OTTAWA – Now that the CRTC has made the big decisions as part of its Let’s Talk TV process, it’s up to the major broadcasters to decide how they want to game the system to their advantage. And Bell Media has already taken the first steps.
On Monday, the CRTC posted applications from Bell to convert Bravo!,The Comedy Network, Discovery Channel, E!, MTV (Canada), M3, Much and Space from Category A services to Category B. Before the Let’s Talk TV process, this would have been a dramatic and unlikely change. But now it’s just accelerating a process that the Commission would have done anyway when Bell’s licences come up for renewal on August 31, 2017.
“The over two years until licence renewal represents a lengthy period of time given there is such rapid change occurring in how audiences consume content, and competition for programming content from domestic and international sources has also grown significantly in recent years,” writes Bell in its application. “The inability of certain discretionary services to manage the transition to a more competitive licensing and carriage environment could set them back significantly and the damage could be permanent.”
The change in category comes with advantages and disadvantages. The main benefit is a reduction in Canadian content exhibition quotas. The services are currently required to devote between 50 and 68 per cent of their broadcast day, and between 40 and 71 per cent of their evenings, to Canadian programs (the amounts vary depending on the service.) As Category B services, both would drop to 35 per cent.
The main disadvantage is that the services would lose genre protection and access rights, meaning they would no longer be protected from direct competition, (something that, in most cases, has lost all meaning), and TV service providers would no longer be obligated to distribute them. Both of these advantages are being eliminated by the Commission, which effectively removes any distinction between the categories.
The services will remain part of Bell Media’s designated group, and their Canadian programming expenditure requirements won’t change, meaning Canadian programming will still get the same amount of funding overall. But it will probably mean fewer repeats of Just for Laughs archives, How It’s Made and other Canadian programs that can fill time on the cheap.
Bell notes that even with these changes, it will comply with broadcasting distribution rules requiring Bell TV to carry three unrelated Category B services for every Bell-owned service it has.
Meanwhile, Bell has filed 33 applications for licence amendments to its specialty channels to eliminate various conditions of licence related to their natures of service. The conditions of licence generally impose limits on how much drama, music and animated programming they can air to avoid competing directly with Category A services. Bell’s proposals leave only a 10 per cent limit on live sports broadcasts, since mainstream sports services are still being treated differently under the new policy. (The CRTC has asked for measures to prevent RDS Info and ESPN Classic from becoming de facto sports services since their applications don’t propose such a limit.)
Comments on Bell’s category conversion applications are being accepted until August 19, 2015.
