TORONTO – As long as it doesn’t mean opening up the border to American cable channels, Corus Entertainment president and CEO John Cassaday says he’s okay with the CRTC dumping its policy of one specialty channel per genre.
In a conference call this afternoon with financial analysts discussing the company’s strong third quarter results, Cassaday touched on the company’s positioning with several regulatory proceedings under way.
"Our view is Canadian competition is fine and will improve the system," said Cassaday. He added he is opposed to allowing American channels in because they will not be subject to the same Canadian content requirements and will be able to "dump" programming here reaping benefits with little costs. "That’s something we would resist with all our energies," he added.
Cassaday says he welcomes and doesn’t fear Canadian competition. "Shame on us," if the company can’t protect a well-established women’s programming brand like W, he pointed out.
The CEO also drew a line along the border when it comes to foreign ownership of broadcast companies in Canada saying while that might be fine for cable and telecom, it should be a non-starter in the broadcast realm.
"We do not believe foreign ownership is advisable in the broadcast sector," he added, pointing out that foreign-based companies are not allowed to own American broadcast companies.
Other regulatory nuggets from Corus included:
* The desire for funding to be more flexible so that it can be spent on new media.
* The desire for the Commission not to get in the way of big companies becoming bigger. Canadian media companies "will have to be of significant size to get the attention of the (Hollywood) studios," said Cassaday, or else those huge content producers might turn to other platforms for Canadian distribution.
* In radio, DAB is basically toast in Canada. "We seemed to have missed that opportunity in Canada," said Cassaday. The attention is being turned on the U.S. digital radio solution, In Band On Channel (IBOC), better known as HD Radio. But don’t look for any near term transitions. Corus Radio president John Hayes said: "It is going to take a significant amount of time," to do it in Canada as all broadcasters here have to agree on technical regime – and co-ordinate that with U.S. Then vendors have to be enticed to come to Canada with product – and then consumers have to be enticed to buy a new piece of expensive equipment at high cost.
"(It will be) 3-5 years before it even gets started," predicted Hayes.
– Greg O’Brien
