Community TV & The CRTC

I'LL BE POPPING up in a number of CBC Morning shows this morning, talking about the CRTC hearings on Community Television & the failure of the cable companies' to provide it over the last twenty years.


To anybody following the saga of the CRTC & its abrogation of responsibility to Canadian citizens, this could seem like one more sordid story of the fixed game & how the regulator favors corporate interests over its watchdog role for Canadians, but even by those lax standards, this story's a bit sordid.


I'll be updating this story throughout the morning in between short hits on the morning shows in Gander, Sudbury, Corner Brook, Yellowknife, Victoria, Calgary, Whitehorse and Vancouver.


* * *


So the story goes like this: once upon a time, Canada helped pioneer the whole idea of "community access tv."  Canadians took to cable tv early, as a way to get those precious U.S. stations in crystal-clear.  This made Canadians very early adopters in the world of cable-delivered television. Even today, the number of homes that subscribe to Cable or satellite is higher, by percentage, than it is in, say, the United States.


As part of the deal to defray the cost-intensive investment of putting in the cable lines in communities across Canada, cable co's were given strong regional monopolies.  In exchange, they were heavily regulated under the Broadcast Act -- rates and conditions of license were set.


One of the most notable of these conditions of license was the rule establishing Community Access TV.  Every cable company with a subscriber base of greater than 20 000 customers was required to pay a levy of 2% of gross revenues, that would go into the maintenance & production of local cable stations. Those local cable stations were to broadcast 30% of programs of local interest, generated by the community. In this way, community tv was supposed to be the third tier of broadcasting in our country -- after public (The CBC, local educational stations like TVO, etc.) and private (CTV, Global.)


A generation of people working in TV got their first start at this community level, receiving their first training as camerapeople, sound people, editors, producers or on air hosts.  I did a movie review show on a suburban Ontario local station when I was in university, and many of the people I met at Ryerson University first cut their teeth on their local community stations.


The mythology of the cable channel went far beyond that.  Viewers in Ottawa first got exposed to shock comic Tom Green through his hilarious and odd local show -- which predated the shock comic's 90's program on MTV.   And anyone familiar with Mike Myers' Wayne Campbell "Wayne's World" SNL sketches & eventual movies know that character was the host of his own Cable show, and the character was based on Myers' own experiences volunteering at his local Scarborough Cable 10 channel.


Where things started to change was 1997. That's when cable was deregulated in this country. Suddenly, the restrictions about cable rates were taken off the local cableco's, and ownership provisions were relaxed.  This triggered a consolidation spree in the industry.   Where there were once dozens of cable companies across the country, slowly bigger players like Shaw, Rogers, and Cogeco gobbled them all up.   This led to a consolidation at the community station level, too.


It might not have been so easy to see in a big city like Toronto, (though what was once Etobicoke Cable 10, Scarborough, North York 10, etc. became one-city wide "community station")  in smaller communities, the "local" programming once made by neighbours started to fade in favour of programs made hundreds of km's away. The local flavour was lost.


Around the same time, the cable companies started to shift their focus away from even trying to fulfill that 30% "access" mandate, and programs on the community channels became more "professional", produced by in house staff.


Incredibly, not once in that entire time did the overseer, the CRTC, ask to review or see any of the cable company's records to make sure they were fulfilling their obligations to Canadians.  So what started as small abuses grew and grew and grew.  When the CRTC did limited reviews in 2002, and 2005 of selected channels, they found so many violations in terms of missing logs, no backups, etc, that a picture of the system was impossible to construct.


What did become clear, through the spin and haze of the community cable debacle, was that the spirit of the enterprise had become entirely compromised. In many cases, cable companies were counting as "access programming," "programs" that were nothing more than barker reels and shills for cable services.   MTV promos were counted as "community programming," and audits revealed that the cable companies ran far more commercials & promos for themselves than they were allowed to by law in any local programs they did run.


In essence, a winfall of over $100 million (2008 numbers) a year that was supposed to provide Canadians' access to the airwaves was being used by the cable co's to underwrite their businesses.  We're talking about $680 million since 2002.




