Dalfen calls for quicker transition to digital, high definition TV

In a speech April 12 to during a luncheon of the Broadcast Executives Society and the Ontario Association of Broadcasters, CRTC chair Charles Dalfen said that the regulator would undergo a review of its commercial radio policy after it releases its decision on subscription radio, probably before the end of this quarter. He also spoke about the need to speed up the transition to high-definition (HD). The mention of advanced technology takes me to another item on our upcoming agenda. I’m referring to subscription radio, a subject which I’m sure is also on many of your minds. We held public hearings late last year, as you know. We heard from representatives of the broadcasting industry, the performing and recording industries, and from potential subscribers to subscription radio. We gathered a wide range of views about how subscription radio should be rolled out in Canada. Now we are weighing the arguments, and we are moving toward a decision, which I expect we will issue before the end of this quarter. As always, our goal here is to serve the public interest by striking the best possible balance among the objectives of the Broadcasting Act. When we have completed our work on subscription radio, we plan to turn our attention to the broad review of our Commercial Radio Policy. The review will cover, as you might expect, the question of Canadian content requirements, as well as of other means by which licensees can contribute to the development of Canadian talent. We will also evaluate the extent to which radio broadcasters have fulfilled commitments made at the time of the last policy review to promote and support the Canadian music industry, especially new and emerging Canadian talent. ...Technological change is something that preoccupies us not only in radio, but also in television. Without doubt, there is a growing technological gap between television services in Canada and the US. South of our border, we have seen the rapid and widespread introduction of digital and high-definition (HD) television, as well as HD programming in prime time. ..Here at home, we have just 15 licensed over-the-air digital stations and 5 HD pay and specialty services. And the actual amount of HD programming on these services is very limited. As you know, we have taken a market-based approach to the digital transition in television. Our view was that the transition to HD should not be impeded by unnecessary regulation. So far, however, the market-based approach has shown only mixed results. There is progress on the demand side – Canadians are buying HD-ready television sets. But the response on the supply side has been slow. There is simply too little home-grown HD product for Canadians to watch. As I have said before, I want to strongly encourage the industry to accelerate the transition to digital and to HD, so that Canadian broadcasters will continue to be strong competitors for television viewers. In order to help facilitate an orderly and timely transition to HD, we issued last summer, as you know, a call for comments on a proposed framework for the licensing and distribution of HD pay and specialty services. Our goal, during the transition period, is to provide broadcasters, distributors and producers with a degree of guidance and regulatory certainty. As well, we want to encourage the production, broadcast and distribution of high-quality Canadian programs. The deadline for comments (is this week), and we hope to finalize the framework as soon as possible. In a closely related proceeding, we are working on the development of a framework for the migration of analog pay and specialty programming to digital distribution. The objective is to encourage the rollout of digital distribution technology in a way that maximizes its contribution to the objectives of the Broadcasting Act. In particular, digital technology will support more efficient delivery of programming services, provide increased flexibility for distributors, ease the development of new services and revenue sources for programmers and distributors, and expand the choice of services for subscribers. This is an obvious win-win, and the more smoothly and speedily the transition occurs, the better for all concerned.

Dalfen calls for quicker transition to digital, high definition TV

Broadcast | April 22, 2005

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