IF THERE’S ONE THING distributors don’t like, it’s being told what to do by the CRTC.
As we saw during the April hearings into broadcast distribution undertaking and specialty service policy, cable companies don’t like linkage rules or must-carries or carriage restrictions or much of anything else they “have” to do.
Cable altogether opposed the licensing of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network as a must-carry, 91(h) channel in 1999, but the Commission still licensed it as a channel which all distributors must carry as a basic service. APTN is one of those channels that furthers the goals of the Broadcasting Act in that it reflects Canadian culture back to we Canadians (a big part of our culture that most of us know little about). Yes, it shows some Hollywood blockbuster movies with tenuous ties to aboriginal culture, but it also airs programming in various languages many Canadians have never heard – or heard of.
In the past, basic carriage meant placement somewhere in the 2-40 channel range. While that has happened for APTN with many distributors (Cogeco in Southern Ontario has it on channel 38, for example), other distributors haven’t been as kind, figuring that as long as they offer the channel somewhere in the lineup to all customers, it’s technically “on basic”.
APTN has also spent about a million dollars on a western feed on the assumption it would be widely carried by operators from Manitoba onwards It’s more than a simple time-shift, where prime time programming actually falls in prime time and not hours early, it carries some western-specific programming, too. In its last license renewal, the Commission said it would expect cable operators to carry the most appropriate feed relative to its geography.
That isn’t happening either.
So, APTN CEO Jean LaRose is mulling over another visit to the CRTC. He wants to get the Regulator to do what distributors hate: Tell them where and how to carry APTN.
“Our west feed,” he told Cartt.ca in a recent interview, “is more than just a time shift… it’s programming that is directed to the audiences in that area.”
Despite that, however, the largest BDU, Shaw Communications, doesn’t carry that feed which has been available for about two years. LaRose said Shaw originally offered APTN West in about 30 markets but pulled it off in June of this year.
The APTN CEO said he was told by Shaw officials that the company needed new decoders in order to carry the signal, and that it wanted APTN to pay for the upgrade, which LaRose declined to do. “Talking to some of the people that work on the technical side of the business, most of these decoders can be reprogrammed,” said LaRose. “You just reset the frequency on them.
“APTN can’t afford to buy between one to two million dollars of hardware for Canada’s biggest BDU,” he added, when asked how much it might cost.
And with the largest western BDU not carrying the western feed, the companies publishing TV listings are telling APTN they no longer want to publish details of APTN West. “And some of the smaller BDUs are saying, well if nobody’s going to publish it, then we want to go back to the east (feed),” added LaRose about this Catch-22 which has caused some audience erosion.
The other primary problem LaRose constantly confronts that causes either audience erosion – or doesn’t allow the audience to ever find APTN – is channel placement. While he may be on 38 in Hamilton (Cartt.ca’s headquarters) APTN East is on 107 in Vancouver.
“And for a lot of my audience, their TV doesn’t go to 107,” he explains. “They don’t have a new TV, they don’t have anything fancy. They don’t have an enhanced package – just connection in the wall, and it doesn’t go there.
“So, how do you address that? How do you correct that? And I know the Commission’s been very reluctant to address the issue of channel placement.”
One way to address it is to create a basic tier that is nothing but Canadian, an idea which LaRose (and a few others) presented at the BDU hearings in April. Carriers dislike the idea, but LaRose believes that given his problems aren’t just his (must-carry VisionTV has reported similar frustrations), it’s time for the industry to go back-to-basics with basic.
“Let’s create something where if you have a basic, let’s go back to the definition of basic that the Commission used when it launched the services… under channel 30 or under 40 depending on what size they determine basic needs to be.
“You know, there’s always space in there it seems for… their little news channels. Shaw’s got one. When I was in Vancouver, I think it’s channel 9 or something.” (Ed note: Shaw TV in Vancouver is channel 4.)
“Rogers has them, too. They always can find space when it comes to their interest. So, they’re making their living off this industry, they deserve to put something back to it, not just pay us lip service.”
So far, says LaRose, APTN hasn’t determined whether or not to head back to the Commission to seek changes, and for now (like everyone else) it is awaiting the CRTC’s new specialty and BDU policies, an announcement for which is coming this fall (best-guessing is that the announcement will perhaps happen just prior to the Canadian Association of Broadcasters convention, set for November 2-4).