Now think about the fight over "Local TV" and the "TV Tax."  Puts a different spin on it, doesn't it?

The CRTC Wades In

WHERE YOU END UP depends on where you start.

That's the most important thing to remember as you parse the decisions released yesterday by the CRTC.  The decision on Consumer impact is a hoot too.  We're going to have a lot of angry Canadians, quietly seething in their quiet, seething Canadian way.

Time to buy the entire nation a mouth guard, methinks.

The brief they had to consider was simply massive -- revisit the entire framework of the Canadian broadcast system & figure out how the business needs of the various players should be balanced. 

Ignore people who talk about "market-based" this or that, because that's a canard.  Like a lot of industries in Canada, broadcasting has always been very managed and protected.  There's always been a thumb on the scale in one way or another.  The problem is that the last time the CRTC changed the weight of the thumb, the domestic TV industry kind of died. Whoops.

A lot of other things have happened in the 11 years since the CRTC shuffled the deck.  The rise of the Internet offered a whole new way to distribute programming -- much (not all) of it illegally.  Cable's power rose, as did the number of specialty channels, who profited from two revenue streams -- traditional advertising and subscriber fees -- carved out dimes & nickels on your cable bill tha flow back to the companies that own them.

Broadcasting used to be a great gig in this country -- a "license to print money," they called it.  That's largely because of the CRTC.  The CRTC had rules in place that allowed Canadian networks to substitute American signals with their own so long as they showed the same program at the same time. This simultaneous substitution -- "simsub" -- was very profitable, and also locked Canadian private networks into the same kind of mindset you see from a zombie computer during a phishing attack; freed from the need to think or create, they became addicted to going south twice a year, buying whatever U.S. product they could, and showing it at the same time.

The problem is that while all this was going on there were warning shots on the horizon that presaged big changes coming.  The U.S. networks they bought all their product from started to see that their future as middlemen was tenuous -- and so they got more into owning and developing the product that they showed.  Time was, 70 or 80 percent of the shows you saw on U.S. Tv came from independent studios like Warner Brothers.  Now that's down to about 20-25%.   Add in the internet, streaming, cable channels' growing audience base, and the shrinking relevance of the advertising model, and there were all sorts of canaries in the coal mine.

But for the most part, the Canadian private nets were blissfully unaware of this. They'd outbid each other for shows -- sometimes even paying to put a show on the shelf so that a rival wouldn't get it.

So the economic tsunami that hit in 2008 hit the Canadian networks way worse than their U.S. counterparts.  They'd gotten used to being easy middlemen. They didn't bother to care about having anything new and different of their own -- viewing homegrown programming as a "tax" and an afterthought.

Over the same period, Cable became far more profitable and powerful. First there were all those cell phones that they were overcharging you for. Then there's the internet pipe that threatens that Broadcast model, and all the VOD and sweet sweet Porn money that comes with it...

Twice before, hearings at the CRTC were consumed by the fight between Cablers (called BDU's -- broadcast distribution units) and Networks. Networks wanted fees for their signals like specialty channels get.  Cable said 'hell no.'   The same fight happened in the USA by the way, but there the channels had a much stronger argument -- local news was a strong profit centre at most stations, and each of the networks had a passel of shows that millions of people like to watch.   In Canada, the nets had to invent the whole "Save Local TV" thing to paper over the fact that a) they'd pretty much dismantled anything local over the last two decades and b) they didn't really have much to offer beyond the same U.S. shows that Canadians got from the U.S. network feeds already on their cable dials.   By not diversifying, or reading the signs that a model was going away, these nets were fast becoming the first victim of that model.

At the same time, Cable co's like Rogers & Shaw got nice and fat, first by having protected monopolies in certain regions, and then by being protected from foreign ownership.

But this fight -- "give us fees"  vs. "stick it" -- never got anywhere. Both industries acted like Children and refused to come to a deal.

That's past as prologue.

