This is not another new policy review
GATINEAU – Canada’s major broadcasters say that a time when consumers have more TV viewing choices resulting from new flexible channel packaging rules and the continued inroads from exempt (often foreign) platforms, the CRTC must resist adding to the regulatory restrictions already imposed on their programming services.
The comments come as the Commission wraps up the written phase for this fall’s licence renewal hearing for the country’s major English- and French-language broadcasting groups.
Many interveners have called for more stringent regulation of the large broadcasters. They relate to a number of different issues, including Canadian Programming Expenditures (CPE), Programs of National Interest (PNI), exhibition requirements, multiplatform rights and others.
For Bell Media, all of these matters have been settled in a plethora of previous proceedings and 12 decisions in the last two years. The company notes this is a licence renewal hearing, not a new policy proceeding. “Re-visiting previously established regulatory policies in the context of a licence renewal process would be highly prejudicial to Bell Media and the other licensees with renewal applications before the Commission,” writes Bell in its August 25 reply comments.
Corus Entertainment agrees. At a time when the industry should be looking forward to competing for customers in a more flexible broadcast world, interveners are bent on looking to the past for solutions, the company argues. Interveners want “to retrench and attempt to retain perceived regulatory gains made in the past. These interveners believe that regulatory prohibitions will structure the broadcasting environment in a way which will best suit their business cases. Alternatively, many of these proposals will simply entirely shift the risks to licensees insulating other industry stakeholders from the shifting environments of the digital economy.”
The new TV regulatory framework, the company adds, was designed to respond to innovative ways in which programming will be delivered over the next licence term, while recognizing the value of current methods of TV content distribution. “Essentially the new Create policy was devised to provide maximum flexibility in how content is created, distributed and watched on all platforms. It also aims to ensure that Canadians have a full range of choice and an array of compelling and diverse Canadian programs,” Corus continued.
The CRTC has moved in recent years to a more standardized approach of regulating the major broadcasters. Rather than having rules tied to specific services, the Commission has given added flexibility to broadcasters in recognition of their individual circumstances and to deal changes in the landscape.
Bell says this standardized way of regulating is the right approach as “linear, regulated television increasingly competes with unregulated over-the-top (OTT) services, creating a need for less regulation, more flexibility and standardized regulatory requirements among competitors operating the same classes of undertakings.”
Interveners had also suggested that Bell was trying to shirk its regulatory obligations by calling for the removal of certain conditions of licence (COLs) related to its acquisition of Astral Media. The company says this is simply wrong, and it only wants to eliminate duplication with the Wholesale Code.
In its reply, Bell also takes Telus to task for arguing the removal of COL #8 would allow Bell to not make mutliplatform programming rights available to non-related BDUs and therefore thwart BDUs from offering a single, multi-device subscription. This isn’t true, the company says. Besides, it adds, there aren’t any Commission rules requiring a program supplier to provide its programming to a BDU. And there isn’t a policy to support the development of a one subscription, multiple device model.
INTERVENERS ALSO QUESTIONED the need for Rogers Media to have a multiplexed OTA OMNI service and a discretionary OMNI Regional service. The company counters that after evaluating three possible options to improve the financial situation of the OMNI stations, it settled on a mandatory carriage discretionary service approach as being the least costly while also ensuring OMNI would meet its regulatory obligations.
This “is hardly a band-aid solution,” the company argues, but rather one that would “ensure that all Canadians who speak a third language will continue to be able to access an ethnic service that is predominantly Canadian and that offers news and information programming that reflects Canadian society, culture and political values at a cost that is reasonable and affordable.”
The comment phase also saw some interveners argue that Rogers would be running around the Supreme Court of Canada ruling against fee for carriage. This is not the case, says the company, noting the decision prohibited licensed OTA stations from charging a fee for carriage by a BDU not a licensed or exempt discretionary service.
The opening of the floodgates argument pushed by interveners also won’t happen, says Rogers, adding this didn’t take place in the TVA Group case back in the late 1990s. Nor did it happen when BDUs were ordered to carry APTN.
The reason the floodgates won’t open after approving OMNI Regional as a discretionary service is because there is only operator of such a service, Rogers argues. Secondly, the Commission has the authority to examine every 9(1)(h) application individually and no provisions exist in the Broadcasting Act requiring the commission to approve other similar applications.
The hearing is scheduled to begin on November 22 and run until December 2, 2106.
