OTTAWA – Robert Lantos, noted filmmaker and one of the men behind a new Canadian film channel application now before the CRTC, squared off against Pam Dinsmore, vice-president, regulatory at Rogers Communications during a session at Prime Time on the challenges of the Canadian feature film industry.
Their exchange likely provided a good preview of what people can expect when Starlight and Rogers appear before the CRTC for its 9(1)(h) hearing in April. Starlight has asked for carriage on all Canadian BDUs with a must-pay wholesale fee for consumers of $0.45 per month.
Lantos noted that Canada, in his view, is the only country in the world where its domestic broadcasters don’t support feature its own films. He spoke about countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain embracing and supporting financial domestic feature films. That doesn’t happen here in Canada.
“We stand alone in this dubious privilege of having a very highly developed and advanced broadcast system in which domestic feature films are essentially not welcome. They never have been. There’s nothing new about this but the situation is more acute now than it has ever been,” he said. He added that at one time, Canadian feature film had a much bigger presence on the dial. Prior to being purchased by Rogers, for example, Citytv aired between 20 and 25 films per year. Now they don’t.
Dinsmore countered that all of the 9(1)(h) must-carry, must-pay applications “are at odds” with where the broadcasting world is headed. People can now get their film programming in multiple ways on multiple platforms. “The fact is customers are no longer a captive audience that can be taken for granted, which is pretty much how they were treated in the old days and I’ll admit to that, but today’s customers can go wherever they want,” she argued.
With respect to Starlight, Dinsmore noted that Rogers is opposed because the service is not unique and Canadian feature films can be viewed on TMN which has exhibition and expenditure requirements as well as on Rogers’ video on demand (VOD) service. She said that Rogers, in fact, has a requirement to have all Canadian feature films in its inventory.
Dinsmore acknowledged that there is support for a service like Starlight is proposing with research revealing that to be about 30% of viewers, but that’s not enough to obtain 9(1)(h) status where everyone has to pay.
“We don’t see any valid public policy reasons that Canadian cable and satellite customers should be footing the bill for Starlight’s film studio,” she argued. “We believe that if the government, be it provincial or federal, think that there is some problem with the Canadian feature film industry, then the existing subsidies, the tax credits, Telefilm, those sorts of things, should be topped up in order to deal with that problem. But it should not be a problem fixed on the backs of Canadian cable customers.”
Lantos argued that because the broadcasters form part of the “fabric of the nation,” they have a duty to tell Canadian stories. The broadcasters and distributors can’t rely on cord cutting and churn to explain away their position of not carrying Canadian feature films. “It is not an alibi for essentially reneging on the very reason why you have been granted privileged status for decades and decades,” he said.