Back to where you end up depending on where you start --


Employees at CTV got a terse email last week informing them that the "decision on Value For Signal was expected Monday."  This is pretty funny, in a gallows way, because it shows that although the decision was much wider in scope than that, and encompassed much more -- that's the only thing that they cared about.  When the decision came down -- essentially, the CRTC punted on this point, referring it to the Federal Court and telling the two sides to negotiate a fee, which has really worked well so far -- most of the broadcasters reported the news like their little part of it was the only thing that happened that day.    If you're actually, really worried about local TV, and continued vibrant reportage -- that should worry you a bit.  One of the most disturbing things through this whole period has been watching how the Broadcasters had no compunction blurring advocacy and editorial.  The idea of "journalistic independence" does not apply.  It's the biggest growing trend in Canadian broadcasting -- and it's actually pretty terrifying. But I think I'll wait for my friend Howard to examine that part of it and do it justice.  Oop. Look. Them retired folk are fast & crafty -- he's already up with his take.

The Cable companies, too, kind of got handed a bag of flaming poo yesterday.   They face the prospect of angry customers getting mad at them not just because their cable bills are going up, but because now they're going to have to figure out a way to block out broadcast signals on the U.S. nets if the nets show a show at a time other than when the Canadian rights holder wants to show it.  Simsub has been transparent for the viewer, mostly -- that's why the CRTC only gets complaints every year when people realize they can't see the Superbowl commercials.  Just wait.  Now you're going to have blue screens of death all over the dial.  An audience who is moving to a "TV Everywhere" model is going to see more restrictions placed on how and when they can watch -- restrictions that go against what they've had for 40 years.   The audience reaction to this is going to be ugly.  If Rogers wasn't Rogers and didn't so totally suck, I'd almost feel sorry for them.

As for Canadian Creatives?  Well.  That's a more complicated stew.  First, I think it bears repeating that one of the problems in the past has always been that the Canadian nets have never really wanted to make Canadian programs. That's why they came up with photocopies of Entertainment Tonight when the rules allowed them to do that.  That's why they ran cheap, low quality crap like Train 48 that nobody watched or cared about.  That's why they used to whip CanCon shows around the schedules, promote it poorly, and throw it on Saturday night at 10.    Corner Gas became inconvenient, as did little cable successes like Trailer Park Boys, because they seemed to suggest that maybe there was a market for homegrown -- just as there is in every other Western country in the world.  (Western country? Geez, check out "Nollywood" sometime.) 

There's stuff in the decision that shows that the CRTC is at least trying to incentivize spending on domestic stuff.  There's a push for 5% of revenues to be spent on a very narrowly designated set of programs -- drama, kids, documentaries -- and it looks like cheap and cheezy magazine shows won't qualify.   There's a closed loophole where nets won't be able to count money they get from the Canadian Media Fund as part of THEIR contribution -- so they'd have to spend more.   There's also something in there the Broadcasters wanted -- some of the money they spend can be on stuff they produce in-house.  Get off the teat of that U.S. programming, they say.  Diversify, at least a bit.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls too.  A reduction in CanCon levels.  Removal of spending requirements for Specialty channels (instead, each "ownership group" ie: Canwest, CTV -- will have their revenues & homegrown spend calculated across all their properties.)

Seeing as the nets in the past have done everything they can to get around rules, and use every loophole, the worry is that there's a whole lot here to find ins and outs.  Maybe the problem was too complicated to solve, but the solution as proposed is byzantine.  So though ACTRA was confident enough to come out and blast it right away.  (God love them emotional actors!) the WGC posted a more cautious, "Ummmm..." response on their site.   There's a lot to parse here.

And one of the worst parts of it is that there's now another one-year push as people figure out the rules.  Hearings will happen next year.  Which means that no changes will be concrete til 2012.  Which means that by that time the Domestic TV industry will have endured about 5 years of complete violent uncertainty.  I don't know if there's anybody who can hang on that long.  I'm in Florida right now, and four people in the last two days have emailed me Real Estate listings in Southern California.

Ha ha.

Where you end up on this depends on where you start.  What about the observers, then?  Well, a generation of viewers who have felt entitled to getting any program when they want it, where they want it, on the screen they want it, are probably going to shrug and keep doing what they're doing.

Banks who have been tougher about gap financing Producers trying to make TV product, I don't imagine are going to get much looser.  It's not a confidence-building decision for them.

