GATINEAU – Canadian content again took centre stage at Wednesday’s CRTC hearing.
Both the Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) and ACTRA pinned the blame for our broadcasting system’s issues squarely on the broadcasters for overspending on foreign content.
The CCA, which provides research and analysis on public policies affecting the arts and Canadian cultural institutions and industries, suggested, using words we’ve heard steadily for a week and a half, that the Commission consider re-regulating cable rates in order to “re-balance the system”, and to “bring back regulations so that broadcasters fulfill their Canadian programming obligations.”
“Your responsibilities are specifically to use all the tools at your disposal, including regulation, to make sure Canadians have access to home-grown quality programming as ordered by Parliament,” said CCA national director Alain Pineau. “If the market cannot deliver on that front, Parliament has mandated you to intervene. This is your historical role.”
CRTC Konrad von Finckenstein seemed somewhat taken aback by Pineau’s directive, adding it “goes without saying” that the Commission would do “everything possible to implement the Broadcasting Act,” but suggested re-regulation was “basically a return to yesterday.”
“Aren’t we trying to get a marriage between a competitive marketplace and the objectives of the Broadcasting Act?” he asked Pineau. “Rather than going the route you suggest of re-regulating cable rates and mandating output, what we have been trying to do for the last 10 years is exactly the opposite. We’re trying to make sure to regulate the competitive market so it produces that outcome by taking away as much of the regulation as possible in order to allow the system to generate as many resources as it can.”
The CCA also recommended the CRTC impose a Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) of 30% of private broadcasters’ gross revenue, with 6% spent on scripted comedy and drama. It further suggested imposing a requirement on each OTA broadcaster to schedule at least two hours each week in the 8-to-11 p.m. timeslot Sunday through Friday for drama or scripted comedy, and recommended it be calculated quarterly to ensure even distribution throughout the year.
ACTRA echoed the CCA’s suggestion of including two hours of Canadian content per week in prime time, though suggested that long-form documentary and children’s programming on conventional services are also “vulnerable genres” that have been “increasingly relegated to specialty services.”
“We can, and we must, develop a contemporary television policy that will meet the dual objectives of strengthening Canada’s domestic broadcasting industry and providing Canadian audiences with the opportunity to enjoy the best programming we can offer,” said national president Ferne Downey.
In a colourful presentation which included appearances by Canadian actors Nicholas Campbell and Wendy Crewson, ACTRA national executive director Stephen Waddell suggested broadcasters should focus on the new advertising opportunities such as on video-on-demand, local avails and targeted dynamic ad insertions to generate additional revenues.
“And they should take that money and they should spend it on putting more red on this prime time chart”, he said, gesturing to the prime time grids of CTV and Global (pictured below) which showed U.S. and foreign programming highlighted in blue (a lot), and Canadian programming in red (not so much).
APTN may have been one of the most congenial broadcasters to appear at the hearing to date, with even von Finckenstein noting his approval of the “tone” of its low key submission.
Remarking that value for signal – and the resulting new fee – seems almost a given, the network suggested that there may be a need to consider some protective or re-balancing (there’s that word again) measures for smaller players in the system through a public process.
“It is APTN’s feeling that the fee will end up being passed to consumers”, said CEO Jean Larose. “If it adds 10, 15, 20% to the cable bill, we may see an impact that the number of subscribers could drop… and we’re highly dependent on subscriber fees. That’s our main source of revenue.”
Larose also expressed concern for other small broadcasters that negotiate their subscriber fees (APTN has a fixed subscriber fee paid by all Canadian cable and satellite subscribers of $0.25 per month).
“They may find themselves in a very difficult situation if the BDUs decided to try and minimize the increase to consumers by cutting what they’re paying to various services”, he added.
Also at the hearing on Wednesday:
– The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) said that it supports the idea of fee for carriage, as long as it is linked to Canadian content and that the community sector is included. It suggested that “genuine” community channels, which it described as cable co-operatives, low power OTA community licence holders and not for profit independent community programming corporations (or really anything other than community channels run by for-profit BDUs), should also receive compensation for their local content.
– Alliance québécoise des techniciens de l’image et du son (AQTIS), an association of professional freelance artists such as designers and technicians in Quebec, said that group licencing could actually decrease the amount of Canadian content being produced if regulatory obligations can be transferred between the networks that fall under one ownership group.
The hearing continues Thursday and includes independent broadcasters Pelmorex, Stornoway, Score Media and S-Vox.
