TORONTO – Peter Finch, in the 1976 movie Network, may have summed it up best for the U.S. Television Coalition, when his character, Howard Beale screamed, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Those sentiments seem to sum up the U.S. Television Coalition’s 17-page submission to the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV initiative.
And Finch’s famous scene could be replayed at the CRTC public hearings on September 8 in Gatineau, if the Coalition gets their wish to participate as an intervener. The American trade alliance, formed in 2012 by several American over-the-air border television stations, is planning to have senior American television executives take the stand and plead their case for compensation for their programs that are being imported and retransmitted in Canada.
“The U.S. Television Coalition seeks an immediate remedy to Canada’s unfair treatment of digital broadcast signals and programming from American TV stations that are imported, satellite relayed for fee, packaged in channel bundles, modified in retransmissions, and sold by Canadian pay TV services to Canadian TV subscribers without notice consultation, consent or fair market remuneration,” said Francis Schiller, secretary to the U.S. Television Coalition.
“The U.S. Television Coalition maintains that American TV stations suffer harm, injury and disadvantage as a direct result of Canadian administrative and regulatory practices that are discriminatory and unfair”, the submission continues.
The Coalition wants the Commission to step in and end the “unfair treatment and discrimination against American TV stations within Canada’s current and future broadcasting distribution regimes, including a revised framework for the Canadian television system that may be introduced as part of the Let’s Talk TV review.”
The group added that the CRTC will require “fair administration and regulation of digital broadcast signals and programming from American TV stations in order to follow through on its promise of unbundling TV programming packages so that Canadian television viewers can “pick and choose the combination of channels they want”.
Members of the trade alliance include: LIN Media, owner of WIVB-TV and WNLO-TV, the CBS and CW affiates in Buffalo, NY; Post-Newsweek Stations, owner of WDIV-TV, the NBC affiliate in Detroit, MI; The E.W. Scripps Company, owner of WXYZ-TV and WMYD-TV, the ABC and MYNetworkTV affiliates in Detroit, and WKBW-TV, the ABC affiliate in Buffalo; and Hubbard Broadcasting, owner of KSTP-TV, the ABC affiliate in Minneaplis, Minnesota, and WHEC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Rochester, NY.
– Cartt.ca staff