Anyone who's been sick of the "Save Local TV" "TV Tax" B.S. is likely to get a whole lot sicker. Goodbye "Old Spice, I'm on a Horse" guy, we hardly knew ye.

And then there's professional observers like John Doyle  at the good grey Globe & Mail.  He writes a pretty on-target analysis of his own about the decision.  But you can see ample evidence in the article of where he starts, too.  It's seemingly from a place of real fatigue.

Part of Doyle's schtick has always been as a bit of a crankypants and occasional scold.   That's been cut with a true & trenchant insight into the good of our homegrown TV -- what we do well, what we don't.  If you read his book A Great Feast of Light, where he started becomes ever more clear -- an Irish immigrant for whom TV was both a window and an escape. There's no question that his love of the medium comes from a deep and honest place.

But in the last year he's also curdled.  You can see it in the way he takes a swipe at "creatives" (his quotes) every time they come up.   Example from the latest article:

At the same time, it has to examine the interests of the unions and guild representing actors, writers, directors and producers of Canadian programming, those groups who like to call themselves “the creatives.” The cable and broadcasting bosses don’t have a monopoly on egotism, believe me. The Canadian TV racket is shark-infested waters, and somebody has to regulate.

Can someone please send this man a cookiegram?

You can see it in the way he returns to certain subjects over & over like a monomania -- the position of women in the TV racket (most of what he writes here I agree with, but it's like every third column now,) and a certain fealty to certain voices that have led to a few weird reviews that seem to be going out of the way to not say something bad.  Surface praise, dark waters underneath -- followed by a review that just goes completely over-the-top.

I have sympathy for this.  I stopped writing about shows here that I didn't enjoy because of one too many weird and whiney emails.  So I try to do the positive sell now when I like it, and go by the golden rule of not saying anything at all when I don't. But then again, I'm also directly engaged in the same biz.  I expect what I write here -- even when it's critical -- to be read through the filter of an insider's view, not a dispassionate critic's.

I guess Canadian TV will eventually drive you insane.  There's no way around it.

Doyle's second book, about soccer, "The World Is a Ball," drops in a few weeks, just in time for World Cup Fever.  He's an excellent writer & I hope it's a real hit, because I think he's looking for a way out of the TV writing ghetto. And really, who can blame him?

The thing is -- I don't want to chicken little here -- but I think we should probably all follow his lead a bit.  Got a book in ya? How's that knitting?  I hear Green Roofs are a big grower.

Not saying it's the end of anything.  But not saying it's not. Welcome to the age of uncertainty.  Try to look natural.  Smoke'em if you got 'em.

EDIT: 6:20 p.m.  Bill Brioux covers a part that I left out -- the effect on the CBC.  Personally, I think CBC was wrong to join in actively in the carriage fees debate just because politically it makes it so easy for the anti-CBC wingnuts to accuse it of "double dipping" -- Boy, those guys get a whole lot of fucking complaining for their 37 bucks a year, don't they? -- but he stresses too that the most devastating aspect of this is the "hurry up and wait"-ism of the slow, slow, slow bureaucracy at work:

by dithering on a CBC decision, he will end up punishing the people who write, produce, act and everything else associated with Canadian television at the one network that actually makes Canadian television. CBC--hit as hard as the other guys in advertising revenue during the deep recession--admitted they were short some $60 million a year ago when they started cutting back on show orders. CBC president and CEO Hubert Lacroix said yesterday that "one thing is clear: this will force us to cut programs and services, and our ability to fulfil our mandate has been compromised."...

The CRTC decision has probably doomed one or more of these shows and will likely mean shorter seasons for some of the others. While they were busy finding a way for Canadian cable and satellite subscribers to pay for CTV and Rogers' Olympic party, found money that bails out a decade of reckless, unchecked spending on U.S. imports, the CRTC burns the one guy with a schedule full of Canadian shows. Von Finckensten may have honestly thought he was protecting the CBC, but he really is punishing the network and anyone in the business of doing the one thing the CRTC was supposed to protect--making Canadian television. 

A Digital TV Antenna...

