Imagine it's 7:58 PM in Toronto on a Tuesday. An American Idol fan turns on their TV set to Fox as their favorite program is about to start. But at exactly 8:00 PM, a look of disappointment suddenly appears on the viewer's face as the Fox TV feed from Buffalo is suddenly lost.
In its place is a message which will remain on the screen for the next hour. The message states that regularly scheduled programming is subject to a local blackout due to an ongoing dispute between Rogers Cable and CTV over the rate of fair compensation for CTV programming. Sound far-fetched? Yet this is what CTV and Global want the power to do according to an article published in The Calgary Herald.
An American Solution for Saving Canadian TV
The October 28th article reads, "broadcasters say they should have the right, as a negotiating ploy, to pull their signals from cable along with the rights to shows they own...without cable simply importing the show from an American broadcaster."
The Calgary Herald is owned by CanWest/Global and not surprisingly the article has a bias towards local television. But since the main argument of the article revolves around how local stations get compensated for their American TV shows, it inadvertently proves what many have suspected all along. The debate may be more about money than it is about local television.
Cable was Forced to Drop NBC in Austin, Texas
The system proposed in The Calgary Herald is known as negotiation for value and is actually based on FCC rules which exist already in the United States, known as retransmission consent. Canada's Networks say it works well but a look at a recent dispute between Time Warner Cable and LIN TV Corporation begs to differ. As the result of an inability for the two sides to reach an agreement, LIN pulled 17 of its stations, including the NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas, off of Time Warner Cable on October 3rd, 2008.
All of a sudden, people in Austin, who were used to having NBC on basic cable for as long as cable existed, found themselves NBC deprived. The dispute eventually came to an end on October 29th, 2008 but in the meantime, many subscribers were left scrambling to dig out their old bunny ears from the closet, while others lost patience with cable and switched to satellite providers such as Dish Network.
Well now that Canadian networks want to have this negotiation for value system, this type of dispute could eventually happen in Canada as well. But unlike in Austin, Canadian providers could also face the added complication of having to delete not only a local network station but its simulcasts as well.
The Save Local TV vs The Stop The TV Tax Bias
Both sides of the Save The Local Canadian TV debate have taken an American-Style attack ad approach normally reserved for political campaigns. Both sides of the debate have made exaggerated claims about the other side's motives, profits, and how much the other is spending on American television.
Case in point, the LocalTVMatters.ca campaign, run by CTV, Global, CBC, CHEK-TV, V and NTV, accuses the cable and satellite providers of spending $300 millions a year for American networks like CNN. It's enough to make you angry as hell, unless you happen to remember that the people who paid for the anti-American spots are the same people who are responsible for bringing Access Hollywood and TMZ to Canadians.
In response, the Stop The TV Tax ad campaign, run by Bell TV, Cogeco, Rogers, Eastlink and Telus, are running a bias anti-American campaign of their own, accusing local stations of running an average of only 2.5 hours of local news par day versus 10 hours of American programming. Interesting point, but that's still 2.5 more hours of local news than what most specialty cable networks run.
It's in the hands of the CRTC
So both sides in this debate are guilty of exaggeration and as of November 16th, it'll be up to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to sort through the mess. Hearings will take place examining if and how broadcast networks should get more compensation from the cable and satellite companies. Note that they already pay 1.5% for something called the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF).
Another option that the broadcasters are looking at is something called a fee for carriage, which is similar to negotiation for value, except that rather than penalize viewers with blackouts, the CRTC would step in and act as an arbitrator to decide what the appropriate fee should be.
So in the end, It may also be that the broadcasters request to pull their programming is in itself a negotiating ploy, making the concept of a straight forward TV tax seem like not such a bad idea after all. But in the meantime, watching TV by way of bunny ears or over the internet for free seems more and more like a good idea.
Other Sources:
Austin Business Journal, "LIN, Time Warner cut new deal; KXAN back on the air", October 29, 2008
CNW, "CBC/Radio-Canada proposes solution to affordability of cable and satellite television services", November 3rd, 2009
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