OTTAWA – After Canada’s major English-language performers’ union and a community TV association testified before the Heritage Standing Committee about Canadian TV content rules, a specialty broadcaster raised concerns about getting carriage for the content once it’s made.
Wednesday’s testimony will help form part of the committee’s study on the evolution of the television industry in Canada and its impact on local communities, which launched March 25 and will conclude next week with a return visit by CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein.
Actors union ACTRA led off by reiterating many of the points it raised during its appearance on Friday before the CRTC’s hearing considering conventional TV licence renewal applications. While union officials say they are concerned by news of layoffs and programming cuts – and by threats of stations closures even if the CRTC grants concessions on OTA licence obligations, ACTRA’s national president Richard Hardacre argued the private broadcasters are not in dire straits. He concedes their most recent profit margins are low, but says they’re still in a profit position.
“We urged the (CRTC), as we urge you,” he told the committee, “not to buy into the panicked cries and threats from private broadcasters. It is our belief that conventional television is not in crisis. It is facing the same challenges as any industry in transition and confronting a global recession.”
He added that the complaints about falling profits fail to acknowledge what he sees as poor business decisions made in the past few years. “Unfortunately, here and at the CRTC, private broadcasters have pointed the finger at everyone but themselves. At the CRTC and its regulations. The Internet. The recession. The cost of U.S. programming. The cost of Canadian programming. Digital transmission. Cable conglomerates. Independent producers. And even you, our government.
“What about their gross overspending on U.S. programming?” Hardacre asked. “They bid up the price of U.S. programs, sometimes buying a series not because they wanted to air it but to stop their competitor from getting it.”
Hardacre said the OTAs spent recklessly during years of “record-breaking profits”, doling out 61% more on foreign programming than on Canadian – or “$740 million versus $453 million” – and added billions in debt acquiring additional media properties, so that when the advertising market “softened”, they had no way to “ride out the temporary downturn.”
In questioning, Hardacre and actor Wendy Crewson re-stated their objections to the idea that the CRTC should reduce or eliminate OTAs’ obligations to produce priority Canadian programming, especially drama, and displayed a chart showing a sea of blue squares, representing foreign programming scheduled during prime-time, compared to a small number of red squares – which they said represent only two hours of Canadian scripted drama currently airing in primetime, from Canwest and CTV.
However, the group is not opposed to fee-for-carriage, Crewson said, so long as the money flows to production of Canadian priority programming, especially drama.
And Hardacre repeated the argument made by unions and guilds before the CRTC earlier – namely, that because Cancon is repeated so many times, across OTA, specialty and other platforms, it can turn a profit, contrary to the accounting presented to the committee and the CRTC by the broadcasters.
Responding to a question from MP Dean Del Mastro, Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage, as to what Canadians lose by not having Canadian stories on in prime time, Crewson got fired up. “Canadian drama is the lynchpin of our popular culture…It tells our stories to us and to our children, stories that form who we are… It diminishes us to not have our stories on in prime time… Unless this turns around, we’ll become a branch plant of American culture.”
The presentation by Catherine Edwards of CACTUS, the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Services, briefly traced what its members see as a long process of cuts to community-run programming and a trend by cable companies to put their staff, rather than community volunteers, in charge of content production for many of these channels across Canada.
She said the formerly successful “community access model” suffered one major blow when many of the funds provided by cable for community programming were redirected to the Canadian Television Fund. Meanwhile, although she argued that this “third tier” production model – a counterpoint to private and public TV – can produce much more local content than the private sector, the model has been “steadily undermined.”
Citing recommendations in the Lincoln Report and notes in CRTC decisions, Edwards called on the committee to restore the tens of millions she says is spent by cable companies on their own, more “professionally” produced programming, to community channels reflecting community access principles.
The third presenter, Martha Fusca, president of Stornoway Communications, told the committee it should consider trying to restore some balance between big BDUs and the large and small broadcasters, between programmers and independent producers and between producers and creative contributors. Stornoway owns and operates three digi-nets, category one ichannel and cat twos bpm:tv and The Pet Network.
Fusca went on to allude to “barriers” to the success of independent broadcasters such as Stornoway and asked that BDUs be prohibited from levying certain “carriage fees”, which she said are “abusive” and “exorbitant”.
During the Q&A, when NDP Heritage Critic Charlie Angus asked her to elaborate on what she meant by carriage fees, she said that one BDU has billed Stornoway thousands of dollars in "extra charges" to carry ichannel, a digital must-carry. Fusca added that she feared if she didn’t pay, the BDU in question might "take down" her cat two channels.
