LET’S SAY YOU’RE AN MP, a cabinet-member even. You’re no dummy, despite the reputation politicians have. You know a lot about a lot of things. As a cabinet member, you’ve probably been elected more than once. You understand the voting public.
You also have a good grasp on what you don’t know and foremost, you probably know a quagmire when you smell it. And the battle which has arisen the past two weeks over June’s CRTC satellite radio decision (and just landed on your desk thanks to much lobbying) has descended into just such a confusing mess.
You can tell by the surveys. For example, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting released a doozy on Monday which – after looking into the thing and the questions asked – I chose to not even cover as news. It just wasn’t right.
The questions were so loaded and posed in such a way and in such an order as to arrive at a pre-determined answer: that Canadians want government intervention. The survey purported to say that two out of every three Canadians want the federal government to overturn the satellite radio decision.
The questions yank hard on Canadian nationalist heartstrings, then move on to how much over the air radio stations have to play and then what the satellite radio companies must play. Of course the survey got the answer Friends desired. Here are the questions:
1. Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree that as Canada’s economic ties with the United States increase, it is becoming more important to strengthen Canadian culture and identity?
2. Overall, how important is it that Canadian radio have Canadian content and programming?
3. There has recently been some discussion about the amount of Canadian programming on radio. Do you personally think that there should be a specified, minimum amount of Canadian programming on radio in Canada?
4. Currently the government’s radio regulations require Canadian radio stations to play Canadian artists 35% of their broadcasts. Do you personally think that 35% of radio airtime for Canadian songs is…
* Too little
* Too much
* About right
* Don’t know
5. The CRTC recently licenced three new subscription radio services to sell radio programs to Canadian listeners. More than 90% of the content on two of these new services will be American. Do you think that less than 10% Canadian content on these new subscription radio services is…
* Too little
* Too much
* About right
* Don’t know
6. As you may know, Canadian law requires the predominant use of Canadian talent in the creation and presentation of broadcast programming. Recently the CRTC licenced new subscription radio services, two of which plan to deliver predominantly American programming. Next week the federal government will decide whether or not to intervene in the CRTC decision to licence the predominantly American subscription radio services. In your opinion should the federal government…
* Intervene because the new services offer too little Canadian content
* Do nothing, and let the CRTC decision stand
* Don’t know
Not exactly a fair and balanced questionnaire. In fact, the Friends release instead says, “two out of three Canadians (64%) want the Government of Canada to overturn,” the decision, when the survey question itself merely says “intervene”. Heck, question #6 even makes it seem the Commission acted outside the law.
This is a foul ball of a press release if I’ve ever seen one, whose hyperbole continued: “The two American satellite radio services and their Canadian partners plan to beam programming that is more than 90% American content to subscribers in Canada.”
To say 90% of the content will be American is ridiculous. Canadian artists and others from around the world are in heavy rotation right now on SIRIUS and XM. And of course, the Friends survey mentioned nothing about how Canadian artists will get continent-wide exposure on satellite.
These are probably the reasons why the folks at CHUM – so they told me – distanced themselves from this survey as fast as possible this week, despite the fact the company is the lead opponent of the satellite licenses.
If we were to go to the other extreme and load up questions like –
Would you like to listen to 80 commercial-free channels of digital music from numerous genres in your car or home?
Then,
Should the CRTC be telling you what to listen to and ban that type of thing in Canada?
– I bet the results, using the same group of 1,002 people Ipsos Reid used for the Friends survey would get a far different result.
In fact, another one done by Veraxis Research for SIRIUS just a week earlier said that 76% of Canadians support the CRTC’s satellite radio decision. Some of its questions were loaded too (I looked at ’em) in favour off satellite radio, but overall, it was a fairer test of what Canadians might want.
Most in the industry know the back-story well by now. John Bitove of Prizm Brands fame, got into bed with XM Satellite Radio and got the whole thing off the ground by asking for a license in the fall of 2003. Standard Radio and the CBC partnered with the other U.S. firm, SIRIUS, for its license.
CHUM, on the other hand, asked for and was given a terrestrial digital license, eventually teaming with Astral, which promised similar Cancon levels as already on radio. The two companies, along with many others – including a number of other industry groups, want the government to force the CRTC to overturn or re-visit the decision. They see a threat. Tellingly, Corus Entertainment and Rogers Media are on the sidelines and don’t care one way or the other. They see little threat.
Cool new technology this satellite radio. Borderless. Footprint from the Arctic Circle to the Caribbean.
But costly. XM and SIRIUS together have lost hundreds of millions of American dollars so far. No way a Canadian company could afford to build and launch their own birds the way Star Choice and Bell ExpressVu have paid Telesat to do for video. And, the receivers are being built into hundreds of thousands of new cars.
The CRTC took a long time to decide this one: How can our Broadcasting Act, the Commission’s policies (and the Canadian content requirements therein) be best wrapped around satellite radio?
It was studied carefully. Commissioners heard from experts in all fields during the hearings. They took in all objectors, intervenors, clarifiers. Heard all explanations, rebuttals and scare tactics.
Ultimately, the commissioners came to a reasonable decision, ensuring that eight channels be dedicated to Canadian programming, with 85% Cancon. Given the technology and our Act, this decision seems to me a decent compromise. And, thanks to complaints from Quebec, the license holders have now pledged that four of their eight Canadian channels will be in French.
Satellite radio is coming. It’s here, actually. You can go to a new car lot in Canada and quietly get a SIRIUS or XM subscription from a discreet dealer. You can buy the gear and bring it here. It won’t be stopped even if the licenses are quashed. And, if they’re squashed, any chance for all-Canadian programming likely vanishes, too, as cartt.ca reported earlier this week.
The CRTC’s satellite radio decision lets two new Canadian companies grow off the backs of a U.S. system already in place (sounds familiar… ). No, it’s not perfect and if you choose to only look at the percentage of Canadian musical content required on satellite (10%) radio as compared to traditional radio (35%), it appears inequitable.
What it is though, is the best decision that could have been made, given the circumstances.
So, if you’re an MP, what do you do?
Hopefully, you figure that the experts have examined this every way possible by now, came to the best decision they could, free of silly political pressures, then you back away from your desk and take a lunch or two, letting the decision stand.
