WHILE WE WAIT for the CRTC to decide whether or not Al Jazeera English can be distributed in Canada by cable, satellite and telco TV companies, I already have it in my office.
Actually, I have both the English and Arabic versions, right now, on my television. (No Canadian BDU offers the Arabic version because even though it’s on the eligible satellite list, the regs around it say that BDUs must employ Arabic language censors to monitor it 24/7, if they want to launch.)
And yet, here they both are, in standard definition, full-screen quality, on my 30-inch LCD television thanks to the Nextv box I have borrowed from Slava Levin.
Levin is the CEO of Ethnic Channels Group, a company which owns and distributes a number of third language channels to Canadian BDUs. Ironically, he is also the sponsor of record with the CRTC to bring Al Jazeera English to Canadian BDUs (a decision on that is coming in the next few weeks, apparently, a source told Cartt.ca this week).
However, in his five or so years at the helm of ECG, Levin has grown frustrated at the admittedly limited success of the company, which operates within the regulated framework offering category two digital channels in Russian, Greek, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Hebrew, Iranian and Arabic. They are “Canadianized” versions of overseas brands, such as NTV Canada (Russian) and ProSeibenSat1 (German).
Simply, he thought there would have been more uptake by now. While Rogers Cable and Bell TV each offer a handful of his channels (Telus TV has also recently added some, too) the rest of Canada’s BDUs do not.
At one point, Levin’s company had 53 category two licenses, but since he couldn’t convince enough Canadian BDUs to carry very many of them, a number of his CRTC licences – and some of the Canadian broadcast arrangements with the originating broadcaster – lapsed.
“Ethnic Channels is still not where it should be,” said Levin in a recent interview with Cartt.ca. “If we go back four years or five years when you and I first talked, I said that Ethnic Channels needs about 30 channels to be a viable, profitable business, and we’re not even halfway there… it’s a tough, tough business that I don’t recommend it to anyone at this point.”
So Levin has had to push into other markets and now distributes Russian Extreme Sports to Dish Network in the States, and has plans to launch two more with the #2 U.S. DBS company (a company with more subscribers – close to 14 million – than there are in all of Canada, by the way).
But, Nextv is a different product altogether. With so many doors on the regulated side of the industry just so difficult to kick open – for many reasons (regulatory, bandwidth and other excuses Levin is reluctant to complain about again in print) – this new service makes him a distributor as well as a broadcaster.
“The only option for us was to develop something that we can do directly to the consumer,” said Levin. “We were sitting there with content that can’t get launched and that forced us, out of need, to develop an alternative source to the consumer.
“We are able to launch services from around the world without going through the CRTC process, without having to worry about getting the channels on cable or satellite.”
Nextv is an “over-the-top” product that hooks into customers’ high speed Internet service and TV sets, delivering 112 channels in 10 languages at the moment. Since it’s Internet-delivered, it’s unregulated – and offers many more third language channels than any Canadian BDU.
And over three weeks of testing, other than a bit more channel latency when surfing, Nextv’s signal quality is at least on par with the standard definition digital cable I also have tied into that TV. And for some reason The Pet Network, an English Canadian cat 2 owned by Stornoway Communications, appears clearer on Internet-delivered Nextv than my Cogeco Cable.
Nextv offers some limited mainstream video on demand movies, too (Transformers, 300, I Robot are there now) and a rather healthy list of adult titles, many of which are in languages other than English (third-language porn is not often found in the regulated BDU world). We ordered and watched Transformers all the way through this week during prime, high web traffic hours, and except for a small audio glitch at the start of the movie, it was the same VOD experience as SD cable.
Besides Al-Jazeera and the Pet net, Nextv also has Fox News, God TV, English-language Russian TV network Russia Today and Setanta Sports, all in English. It then offers various packages (ranging in price from $7.99 a month to $35 a month) in Arabic, Croatian, German, Greek, Hispanic, Hungarian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Vietnamese.
Levin’s plan was to launch many of these channels within the regulated sphere in Canada, but instead has nearly 10,000 customers in Canada and the U.S. for Nextv.
The Internet TV service is a separate subsidiary of ECG, with its own content arrangements and affiliate agreements – and Levin is looking to launch more English channels too, including major conventional broadcasters, if they are interested. He’ll even pay a fee for carriage. “If you produce content, you should get paid for it,” he said.
Right now, Nextv’s subscribers are half Canadians and half Americans – but those limited subs are earning almost as much revenue as ECG’s regulated broadcast business, says Levin. And Nextv is making money after just a year since launch – and with no marketing except word-of-mouth.
When asked if he’s worried his BDU customers on the broadcast side of the business will see Nextv as a threat, Levin the entrepreneur is unapologetic. “Look, they forced us into this business… I wish I didn’t have to spend money on this,” he said. “I’m not a distributor. I’m a broadcaster.”
So if there had been more uptake on the traditional side, Levin insists that he “absolutely” would never have launched Nextv.
“I’d never just sit idle and wait for something to be handed to us. Nextv is just the next progression.
“Bottom line is we do what we need to do to survive.”
