THERE ARE ALWAYS A HANDFUL of questions asked repeatedly by commissioners during a CRTC hearing which can tip followers off about the direction the Regulator is leaning on certain topics. The Let’s Talk TV hearing is no different.
Big questions have been asked, answered and covered by us and others over the first eight days of the hearing (just search Cartt.ca for “let’s talk tv”), but there’s one query most have not touched upon yet: CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais’ recurring request for a road map from each of the companies to help him with the timing for changing the rules. He wants the best guesses from everyone as to when and at what speed whatever might be changed can and should be, in order to try and accommodate the new video realities.
“It has taken years to build this regulatory system… decades, frankly. I am not suggesting that we take as long to dismantle it, to adapt to a new environment, but there is a management of change that needs to occur, and how much change the system can absorb within a short period of time,” said Blais during his questioning of Bell Canada. “I often think of… the old Kerplunk game… all the marbles at the top, and you took turns pulling out a little stick, and the crashing of the marbles at the end. I often think of that when I think about deregulation, and adapting to the system, and going at the right pace, or not.”
While the rate of change issue brought Kerplunk to his mind, it instead got me thinking about my summer trip to Germany. My wife and I spent four days of our trip in Berlin and got a first-hand look at the unique, often miserable, history of that city. From under Hitler’s thumb to Stalin’s to being behind the Iron Curtain for decades (save for the free U.S. and British sectors of the city), Berlin was often trapped.
The Berlin Wall, as many of us will vividly recall, came down in November of 1989 and with its destruction, came the end of the Cold War. So, where on earth am I going with this, you may be wondering.
Well, by the late 1980s the East German government was under increasing pressure from its own people to reunify the city and the country and for the Soviets to leave. Long time leader Erich Honecker was replaced, and demands for freedom were growing throughout the Eastern Bloc, marked by rioting in many places, including East Germany. So, in 1989, the East German government hatched a plan to perhaps, maybe, kinda let some East Germans into West Germany. They knew change had to happen, but they wanted to take it slow, just barely moving the needle to begin with, or so the story goes.
So, after many meetings, a press conference was called and the usual East German press officer, Gunter Schabowski, was given documents to read to the international press. The trouble, at least according to legend, is he had been sick in the days leading up to the press conference and he was barely aware of the contents of the press release. He stumbled his way through, telling reporters that people would be allowed to visit the west. He was asked “Who?” and said “everyone”. The room of reporters could scarcely believe their ears and asked, “When?!” Schabowski scrambled to find the date and the only one he could see was that day’s date at the top of the document.
Immediately, hundreds and then thousands of East Berliners flooded to the Brandenburg Gate and other crossings (most of whom heard the news on West German TV and radio), demanding to be let through. Because they could get no one on the phone willing to make a decision or tell them what was going on, since they were unaware of what had been announced, the handful of border guards were left with the final choice: Open the gates; or open fire.
They chose the former of course and the Wall was gone immediately. So much for the plan of taking a slow, measured, pace to progress. Families long separated were reunited and the country and a world rejoiced.
However, it has not been smooth sailing for Berliners or East Germany as a whole. East Germans often feel they were more or less taken over by the west rather than merged with – and almost 25 years later, they are still have-nots in their own country according to many we encountered. The Berlin economy is still weak compared to the rest of the country, leading Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit to have coined a motto that the German capital is “poor, but sexy.” There are T-shirts, even.
“The CRTC and the industry as a whole really is not in charge of the speed at which change is happening or will happen in media, despite the fact it still looks like they are. Consumers, with the help of Silicon Valley, are in control.”
Now, of course I am NOT equating the Canadian TV business or our regulatory regime to East Germany, but a parallel stands out. As our own Berlin Wall of regulation is under attack from a riot of global internet content going around, under and through the rules we’ve constructed, can our figurative wall be taken down slowly, in a managed way? Or will it simply be obliterated at the hands of technology and the demands of Canadians who don’t want to be held back from accessing whatever content they want, whenever they want using whatever they want?
The CRTC and the industry as a whole really is not in charge of the speed at which change is happening or will happen in media, despite the fact it still looks like they are. Consumers, with the help of Silicon Valley, are in control. And so if our regs are adapted either in a managed way as hoped, or in a messy, job-killing, company-exploding, business-redefining manner as what happened to the music industry, the key question from this hearing remains; What happens to Canadian content? How will drama, comedies, news, sports, documentaries and other programming made here, for here, get made?
The raison d’etre of our system is ensuring we can not only create great television for Canadians, telling our stories to ourselves as we’re all fond of saying, but that we can also pay for it and maintain the thousands of jobs which are underpinned by our old, weird, wonderful, wonky, maddening and yes, relatively effective system.
But if it breaks down quickly as some fear will happen, will Canadians have to endure the demise of their local TV station, rely on whatever rises to the top on YouTube and other platforms, coupled with the odd killer Canadian hit that can go far internationally like Orphan Black, Murdoch Mysteries and Continuum?
Will Canadians, with whom the CRTC has valiantly tried to include in this process, be satisfied with a television future that is just “poor, but sexy”?
