, Musique Plus and Musimax), the company is talking about a break-out year in 2006 with substantial investments in HD and subscription video-on-demand.
At the company’s annual meeting in November, Pierre Roy, President of Les Chaines Télé-Astral, talked about launching four HD French-language channels but gave no firm date.
Another division, Astral Television Networks, is now offering The Movie Network in HD, but there is no HD date set for its French-language equivalent, Super Écran.
VIDÉOTRON – The province’s dominant cable carrier, with more than 1.4 million subscribers, has made Montreal HD-ready and the Quebec City region will follow suit later in 2006. As of September, the company had 400,000 subscribers for its digital Illico service, an increase of 36% in one year. Few are HD customers.
Now, Videotron is looking at adding HD channels (American) and it’s anxious to have French-language HD content.
“For us in digital,” said Pierre-Luc Poliquin, Vidéotron’s Senior Director of Marketing and TV distribution, “it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, where the customer wants more HD content and channels, but the channels want more subscribers of HD before they launch an HD channel. So it’s a challenge. Radio-Canada has launched it but there are still few programs there, so it doesn’t stimulate the demand very much.
“We hope to have more programs on Radio-Canada to give a lift to HD and then the people will buy, and then other channels will follow.”
Vidéotron though, with its fingers in cable, Internet, and now phone service, has all the delivery platforms covered, ready to provide content wherever consumers turn. And soon, it will increase bandwidth capacity to offer HD video-on-demand.
But, says Poliquin, it’s just about time for the TV networks to make their move. “Yes, of course it’s expensive, but at a certain point of time, it won’t be expensive and we will make money out of it.”
For network managers, though, timing is everything.
“Right now, traditional TV is where the audience is, so announcers are more interested in that,” said TVA’s Jeannotte. “That’s what’s at stake. It’s all about revenue, about content, and about technology. The task is to take all these issues into account to know at what point in the plan we should do things.
“We’re not like Radio-Canada where they have a mission to develop technology, and especially in the Quebec environment where the issue is posed differently. English Canada can feel threatened by U.S. TV, but it’s not the same for French TV. And I’d say even in Toronto, where they rushed to have HD antennas, it’s more of an expense than a source of revenue or higher audience right now.”
TQS’s Richard Roy agrees Quebec networks will be at least slightly protected from the U.S. threat, but probably not for long.
“People won’t change all at once. But how fast will the change occur – that’s the evaluation we have to make. What consumers are doing now is looking at digital but more in terms of DVDs. That’s how they’re buying, not on the basis of a TV signal they may have one day. So as long as it’s not in the mind of consumers, it’s not a threat. But everyone has their own idea on how long that will take.”
“It’s clear to me,” said Baril of RDS, “that the day there is a private francophone broadcaster going HD, that will push the others to follow because the law of the market will apply. That will also dictate the timing and the conditions, on the francophone side anyway. On the anglophone side, it will be more rapid because they’ll face neighbouring cities in the U.S., and they’ll have to make the move or risk losing their clients. But we have more of a closed market.”
CDTV’s Michael McEwan agrees that language differences will only protect Quebec networks for so long.
“I think the francophone market is where the English market was a couple of years ago. People are starting to get their feet wet, then you’ll see growth in Montreal and Quebec City, and then services will move out to the rest.
“As the rest of the system moves increasingly to HD and as viewers buy HD displays -and they are buying them in large numbers in Quebec as well – at a certain point, not to change and start providing HD services will make business plans less effective. I guess the trick for the Quebec broadcast community is to assess when to make that transition, and if I had advice to give them, I would say certainly in the Montreal-Quebec City markets, they should start within the next year to 18 months.”
Télé-Québec is quietly making the argument that its future, as the province’s only public educational and cultural network, is at stake in this technological evolution.
If it’s left alone in the analog world, then its relevance and its role will be undermined. Network officials won’t discuss the arm-twisting that’s under way with their political masters in Quebec City, except to say that a long-term budget plan has been developed and submitted and they’re awaiting a decision.
In Ontario, said McEwan, TVO has not got government help and is now lagging well behind.
“If you have a public broadcaster serving a certain cultural, educational mandate within a province, not to make that commitment is, at least in the core network centre, very short-sighted because if they are the very last to convert, the natural competition for eyeballs almost excludes them from having a competitive arrow in their quiver.”
Meanwhile, the commercial networks continue to juggle their figures, await the verdict of viewers, and softly pray for government help.
RDS’s Baril can’t help but worry.
“The biggest problem is to produce our own HD material. For us on the francophone side, we have to stop and think, technically speaking, how we will integrate signals from a mobile, decode the audio tracks, re-mix with French audio, and have an HD and analog signal. So that’s another investment level.”
Then, he said, there’s how to integrate all the external feeds, equipping production studios, and upgrading distribution capacity.
“So right now, it’s a bit like the dog chasing his tail. People will definitely want to have francophone content but at what price will they be willing to pay, and when is it going to be advantageous for us?”
There’s no doubt the networks would appreciate government aid, especially to overcome the high cost-low return from installing regional infrastructure.
CDTV hasn’t been given the mandate by its industry members to actively pursue this yet, but McEwan acknowledged it’s been a topic of discussion.
“I think it’s a fair thing to look at, especially when you get outside the major population centres. That’s a huge economic issue for over-the-air broadcasters because it’s bloody expensive. The CBC-SRC won’t do it unless they get government money…so networks like TVA and TQS may legitimately say we need help too.”
Still, TVA’s Jeannotte even wonders if traditional TV, obligated to maintain its over-the-air analogue service while duplicating transmission infrastructure for HD, can survive this transitional stage.
“We’re ready to go digital once there’s a significant audience. But we’re obligated by the CRTC to have a transition solution where they give us a frequency on UHF. We need to put in a new antenna, but in Montreal, the existing tower can’t support all the new antennae. So we need another site. As well, you’re investing in a transmission mode that won’t even be watched. That’s the big problem, and we’ll be on a frequency where many people will not know where we are, so that complicates things,” he said.
“So you begin to notice that you have a lot of expense for a solution that is not viable, that is transitory, that segments your market, and increases your acquisition costs by 30%.”
He doubts that in the end many people will be satisfied with an over-the-air HD signal, especially in the regions, because the quality will not be as reliable.
“I’d be surprised if a lot of people watch digital with an antenna. They’ll switch to cable or satellite. So in a small town, we have all that expense [of installing a digital transmitter] for 200 people?”
And then what, he asks. “Maybe what will happen is there will be competition from the Internet, and more and more, content won’t have to pass through TV to reach people. Meanwhile, broadcasters are obliged to make huge investments. So there’s a danger in that and it’s something the government will have to consider. This passage to digital could kill some stations.”
As bleak as that sounds, Quebec broadcasters can count on the big advantage afforded by linguistic and cultural distinctiveness. They regularly attract audiences of over one million people, in a market of roughly six-seven million people, for domestically produced dramas and variety programs – a ratings performance that English Canadian networks would die for.
That’s one reason why Vidéotron’s Poliquin is bullish. “We believe in HD,” he said firmly, “This is the future.”
Glenn Wanamaker is www.cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor.
