MICHAEL SUTHERLAND-SHAW
NEWS EDITOR
Don’t be surprised if the next time you turn on your TV you see a useless two-minute spot called Local TV Matters.
Major Canadian networks are trying for the third time to coerce the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission into saddling local cable and satellite providers with an additional fee to carry previously free local programming. The carriage fee has been branded as a way to support local TV, which is supposedly struggling to stay afloat during this time of economic uncertainty.
But what isn’t advertised in the campaign is what the fee could mean for the average TV consumer. An additional fee – upwards of $10 on top of your current monthly cable bill – is what cable and satellite providers are saying they will be forced to charge consumers if networks including CTV, CBC and Global have their way.
This new threat to consumers comes shortly after the CRTC imposed the Local Programming Improvement Fund – a fee you may have noticed on your September cable bill – already guaranteeing the big networks close to $100M.
Apparently, it isn’t enough.
Networks have until Nov. 16 to sway the opinions of consumers, at which point the CRTC will discuss the possibility of a fee-for-carriage during a general meeting. But with Canwest CEO Leonard Asper recently telling the Financial Post that the company’s television business alone generates hundreds of millions of dollars in operating profits, they’ll have their work cut out for them.
If local TV is to survive, TV networks need to support the production and development of Canadian content. Instead, major networks are spending over $740M on U.S. and foreign programming and only $54M on Canadian English-language drama, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial summaries.
Networks are also promising this to be a one-time fee, but are not offering an expiry date or guaranteeing that the fee would be used for local TV.
Despite local TV cable and satellite providers now fighting back with their own campaign called Stop the TV Tax, with big networks controlling the airways, consumers must realize no matter what they call it – it’s a tax. The Local TV Matters campaign is just another easy way for the ‘suits’ to ask for a cash handout. Problem is, they’re looking to get it from us.
So, let me see if I understand this: the TV stations incur the costs and risks of shows (even if they bought it elsewhere, there still are those factors), then I can either watch free over the air or I can pay Rogers a solid wack each and every month. But if I pay Rogers, then the originating station gets nothing of that?
Compare that if you write a book, then either I buy it, or a library has to pay a copyright fee to you for the use? That’s part of an “author’s rights.”
And if a university uses part of a book in a course package, the author gets a photocopy fee. Again, that’s “author’s rights.”
But if, as at present, Rogers grabs that signal then takes my monthly fee, but passes NONE of my fee to the stations? Who has the rights? And who is raking in the profit?
Is it OK to have a business model where “I’ll take it for free (and sell it to someone else)”? Or is it wrong?