Regulation, Redefined more like Regulatory Wish Lists

Billed as a discussion on the future of broadcast regulation, the Tuesday morning plenary session at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' convention more closely resembled a series of opening remarks from a CRTC hearing as broadcasters and BDUs offered up their regulatory desires. But with the help of some levity from Asian Television Network president and CEO Shan Chandrasekar and a question from moderator Richard French that likely took him back to his days as a commissioner, the panel entertained the full ballroom of delegates. Speaking to the two BDU representatives on the panel, French, the former CRTC vice-chair of telecommunications and now an adjunct research professor at the University of Ottawa's graduate school of public and international affairs, asked if granted their request for lighter regulation, "what would the basic tier include and what would the price be?" Chris Frank, Bell ExpressVu's VP of programming, and Phil Lind, vice-chair of Rogers Communications Inc., each waited for the other to reply before Frank joked that if he remained silent long enough he wouldn't have to answer, and Lind took up the torch just high enough to offer, "We would have less services and the price would be lower." And as if the panel didn't resemble a commission hearing enough, Lind also took a chance to reaffirm the BDUs hard-line stance against the introduction of carriage fees for local conventional television stations, saying, as his colleague Real Merson said a day earlier, that Canadians will react negatively to being asked to now pay for channels they have been getting for free for decades. CanWest MediaWorks VP of regulatory affairs Charlotte Bell countered that many Canadians think they already pay for conventional channels through their cable and DTH bills. What remains to be seen, however, is if this also means consumers would gladly pay an additional $10 a month on their cable bill. Although Bell made no mistake what CanWest's number one regulatory wish is - she loosely joked that the company's three priorities are: fee; for; carriage - she also added the broadcaster wants the commission to examine technical means to mitigate the impact of time-shifting, and feels its time to deal with the relationship between BDUs and content providers. Interestingly enough, among Frank's many regulatory priorities - increased flexibility, eliminate genre protection for Canadian programming, question the need for must-carry status - he included private dispute resolution, which would seem to be in line with creating a more amiable relationship between broadcasters and BDUs. And while Pierre Dion, president and CEO of Groupe TVA inc., eventually advocated for fee for carriage as well, he certainly didn't list it right away. Rather, Dion said with consumer control increasing, broadcasters are left to either take a defensive stance or a proactive approach. "We don't think the defensive approach will work in the long run because consumers will get what they want eventually," he said. "I don't care if the TVA morning show is seen on a TV or cell phone or computer screen. We need to change the model internally and change the culture of the company." Likely needing no segue to get his message across, ATN's Chandrasekar took Dion's notion of being proactive and ran with it, telling his now-familiar story of how along its rise to becoming a 14-channel specialty broadcaster ATN was met at almost every turn with an unfavourable policy implementation. "Each step of the way we've been proactive in meeting the commission's regulations," said Chandrasekar. "We didn't fight them. To be involved in broadcasting is a privilege, not a right. Without the CRTC there wouldn't be a broadcasting system. We need these regulations." And as most broadcasters and BDUs want us to believe unregulated new media will destroy the regulated system any day now, Chandrasekar gave a little more perspective to the immediacy of the situation. "We're not scared about JumpTV," he said. "Their number of channels is higher than their number of subscribers." In fact, one pressing issue the ATN president addressed has actually been around for a decade: illegal satellites. Chandrasekar called DTH piracy the 5th largest BDU in Canada, which echoed the earlier statements of John Hayes, Corus Entertainment Inc.'s president of radio, who said there are now 1.4 million households using a grey market satellites.If the session was to help shed light on what the future of regulation should look like, Hayes offered one ideal that everyone in the industry should be able to get behind. He said: "Any regulation that causes Canadians to used Canadian media less is absolutely detrimental."

Regulation, Redefined more like Regulatory Wish Lists

Broadcast | November 7, 2007

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