...COSTS ABOUT EIGHTY bucks.  You can set up a PVR on your computer, or put it to your TV.  You get 12 channels uncompressed.  I can get 2 of the 4 U.S. nets from my window.

Just saying.

Carriage Fees: The U.S. Version

IT SHOULDN'T SURPRISE you to know that nothing in Canadian Television happens in a vacuum.  And so it is with the Cable TV - Broadcaster fight over "carriage fees." Or as KonRadvF (which I am hereby decreeing the Chairman of the CRTC's new "internet" spelling. Why? For the lulz, of course) would like to frame it:  "value for signal."


The Value for Signal proposition has been proceeding rather more quietly in the United States up til now.  CBS successfully negotiated a fee for programs with cable operators a few months back.  


Now all that's changing.  In a number of high profile markets (including the one where I'm currently parked, Orlando) carriage agreements expire December 31st.


And FOX is leading a push that might seem very familiar to Canadian viewers of the "Local TV Matters" "Stop the TV Tax" ads of the last several months.


The New York Times has a pretty good article on the lowdown. The upshot is that FOX is pushing for way more than anybody's ever gone for before -- up to a dollar a subscriber.  And that's resulted in a mini-version of the ad campaign Canadians have been seeing for months, catered for every market.


You can see some of the pics I took of the FOX-sponsored ads as they appear in recent editions of the Orlando Sentinel.  Elsewhere in the Times article they have the same ad, purposed for Time Warner Cable.


There are some key intriguing differences in the American-style fight that you have to understand going in, though, too:


1) Nothing's mandatory.   One of the points that the Canadian Cable and Satellite providers raised at the recent hearings that was actually quite valid was that they are required by law to carry the Canadian networks.  So they rightly turned about and said, "you can't make us carry them, and expect us to pay for them."  That would mean cable had no lever to negotiate. The Canadian networks could literally charge whatever they want.  In the U.S. system, cable is not required to carry anybody.  Even though fights like the current one have happened before (though never for so much money - a buck is a big jump) they usually get resolved because there IS pressure to both sides to come to a deal.  Customers want the channel because there's lots of programs on it that they like; cable wants to give the customers what they want so they can retain subscribers and keep their service valuable.

2) Affiliates -- The U.S. networks are a mix of what are called "Owned & Operated" stations and Affiliates.  "O&O's" are exactly what they sound like.  ABC owns several stations in major markets, CBS the same, etc.  Sometimes it's easy to tell, because of the station call letters:  WABC, or KNBC, for instance.  Besides the O&O's though, there is a large network of stations owned by smaller broadcast groups -- who pay to "affiliate" with the network for access to their programming, promotions, etc.  On these stations there are "network hours" where the advertising revenue is split between the nets and the local stations, and local hours, where all the ad money (and the responsibility to fill the airtime) goes to the local stations.  (Ie: local news hours, game shows or syndicated off-network sitcoms, etc.)


As I understand it, Cable started giving money to affiliates to carry their feeds years ago.  And now one of the fronts in the fight is the originating networks asking for some of that money back, since it's their marquee programming that makes those local stations valuable to carry.


In Canada, the nature of the "affiliate" culture went by the wayside a few years ago.  Now Global and CTV, and (mostly) CBC depend on stations that they own outright.  It's a different culture. (Very different, when you consider CTV, who once upon a time had a completely backward structure --  powerful affiliates with an anemic central network)


3) Tone of the ads -- if you're somebody into reading Tea Leaves, this is the most interesting part of the fight. First, in the FOX corner -- look at what they're threatening to pull.  Those are some programs. There really *is* a value to that signal.  


You now start to see the hole that the Canadian nets dug themselves into, after all those years of consolidation, cutting local shows and putting their entire focus on centralized schedules that relied almost completely on American shows.  It's not that framing the debate as "Save Local TV" was the best move. It's that it might have been the ONLY move.


But the difference that really matters is on the Cable side.  Last night I saw a Bright House ad responding to the FOX ads.  You can view the same spot on their website here.  It was calm, reassuring, explained that this was business, and it happened all the time and that nobody's going to lose their signal come New Year's day and they'll reach some sort of agreement just as they always do.   The print ad tries to make the same point, in much the same way.


