TORONTO – A trio of independent broadcasters is urging the CRTC not to introduce a fee-for-carriage regime without also taking steps to offset the potential impact on their business.
The S-VOX group of companies, Stornoway Communications and Fairchild Television have banded together to ask the Commission to consider “the challenges” facing small, independent broadcasters, and to “rebalance regulatory support within the broadcasting system to ensure a more level playing field”.
In their joint submission, the independents predict that the BDUs “will inevitably take steps to recover the costs of fee-for-carriage”, perhaps by reducing the wholesale fees paid to their specialty services, or by “employing threats of punitive action that range from channel repositioning to the outright removal of channels”.
Among the measures the group has recommended are barring BDUs from competing with broadcasters for commercial advertising revenues, maintaining the requirement for a preponderance of Canadian services in all channel packages offered by BDUs, maintaining a regulated wholesale fee for independent specialty services, and ensuring that the new video on demand framework does not disadvantage linear broadcasters.
