GATINEAU – To many we’ve talked to so far this week, it smacks of re-regulation, not de-regulation, but commissioner Michel Morin wants to know what the industry thinks of a new points system he has devised to help small specialty services gain more notice.
At the BDU and specialty service hearings on Monday and Tuesday, the first-year commissioner has explained and re-explained his proposal to just about each intervener – several of whom seem a little perplexed by the proposal. Count some audience members in that group scratching their heads, too.
After hearing Morin (a former broadcaster explain it several times, it would work like this. A new points system would be created for specialty services that would take their level of Canadian content and Canadian program expenditure requirements and subtract the wholesale rate the channel is paid by BDUs.
Those channels that score the highest (i.e., those channels with the most Cancon and the tiniest wholesale rate) would move into the basic carriage tier while those who score lower (those with lower Cancon levels or a higher retail rate) would stay where they are, or be free to negotiate with BDUs where they should go. The most popular or most expensive channels would likely go nowhere.
Morin said it would be up to the Commission, in a new hearing, to decide how to set up the points structure and the thresholds which activate moving channels to basic. Primarily, Morin said he is troubled about the BDUs’ push towards dropping genre exclusivity and other protections and what that will do to smaller broadcasters. “We can’t leave them completely helpless,” he said in French.
Both Bell, today and Rogers, yesterday, were less than enthused with the idea (moving channels in and out of basic sounds just plain confusing and problematic not just for their marketing departments, but more especially, for their customers).
However, added Bell Video president Gary Smith, if the Commission were to ignore his company’s calls to eliminate most must-carry rules, “the points system does have a potential function.” The problem is finding certainty in such a regime, since channels moving in and out of basic could mean moving them from transponder to transponder for ExpressVu.
Morin, during Bell Canada’s presentation, said he thought such a points plan, done in the face of other regulatory changes would mean that “everybody could benefit from this level playing field,” and that every three years, specialty services could come back to the Commission to see if they meet the basic points threshold.
After hearing that, Smith added “We just feel that the marketplace doesn’t need such a system.”
– Greg O’Brien