Notice -- no hysteria, or histrionics, or "Stop the TV tax!" stuff.  (Although Time Warner's got a bit more heft in their RollOverorGetTough.com site...)  They know the value of their product -- and they also know that their business model's way more secure than the Networks' though for the next little while the fortunes are both are inextricably linked. 


Of course, this being the United States, somebody's also figured out a way to sue.


FOX is playing high stakes poker here, and going for a big grab, but the reaction isn't anywhere near as OTT.  I don't know what could possibly explain the cultural difference, except maybe that what we saw in Canada was two industries that are used to going to the CRTC and getting whatever they wanted, in terms of "goodies bestowed" from on high.  Maybe this is one of those cases where you don't pull out the grenade because you know at some point you're gonna have to shake hands and solve it yourselves. And it's harder to shake somebody's hand when you've just blown it off.


Or maybe I'm wrong, neither side will blink, Florida viewers won't get to see the Sugar Bowl, and the Panhandle will be burning by Friday.


Stay tuned -- if you can!


UPDATE:  lookieloo. they have a deal.  See?  It's possible. Think KonRadvF is on the phone yet?

A Visit from von Finckenstein

(with deep, deep, deep apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, Not even a louse.

The cable bill was flung on the ledge with despair

In hopes new antennas would grab HD off air.

Ivan in his kerchief, and Len in his cap

Had settled back down, for their post-hearing nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter

sounded just like that douche yelling "local TV matters."

Away to the window I flew with a shoe

Thought maybe I'd nail the "TV tax" guy too.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a sterile appearance quite like Gatineau.

When, what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a passel of bureaucrats looking severe.

And their driver, so precise and rigid of spine,

I knew in a moment twas von Finckenstein.

He mumbled and shouted in such a great barrage,

saying "value for signal,  not fee for carriage!"

"On Rogers! On Global! You too, CTV!

Bring me solutions, not money for free!"

"To the back rooms! Committees! There's deals to be made!

Throw out an idea, not just a grenade!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

came reams of paper, a snowstorm in the sky,

Up to the house-top the courses they flew,

With a sleigh full of arguments, and Jim Shaw too.

He was green, with a twinkling, and his face in a pinch

And I knew there and then that this dude was the Grinch.

"Here's what I want," he shook with his fist,

"You better sit down, cause it's quite a long list."

Von Finck whispered nervous, "we should move along,"

But Shaw slapped him back, saying, "this is my song!"

He pawed at my aerial, wrecking the mount, and claimed

that Canadians just couldn't count.

"Let the market decide, stay out of our way! 

But don't dare try to tell us how much they should pay!"

Shaw poked through the sack and found all U.S. shows,

and he shook his green head and said, "Finky, this blows."

Von Finck, how he brooded! Til they forged a detente,

and Finky admitted "well, that's all they want."

"I try to encourage, cajole and yes, shame.

But you know, our broadcasters are unspeakably lame."

The Grinch poked the sack and said, "most of it's junk,"

Von Finck sighed and nodded, said, "and thus, there's my funk."

It was round about now that these two got my goat,

I announced my appearance by clearing my throat.

Their eyes snapped to me and I felt a great dread,

And I wished with each fibre that I'd just stayed in bed,

"Who are you?" They demanded, with no ounce of fear.

"Where's your written remarks and notice to appear?"

I held my ground, said, "I just wish to note,

I know I'm supposed to just work the remote.

But now that you're here, I'll try a new tack,

Can you tell me what's there for me in that sack?"

The Grinch shrugged, and mumbled and von Finck went pale,

Then Shaw booked for a profile from the Globe & Mail.

Relief flooded through me, there'd be no background noise,

From the guy who hawks porn but hates Trailer Park Boys.

I then fixed my gaze on the man of the year,

Hoping his solutions I soon would hear,

But he shook his head sadly and said with a sob,

"Skinny basic? Unbundling? Man I hate my job."

So I patted his head, and offered a snort.

And he admitted he didn't have much to report.

So I said, "I'll be brief. And let's start with a fact.

