Star Ray TV will pursue UHF/Internet strategy despite CRTC decision

A maverick community broadcaster is turning to pirate television and the web after being denied a broadcast licence by Canada’s communications regulator. In a strongly worded release issued August 25 – the day after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) turned down his application to broadcast over-the-air in an upscale Toronto neighbourhood – Jan Pachul said he would use streaming technology to distribute his programming on the Internet. But in an interview with Canadian NEW MEDIA, the principal behind Star Ray TV said the announcement was intended to divert attention from his real plan to launch a pirate television station, in defiance of the CRTC decision. Pachul says he has already spent "a couple hundred thousand, at least" in setting up a functional TV studio. On August 24, a majority of commissioners turned down his application to operate a low-power TV station serving the Beaches area of Toronto (Decision CRTC 2000-340). Pachul denounced the commission in colourful terms on his web site soon after (www.srtv.on.ca), and said he’ll build an "irresistible" viewer base by programming on the Internet. He discounts the commission’s ability to enforce broadcasting regulations, saying he will proceed with a two-pronged Internet/UHF strategy until stopped. "We’ll just do Internet and UHF. We haven’t been talking much about UHF because, essentially it would be pirate. What we figured we’d do is just talk about Internet which would cloak our intentions of doing Internet and UHF," he told CNM on August 31. "How much power does the CRTC have to enforce anything? That’s a big question." Pachul has been trying to win the right to broadcast his station, Star Ray TV, locally using a low-power UHF transmitter since 1999, when the commission denied him an exemption to test his service. He later applied for a licence, and was subsequently denied. In his fight to win the hearts and minds of the CRTC, Pachul pit his individual supporters against heavy-hitting opponents from Canada’s largest broadcasters and cable operators. And he nearly succeeded, with two of the five commissioners siding with his request. Pachul says dissenting opinions from commissioners David McKendry and Barbara Cram give him solid ground for a federal Cabinet appeal, something he says is in the works. Channel could fill local niche In light of recent cutbacks to local CBC programming and consolidation among community cable channels, Star Ray TV’s appeal to Cabinet could find some political allies. Under its proposal, 75 per cent of the station’s programming would come from local sources, including local independent producers and residents interested in producing TV programs. At least 80 per cent of the content during the day, and 100 per cent during the peak evening viewing period of 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. would be Canadian content. Pachul will also have one more chance to argue his case before the CRTC. On September 1, the regulator announced that it would hold another proceeding to consider a licensing framework for low-power community television stations in urban areas (Public Notice 2000-127). The notice also asks for comment on whether for-profit services such as Pachul’s should be given such licences. Advertising agreements in place Star Ray TV had already hammered out deals with several advertisers, says Pachul, though moving to the web will mean less revenue. For television, the plan was to sell 30-second commercial spots for $50 in prime time and $25 in off-peak hours. For the web, he says those rates drop to $20 and $10, respectively. The best revenue scenario would see a combination of both web and over-the-air advertising. He claims Star Ray TV had already lined up $20,000-$30,000 in agreements before going to air. Annual revenues and operating costs were projected to hit $478,000 and $451,000, respectively, in the first year of operation, rising to $1,223,000 and $1,086,000 in the seventh – assuming cable carriage on an unscrambled basis throughout Toronto. In the end, it was Pachul’s request for carriage on the basic cable tier that sank his licence bid. Canada’s largest broadcasters and cablecos said adding another analog channel to their lineup was impractical at a time when most other new channels a launching on digital tiers. Pachul later dropped that request, saying he would accept placement on any unencoded high cable channel. The CRTC still wasn’t convinced, primarily because existing regulations require cablecos to carry all over-the-air signals. "Under the regulations, the proposed station would receive carriage in an area that extends far beyond the sector of Toronto that the applicant proposed to serve," the commission writes in its decision. "Intervenors indicated that, not only would the station reach close to a million households in Toronto, it would also, due to the interconnection of cable systems, be received in areas as far removed from The Beaches area as Mississauga and Brampton, a distance, in the latter case, of more than 35 kilometres." Whatever the commission’s stated reasons, Pachul is convinced the broadcasters and cablecos, including the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, the Canadian Cable Television Association, CHUM Television, CTV Inc and Rogers Cable Systems Inc, opposed his application because they fear more competition. "I think they don’t particularly like competition and they thought that we would give, particularly CITY-TV, some pretty strong competition. They might actually have to increase their production values to compete… "We did a lot of sniffing, and we found out that there was pretty much systemic discrimination to keep guys like me out," he adds. "We already knew that three years ago. But we thought that, well, maybe there is a possibility because our stuff is right in line with the Broadcasting Act, the objectives of it. We thought we’d get a fair shot." Whether he follows through with a pirate station or not, testing has already begun on webcasting the signal using the Microsoft media server. "We’ve actually got that working and it works like a million bucks. The biggest problem is the pipe. Our actual server could handle 10,000 concurrent connections. We just have an ADSL running into it which really isn’t enough to do much. We’re making some deals with Internet service providers to get into server co-location and using a metered service."

Star Ray TV will pursue UHF/Internet strategy despite CRTC decision

News | 09/06/2000 4:00 am EDT

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