OTTAWA – With the hearings on the new pay television applicants scheduled for next month, the two major associations have weighed in with their comments.
While expressing no opinion on the merits of the applications, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters told the CRTC in its submission that since the applications force it to consider altering its policy of licensing just one Canadian specialty or pay service per genre – or in this case, per region – that a separate hearing needs to be held.
As reported by www.cartt.ca, four new applicants will face the Commission October 24th looking for licenses as new pay television services, long the purview of two regional players Corus Entertainment’s Movie Central in the west and Astral Media’s The Movie Network in the east.
One applicant, Spotlight, is being supported by Bell ExpressVu.
“Policy changes and exceptions should be addressed prior to licensing,” says the CAB letter. “Similarly, some applications create the need for new policies. These too should not be considered for licensing before processes are conducted that put those new policies in place.
“The CAB supports the Commission’s current licensing policy, as it provides a measure of stability to the industry and has supported its ability to make significant contributions to the achievement of the objectives of the Broadcasting Act. Without commenting on the merits of any of the pay television applications currently before the Commission, the CAB is of the view that exceptions to this policy should be considered only where the Commission is satisfied that approving such exceptions will yield clear and unequivocal benefits to the Canadian broadcasting system.”
Finally, said the CAB, any kind of must-carry language – which all of the applicants are pursuing – must be set aside. “New general interest pay services with guaranteed access rights could impose heavy capacity demands on BDUs given the large amounts of bandwidth required to accommodate proposed multiplexed and/or HD offerings. This significant demand on limited capacity would be happening at a time when some BDUs are expected to face significant challenges in accommodating the carriage requirements of existing services as they transition to HD.”
Those lines from the CAB must be music to cable’s ears, since its submission to the Commission on the new pay apps demands that any new pay TV license holders be dumped into the digital mix with the rest of the category two channels.
“The CCTA opposes the application of any must-carry rule to the distribution of new digital pay services. The CCTA submits that applying a must-carry rule for the distribution of new pay services would constitute an unwarranted exception to the Commission’s existing licensing policy,” reads the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association’s submission.
“(T)he CCTA submits that the applicants cannot rely on past regulatory models to ensure that their services are successful. It is incumbent on the applicants to ensure that their business plans adequately reflect the new competitive regulatory environment for digital services. The CCTA is strongly of the view that all applicants should have filed applications with business plans that were based on the premise of digital carriage and optional access. None of the applicants have put forward any convincing public policy grounds to warrant an exception to this regulatory framework.”
Plus, with the issue of digital migration far from settled, where BDUs are not yet allowed to transition all of the mature analog channels to digital, there is no way the CRTC should be contemplating additional must-carries, says the CCTA.
“Simply put, the Commission cannot increase the number of must-carry requirements while continuing to constrain a BDU’s ability to migrate existing analog services. The CCTA submits that the Commission must give BDUs the option of carrying new digital services and the flexibility to migrate existing analog services if digital distribution is to be successfully completed.”
– Greg O’Brien