Are we still trying to follow the broadcasting act?"

His eyes started glazing, and I held up my hand,

Said I'd keep my promise, and make short my demand.

"On gaffer, on seamstress, on writer, and grip,

On actor and P.A. and director so hip,

When we come before you, you seem so polite,

But like we don't really matter, and that, sir, aint right."

For it's we who make things, we haul and make fast.

We don't just sell pipe, or simulcast,

So when you consider a future direction,

Please Santa von Finck, can we have some protection?"

He stared straight ahead and he said not a word,

For a moment the whole thing seemed rather absurd,

Then, in a low voice he said something bold,

"Man." Said von Finck, "is it freaking cold."

So there in the midst of the holiday heather,

Two hosers a-sat, discussing the weather.

The hour grew late, and I ran out of beer,

And the man rose to leave, and I wished him good cheer.

But I heard him exclaim, as he rode out of sight,

"Licence renewals in April! Man will that be a fight."

Happy Holidays everybody. Be safe.  DMc

A Pox on All Your Houses -- oh, and Happy Holidays!

I'M GETTING READY to pull out of Dodge and drive into oblivion,  (Glad that blizzard hit the East Coast YESTERDAY...) but before I do there's one more kick to be had at the TV-fight can.

This subject has been woefully under-covered in the Canadian press, and it's not hard to figure out why.  Newspapers showed up for the first days of the latest round of CRTC hearings -- when the broadcasters and cablers sturmed and dranged, and sucked the air out of the room by making what was supposed to be a review of the Canadian broadcasting system since 1999 all about Carriage Fees -- for the THIRD TIME...

Discussion of later issues, indeed, any coverage at all beyond that narrow frame, was ignored.  The Globe and Mail continues to feel the chill of writing honestly about anything that might reflect badly on corporate parent CTV. And the Post and Canwest Papers have their own issues with broke Daddy broke.

The disappointing thing here has been The Toronto Star -- by a miracle of turndowns and vagaries of this or that -- is one of the only papers in the country WITHOUT a significant finger in the broadcast pie.  But they followed the pack and didn't do much to elucidate and illuminate the issue, either.

Well, the Sunday Star today makes an attempt to rectify that, with a series of three articles.

Bill Brioux, of the TVFeedsMyFamily parish, lets loose on the guff that the broadcasters have been giving.

The Canadian broadcasters claim that – especially during the recent recession – their business model is irreversibly broken and that they can no longer survive off ad revenue alone.

What they really want is for the government and ultimately taxpayers to bail them out after decades of reckless overspending on American shows.

The dark side to the whole Canadian broadcast story the past decade or so has been the limitless, reckless overspending – especially by CTV – in order to attain total dominance in the marketplace. CTV has owned the Canadian Top-20 nationally the past decade with its deep line-up of American hits – American Idol, the CSIs, The Amazing Race, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, the list goes on and on.

During – and, really, because of – that drive to dominance, the cost of importing American shows skyrocketed. Still, it seemed, no price was too high to keep a potential hit away from arch rival Canwest Global.

Yours truly tears a strip out of Canada's cable bullies:

Forgive an old cynic, but cable leading the "Stop the TV tax" charge is kind of like the schoolyard bully turning around and telling you you've hurt his feelings. Satellite companies like Bell Expressvu, who aren't as profitable, (they have to pay for those satellites, after all) earn equal disdain for throwing in with the disingenuous tubthumping.


Like every good story, this one comes with a late-breaking twist. The wireless divisions of our new "consumer friendly" carriers got a shock when the government overruled a CRTC decision on Globalive Wireless Management Corp. Wireless phone competition – and maybe foreign ownership – the industry's last big protection – is on its way. I wonder if they feel that one in their bones. I can't wait for the next ad campaign.

And Garnet Fraser, Sunday Star editor -- raises that provocative point that maybe there's some blame to point at our own houses.

In poll after poll – see the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting at friends.ca if you don't believe me – the public has said it wants distinctly Canadian broadcasters and programs. But we'd rather that someone else do the watching. U.S. imports dominate the ratings of private broadcasters; heck, even the CBC does it with British stuff (Coronation Street and the co-production The Tudors).


