OTTAWA – Kevin Crull, president of Bell Media, took to the pulpit at the Canadian Media Production Association’s annual Prime Time conference on Friday to criticize the CRTC for creating a regulatory environment that in fact hurts the Canadian system and to call for the banning of American OTA TV signals from Canadian cable, satellite and IPTV carriers.
During his nearly 25-minute speech, Crull spoke about a number of problems facing Canadian broadcasters, rights owners and distributors as a result of the commission’s current trajectory. This ranges from the advantage U.S. specialty channels enjoy, subscriber fees, geographic rights and more. In essence, he rehashed many issues Bell raised during the Let’s Talk TV hearing, noting that the television system is at a cross roads and unless the right choices are made, it could be irreparably harmed.
Bell has already filed a motion to appeal at least one decision from that hearing – the Commission’s decision to ban simultaneous substitution during the Super Bowl.
(As first reported by Cartt.ca, the final CRTC decisions resulting from that proceeding are going to be announced this Thursday when CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais addresses the Canadian Club in Ottawa – where will concentrate on Canadian content – and then a week later when he will announce the new carriage rules [the vaunted pick-and-pay portion of the decision]).
One of the major challenges facing the sector is the rising costs of content creation and the ability for broadcasters and producers to make money from it. On this latter point, Crull described the Canadian system as “fundamentally broken.” The difficulty surrounding content monetization relates to the U.S. retransmission regime, argued Crull, noting that 99 of the top 100 American TV shows are already available on Canadian networks and so do not need to be repeated via carriage of U.S. border station TV signals.
“Canada is the only country in the world that allows American networks to be retransmitted without restriction despite valid and exclusive copyrights held by domestic broadcasters,” said Crull. “We allow distributors to put up antennas near the U.S. border, capture the OTA signals of American broadcasters, and sell them to Canadians without regard to the exclusive rights of content creators and the Canadian broadcasters that acquire them. In an industry which is obsessed with intellectual property protection I am absolutely stunned that this continues.
“We can’t expect to have a successful Canadian television industry without basic intellectual property protection for creative content." – Kevin Crull, Bell Media
“We can’t expect to have a successful Canadian television industry without basic intellectual property protection for creative content. The lack of a legitimate Canadian rights market is the fundamental flaw in our system… Fix this and we don’t need simsub, which is a moderately effective, but inelegant and insufficient solution. We can’t expect to have a successful Canadian television industry without basic intellectual property protection for creative content. The lack of a legitimate Canadian rights market is the fundamental flaw in our system,” he said. Crull added simsub is still required as long as U.S. signals are carried, because it allows Canadian networks to make money from U.S. shows and to promote its Canadian content. For Bell Media’s Canadian shows, that promotion is valued at about $40 million, he added.
Then, the CRTC’s decision to eliminate simsub during the Super Bowl has made the situation much worse. “The acquisition of exclusive rights for Canada is now meaningless. This has introduced unprecedented uncertainty and chaos into the market,” said Crull.
Bell has filed for leave to appeal the CRTC decision with the Federal Court of Canada.
The Bell Media chief also levelled some criticism at the CRTC for ruling that the company was conferring undue preference on itself by not charging its own wireless customers data fees to watch mobile TV. He said of the 44 TV channels available on the service, only nine were owned by Bell Media so there wasn’t any undue preference.
Crull wondered if Canadian content such as scripted dramas like Saving Hope, television news and talk shows are more important than American counterparts.
“Do we value the tens of thousands of well paying jobs and the multi-billion dollar contribution to our economy that comes from domestic television?” he asked. “If the answer is no, then we are on the right track.”
Conversely if Cancon is foundationally important, then the industry needs to move in a different direction.
“We can either fund the public broadcaster two to three times greater than today, that’s another billion or two of taxpayer funding or we can support a sustainable business model for private investment in media and broadcasting.”
