REGULATION IS GOOD. Necessary even. And regulation is already all around us and has been forever, not just enabling, but driving commerce and business success, says Bill Roberts, president and CEO of S-Vox, the company which owns and runs VisionTV, One: The Body, Mind & Spirit Channel and The Christian Channel.
Such statements are an outright abomination to the deregulation set in the electronic media industry in Canada (I’m looking at you, cable operators and other BDUs…), but Roberts makes a case that not only does the broadcast and cable industry still require regulation, but that the companies already practice it on their own quite regularly every day, even in sectors they say isn’t regulated and doesn’t need any.
S-Vox and Canadian broadcast distribution undertakings, one could say, have a natural suspicion and cynicism towards each other. The company’s primary channel, faith based broadcaster VisionTV, has long been a must-carry, so cable operators – a bunch of folks who don’t like to be told what to do – have been forced by the Commission since its launch in 1987 to offer the channel and were also what price they had to pay Vision for that privilege.
Cable operators treated the channel with disdain, often bouncing VisionTV all over the dial, sometimes even on impaired channels, or the one reserved for condo security channels.
“It’s interesting when you’re a small independent specialty broadcaster where it’s not a problem for (BDUs) to move your channel placement all over the place… and it’s always explained: ‘don’t worry about it, (viewers) will find you,” says Roberts. “But when it’s a property or an interest of the BDU, it can’t be done because consumers don’t like change… There’s a little logical cavity I can’t quite fill there.”
So with the policy review on tap in a little over two months, and with cable, satellite and telecom carriers agitating for further deregulation – and even for the expansion of the levels of allowed foreign investment, what is a relatively small company like S-Vox to do?
“I’ve been told the BDUs have more lobbyists in Ottawa than I have employees,” says Roberts, ruefully.
Roberts has taken to the media of late, defending his thoughts on the Canadian system and regulation in general in thoughtful letters to the editor, for example, that often lament the lack of inquisitiveness of Canadian reporters when it comes to their coverage of this important industry.
And when one adds to the regulatory puzzle the recent spate of media company consolidation, it’s either a dangerous time – or potentially one chock full of opportunity – for independent Canadian broadcasters.
“I think that the small and independents are the canaries in the coal mine for the Canadian broadcasting system – and it’s not just about survival, it’s about flourishing. And that counts for diversity, it counts for editorial opinion, it counts for who’s going to invest in the young producers and directors and writers and talent. It’s a whole ecosystem,” explains Roberts.
So, when the Commission reviews its policies on BDUs and specialty services beginning April 7 – to re-decide how it regulates a significant chunk of the industry – the CEO hopes it won’t be made to seem that it’s the backwards forces of rules and regulation keeping evil foreigners and their TV out of Canada versus the freedom fighters battling to let Canadians see Super Bowl ads.
“I think one of the great spin jobs that’s been done… is that somehow regulation is bad for business,” explains Roberts, “or that it’s a nanny culture. It’s exactly the opposite. Regulation is the best thing that’s ever happened to commerce.”
It’s been demonstrated through the years in this industry and all others, he says. “This country is not a natural market. Everything that is constructed here that has to do with business is the subject of subsidy and support by an entity that is not a natural market, whether that’s tax support, whether that’s employment support, whether that’s income security support… Just in our business, there would be no BDUs in our business if there hadn’t been public policy intervention and regulation.
“There would be nothing here but American affiliates and a little bit of local news and some people running mom and pop radio stations. And that’s the end of the story,” adds Roberts.
“Regulation done the right way and under the right circumstances, facilitates commerce and business… If there were no stop lights at Young and Bloor, how would that work?” he asks.
“Where we’re heading to in terms of consolidation now – if I’m to be dramatic about it – is into an era where we’ve somehow rationalized that antipathy to regulation. And that will take us down a path that leads to oligopoly and dynasty and those are the two things which are most antithetical to commerce.”
In a freer world that BDUs and telecom companies say they might like, who then would decide or arbitrate what gets on the air, on cable, on satellite, on wireless phones, on the Internet? Such a scenario gives Roberts “anxiety”, especially when he reflects on a recent visit to his office by a representative of a large BDU he declined to name.
“A BDU that doesn’t need mentioning has been sending around one of their top engineers to broadcasting companies to explain why the Internet doesn’t need to be regulated – that it can’t be regulated. He does a whole afternoon of slide presentations and at the end of it – a major broadcaster said to me ‘I didn’t think the Internet should be regulated and this guy’s trying to pitch us that it shouldn’t be regulated. But when he finished his presentation, I think it should.’”
“In a bunch of PowerPoint slides he says ‘yep, this is everything that’s coming down our tube. But we’re going to build a bigger tube. But the problem is all this peer to peer and MP3 stuff, will fill our tube as fast as we create the wideness of that tube,’” recalls Roberts of what his BDU visitor had to say. “‘So, what we’re going to do is put constraints in on peer to peer, so that we allow this other space here to work for us and then we can charge differential prices for speed and differential prices for priority access.’”
“This is regulation,” says Roberts.
“So, it’s bullshit. And whether we actually think about it in terms of regulating the Internet or in terms of giving priority to Canadian expression and to things which we make a conscious decision about… I think there should be some forum for that discussion.”
Roberts also insists he doesn’t want the status quo when it comes to future regs. In the face of such facts as how Google’s research and development budget is $1.7 billion or so, “larger than the entire budget of the CBC,” he notes, the Canadian media and distribution landscape has to change with the times.
“I want to have more and better content in our system. I want to have independent and smaller players playing a real role in growing and diversifying and maybe becoming big themselves. I want a strong public broadcaster with real focus. I want private commercial broadcasters to make money and return that money to their shareholders. I want the best of what the world has to offer. I want that. But I want it in way that’s consistent with the civic space that we have spent a lot of time trying to shape,” says Roberts.
What’s consistent with that “civic space” we call Canada and Canadian culture would be, for example, an all-Canadian basic cable tier, “where being on basic is a function of your contribution which the Canadian broadcasting community through commissioning, licensing, original Canadian product, working with independent producers, having a fresh slate of no less than 60% Canadian content, 50% in prime time,” says Roberts. “What is so wrong with that being a criteria for being on basic? Why does that throw BDU execs into a hysteria?
“We can take the Americans out since we simulcast them anyway. Take them out, put them on their own little tier, reduce the cost of basic and make basic even more accessible to Canadian consumers and let Canadian’s choose American.”
It’s time for new thinking. Smarter regulation. Not the end of regulation, says Roberts, because what we have is already pretty good, even if much of it is overseen by family-controlled dynasties, ruled by the decisions of a few.
“I think we need to be cognizant of our history and where we come from. I think we need to be bold about the future. But we also need to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have created something very special here. It needs astute conversation, research, decision making – and it can’t be done by people who’s primary occupation is estate planning.”
