Today, the broadcasters and cable companies of Canada have gathered in the Ottawa area, Gatineau, QC (it’s like the same city). There are all out for one thing…
Ripping what’s left of Canadian TV to shreds.
For our international readers, as I know we have a lot of you, here’s what’s been happening up here. First there was a global recession as I’m sure you’re aware. Advertisers stopped buying ads and that left the industry in a crunch. Right before that, CTVglobemedia and Canwest Global Communications went on big buying sprees. CTVgm swallowed a company that was just as big as theirs called CHUM Limited and Canwest used American money from a creepy little investment bank called Goldman Sachs to buy Alliance Atlantis Communications.
CTVgm then asked the government and the broadcast regulator, the CRTC to force the country’s biggest cable companies and satellite providers to compensate them for their most valued resource, local television. Since local television stations, or conventional broadcasters use a transmitter to broadcast, they are not considered speciality channels. Specialties get somewhere between 50 cents to a dollar from each customer and conventional stations get squat.
What happened after that has become a pretty big PR war from both sides. CTVgm got Canwest, the CBC and various local stations across the country to join their campaign called “Local TV Matters” while Rogers got together with Bell Canada (they provide Satellite TV), Telus and other smaller cable providers for a campaign called “Stop the TV Tax“. Rogers, Shaw (another cable company) and Bell have said they will pass on the charge to customers without question. They don’t have to, they’re just going to. Another thing that Canadians are somewhat familiar is “simultaneous-substitution” or “sim-subbing”. CTV, Global (owned by Canwest) and other networks follow a practice of buying the Canadian rights to CSI: or The Office, basically all the major American shows. Cable and satellite providers are required to place the CTV signal overtop of the American network for the duration of the program.
Today, CTVglobemedia spoke along with cable giant Rogers Communications. It should be noted that Rogers and CTVgm are part of the same consortium that bought the Canadian rights for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. That would be fun to see, all those people working together.
Well, CTVgm execs sat there and explained that if things didn’t change they would be forced to pull their signals from cable providers and blackout the shows they paid the rights for, or shut down their conventional holdings. They explained they wanted to negotiate a fair price for each station in some bigger markets while allowing smaller markets to remain available free of charge to cable companies. Basically, CTV doesn’t want to be in the business of running conventional television stations if they can’t get paid for it. Ouch if you like and support local news.
Long story short, they had a long winded presentation. Basically, give us money for our signals.
One of the things I keep hearing from people is that “we don’t need local news” and “we don’t need this or that” and “we can get our local news from the internet”. Calgary has NO choices for local news on the internet, Calgary has dick. We have two newspapers that update sporadically and one of the newspapers is owned by Canwest (who also filed for bankruptcy protection). We have an all-news radio station called 660 News. But they’re pretty slow at getting to stuff, even if it’s happening in their vicinity. We had a big thunderstorm back in August and they never mentioned it once, even though it pretty much woke up the entire city, not one word.
Meanwhile, Rogers Communications went up there and said that local television stations were doing fine. Rogers runs it’s own network of stations, Citytv, and they don’t do a lot of local news. Basically, Rogers kept saying they’d be happy to help CTVgm and Canwest find new mediums for distribution of content and new business models, but they don’t want to give them a dime.
Long story short, the CRTC is pissed at both sides. Especially for the ad campaigns, they said they were disappointed they couldn’t figure this out on their own. I think they should get paid for their signals, it’s just good business. If you had a product, you’d want to be paid for it, right?
If you’re bored, have free time, the Canadian Parliamentary Affairs Channel, CPAC is streaming the hearings live. Parliament is currently in session so all air-time on the channel is shifted over there. CPAC.ca