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Consumers caught in middle of TV battle |
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Written by Lethbridge Herald
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Thursday, November 19 2009, 9:36 PM |
Can you imagine a situation where Telus would threaten to cancel Albertans’ access to SaskTel subscribers? Or where Trudeau Airport at Montreal — home of Air Canada — would cancel landing rights for WestJet?
How long would Canadians or their governments put up with such public disservice?
Yet that’s almost what it’s come to for another publicly regulated service, cable TV.
Our nation’s TV networks and the cable companies that carry their signals are slogging it out in a public battle that looks a little like showbiz wrestling.
Except these combatants are fighting for real, apparently.
Ivan Fecan, president of what’s now known as CTVglobemedia, has threatened to pull CTV signals off cable if the cable companies refuse to pay something for the signals they now receive free.
Worse, he’s warning that CTV stations in smaller markets will close down unless the nation’s cash-strapped TV networks get some revenue from the highly profitable cable services. That could certainly mean Lethbridge, in light of recent closures or near-closures in such markets as Brandon, Red Deer and Victoria.
Local TV, as a current ad campaign points out, is clearly at risk. With hundreds of channels available today — on cable or over the Internet — a small TV station faces dwindling audiences which inevitably leads to lower advertising revenues.
Yes, there would still be plenty of TV news feeds available, but they’d likely come from Detroit or Atlanta or London. Lethbridge and cities our size across the nation would “fade to black.”
For their part, Bell Canada and its regional counterparts are refusing to consider a “skinny basic” package, which would carry those local channels and just a few more in a low-cost package that could provide funds allowing local TV to survive. That might mean a $10 monthly fee hike, they say — far too much to ask Canadians to pay.
So what’s at stake here, really?
Is it really that extra $10? Given the choice, many subscribers in Lethbridge (and in cities our size across the country) would probably be ready to give up the fishing channel or home improvement TV — or any number of “narrowcasting” channels they’re now receiving for that same $10 or more.
Or is it possibly the role of public regulation in the entertainment industry, a global enterprise that’s become dominated more and more by powerful American corporations? What right does a country like Canada have to regulate any aspect of the entertainment industry, let alone what products can be sold and at what price?
Or, bottom line, could cable companies be playing a big-stakes game hoping that a neo-conservative federal government in Ottawa won’t back any controversial decisions by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. After all, it’s an arm of government that could conceivably vanish along with various Crown corporations and other public agencies.
In time, we may see where the truth lies. Maybe the big players will find they can compromise. Maybe they’ll be forced to work together, in much the same way as employers and their people when a government issues a back-to-work order.
Or maybe the whole issue will reach an impasse, and we’ll all lose. And like it or not, the federal government may need to impose a solution.
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