New NAFTA means return of Canadian ads to Super Bowl – and QVC is coming
OTTAWA – Buried deep within the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade is a specific bit of direction to the Canadian government about a TV show.
Okay, it’s the most popular show of the year, every year, but it’s highly unusual such a comprehensive agreement on trade also requires our federal government to rescind a decision by our communications regulator which has been upheld by the courts, too. However, this new trade agreement demands the decision made by the CRTC to prevent the simultaneous substitution of Canadian ads during the Super Bowl broadcast be rescinded.
It was a decision announced by then-CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais in January of 2015 (a week before the big game that year) and took effect for the 2017 game. It was the first decision to come out of his vaunted overhaul of Canadian TV policy he dubbed Let’s Talk TV. Nearly the entire TV industry railed against the decision, from rightsholder Bell Media, to other broadcaster, the National Football League, unions, advertisers and others.
Back in 2017, the NFL even urged the U.S. government to retaliate under NAFTA while at the same time other foreign rightsholders feared this change was the thin edge of a wedge which would see simsub banned altogether eventually – a move which would decimate the value of their rights (worth annually in the hundreds of millions of dollars) here if all of a sudden Canadian broadcasters couldn’t capitalize on simsub to earn major ad revenue from their U.S. TV purchases.
So, Annex-15 in the USMCA says “Canada shall rescind Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-334 and Broadcasting Order CRTC 2016-335. With respect to simultaneous substitution of commercials during the retransmission in Canada of the program referenced in those measures, Canada may not accord the program treatment less favorable than the treatment accorded to other programs originating in the United States retransmitted in Canada.”
The same section of the agreement for some reason also says that Canada must “ensure that U.S. programming services specializing in home shopping, including modified versions of these U.S. programming services for the Canadian market, are authorized for distribution in Canada and may negotiate affiliation agreements with Canadian cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors.”
Good thing the CRTC is already looking at that very thing for QVC… Guess we know what the decision will be there.
As for the Super Bowl simsub decision, the USMCA must still be ratified by each government, then the federal government likely has to issue a directive to the CRTC to make this happen (we say likely because we don’t know as this is more or less uncharted waters). Bell Media still has an outstanding case in front of the Supreme Court on this (as well as a stalled appeal to the Regulator), but it’s not clear at this time what the timing will be.
That said, assuming the governments ratify the deal, we’d be gobsmacked if simsub isn’t back in place for the February 3rd, 2019 game, Super Bowl LIII, in Atlanta.
RIP, “Watch to Win!”
