GATINEAU – Bell Canada says it has continued to develop an interesting way for the conventional broadcast industry to go digital, but it is bumping up against stiff opposition by those broadcasters to its so-called (and perhaps mis-named) FreeSat proposal.
In a nutshell, Bell is offering broadcasters the ability to distribute their local signals digitally, via satellite, covering their entire traditional over-the-air contours, without upgrading a single transmitter. And beyond paying about $450 for the required dish, set top box and installation, FreeSat would not cost the tens of thousands of OTA-only consumers a monthly subscription fee to Bell TV, according to executives who presented the idea to the CRTC Wednesday in Gatineau. (As we have reported in the past, this isn’t the first time the idea has been explained to the Comission.)
Bell says it’s a solution for conventional station signals outside of major urban centres where transmitters and studios are being upgraded – or already have been. Broadcasters have repeatedly complained that upgrading to digital OTA in areas beyond the big cities is not economically feasible and have been hoping for something of a hybrid model to be approved so that new digital transmitters won’t have to be upgraded to cover smaller communities.
“Consumers would replace their traditional antenna with a compatible satellite dish and digital receiver, which Bell TV would authorize to receive FreeSat’s OTA signals free of charge,” explained Bell Canada’s senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs Mirko Bibic as he talked up the option Wednesday morning during the CRTC’s hearing into private conventional TV station license renewals “The result would be an extremely efficient method of solving the broadcasters’ digital transition issue, while saving them significant costs. Bell TV could also make the FreeSat signals available to other BDUs provided that they follow the FreeSat model.”
The idea is to offer what Bell estimates are 80,000 Canadian households who consume television over-the-air only a way to continue to receive a handful of local and regional conventional signals – at least five – once those stations make the transition to digital.
However, Bell isn’t offering to deliver high definition and it certainly won’t be free for the broadcasters who, if they want to take part, will have to pay for the terrestrial backhaul of their signal to Bell’s broadcast centre in Don Mills. Bell would foot the spectrum costs. There’s also no word on how those who can’t afford the $450 would be able to opt in, although Bibic is open to hearing from the federal government on that, he told Cartt.ca.
The only broadcaster who said anything about the FreeSat idea – which is more than an idea and nearly ready, technically, says Bell (using Nimiq 4 and an MPEG-4 box) – was the CBC’s head of regulatory Steven Guiton. He insisted FreeSat “should not have any cost to conventional broadcasters,” on Wednesday morning.
We attempted to get a word from private broadcasters on the proposal but they declined to comment on the record about something they haven’t yet studied. But suffice to say, they’re a little suspicious of Bell’s motives and don’t like the fact it’s a standard definition and not an HD solution. They see it as Bell’s way out of paying for distant signals by trading this service instead of forking over cash for their carriage of numerous distant broadcast signals – something the CRTC has said broadcasters can now start charging BDUs for.
In fact, Bibic said that part of the thrust behind doing this was as an innovative way of negotiating against distant signal payments. “You have basically made a counter-proposal,” offered CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein in asking about it.
“You’ve got it,” said Bibic.
And, part of the money to pay for this system would actually come out of the company’s contributions to the new Local Programming Improvement Fund, according to Bell’s presentation.
“Bell TV would credit the costs of customer care, warranty, maintenance of the security system, headend equipment, annual software and start-up activities against our contribution to the LPIF. We would also credit annually $1 million of bandwidth costs against our LPIF contribution, a sum well short of the total cost of bandwidth required to deliver FreeSat,” said Bibic, “and the FreeSat model would be offered to OTA broadcasters at no profit to Bell TV, that is, on a cost recovery basis only.
“FreeSat offers significant public interest benefits for the broadcasting system and consumers,” he added. “It would allow all Canadians to gain access to local signals and national networks without paying a subscription fee. Broadcasters would realize significant savings by not having to construct new digital infrastructure. This is a public policy win for all concerned. Bell TV is willing to work constructively with the OTA broadcasters and the Commission to the timely implementation of a FreeSat solution by the third quarter of 2010, one year ahead of the digital switchover.”
The other portion of Bell’s presentation shows that broadcasters aren’t quite in for the new levels of compensation they might have been hoping for from Bell TV from those distant signals because the DTH company wants to dramatically cut the number of broadcast stations it carries. Then again, those same broadcasters say that distant signals erode their local viewership and revenue, so Bell is just doing what has been asked.
The company presented a new potential plan for its conventional TV carriage which would see 27 conventional broadcast stations dropped from the channel lineup of subscribers in the Ottawa region, for example, with similar adjustments across the country.
“That meets the requests that the broadcasters have been making,” noted CRTC vice-chair broadcasting Michel Arpin.
While it does go down the road, broadcasters would prefer to have their local stations only delivered into their local markets. However, Bell can’t provide that the way it is done in the States (If you’re a Dish Network customer in Miami, for example, you only get the Miami local OTAs). It just doesn’t have the scale to build out that kind of system.
“We have capacity issues that don’t allow us to do (local into local),” added Bibic. With its new proposed distant signal regime, Bell is looking to “reduce the damage and compensate via existing arrangements plus providing FreeSat.”