Last week CTV and Global put out duelling news releases crowing about all of their shows in the top 10. But the shows aren't really their shows; they're the likes of House and CSI. These networks wouldn't mind if their own creations (e.g. DeGrassi) were charting instead; heck, they'd prefer it, as popular shows also sell more DVDs, etc. that the shows' owners would greatly profit from.
But that's not what most Canadians want to watch, whatever we tell pollsters. And it's not like Canadian broadcasters don't sometimes make a pretty decent effort to woo us.

I must admit when I was writing my piece, I found myself in a very weird place with all this.  Weird because I'm currently researching an MOW on a figure in Canadian history -- that of course nobody I seem to meet and talk with casually seems to have ever heard of.   Being American-born, there is something really astonishing about that to me.  I grew up hearing, like everybody else, that "Canadian history is boring."  Right now, I'm learning just how false that is, and how terrible and pernicious that misapprehension is... it probably goes a long way to explaining the conundrum Garnet explores above.

But every time I tell people what I'm working on, there's all this tedious explaining to do.  The equivalent would be if I had to explain who Davy Crockett was to an American. But of course, you'd never have to do that. Not in a million years.

I don't know how a country with such a complete disconnect from itself ultimately survives. But there you go.

It's hard to boil down a problem -- especially one that leaves you with such a feeling of disgust -- to 600 words.   And were there more enterprising and courageous journalists in this country covering the most corporate concentrated media in the world, perhaps one or two might have wondered at how the Broadcast Execs could have repeated the falsehood that "Canadian shows don't make money," when the CRTC has a report prepared by the WGC and other groups showing how patently untrue that is.

But we live in a nation of "official truths," not "real truths."  Where we try to destroy truthtellers instead of embrace them and learn from them.  Where we have no idea where we've been, so no inspiration for where to go next.

No wonder it's so easy to frame a false debate between "saving local tv" and "tv taxes."

And remember, folks, it IS a false debate:




Anyway, hopefully I won't be writing any more about this bullshit.  Through it all I never did get my big questions answered:  1) Howcum U.S. channels make all sorts of money on their local newscasts (so much so that Jay Leno's 10pm numbers are a BIG problem for affiliates) but here, those same newscasts are framed as big money losers?  How is that not just an example of the sales team not being very good at their business?  And the 2nd one -- Corner Gas, our biggest homegrown hit -- a show that was paired with any number of U.S. sitcoms through the years that it regularly beat -- why were commercials in it sold at a discount from shows it was completely outrating?

No matter how you uncoil the tail of Canadian TV it seems, you get caught in the slime trail.

And with that I point my car south.  Happy Holidays to you all.  Stop the Reindeer Tax.  Save Local Elves.

The Quotable Parker

POSTED W/O FURTHER COMMENT -- this is taken from Brendan Kelly's article in today's VARIETY.  (emphasis is mine.)

Canadian auds get their say

MONTREAL The bitter fight over the future of the TV biz in Canada is set to heat up again this week, with the public poised to weigh in on the debate.

CTVglobemedia executive VP Paul Sparkes warns that if the networks don't get a monthly fee from the cable and satellite companies, "we'll be closing stations and the government will have to deal with that."

The exec went even further, saying the media giant might even close major-market stations or get out of the free-to-air TV business altogether to focus on its more profitable cable channels.

If there is no extra money, CTV wants the rules changed to allow it to pull its network from cable systems like Rogers.

Worse yet for viewers, CTV owns the Canuck rights to U.S. shows such as "Desperate Housewives" and could force Rogers to black them out when they appear on the U.S. webs that Rogers carries, such as ABC.

Meanwhile, cable execs claim the networks are looking for an unwarranted handout.

"We're not the ones that are destroying the system," Rogers senior VP Ken Engelhart says. "We're the ones that lost money for years. (The TV networks) have had one bad year and they're saying the sky is falling."

Rogers execs say the Canuck networks are in an irrational bidding war for U.S. shows, which is a big part of the reason they're losing money -- and it's true that spending on American fare has risen sharply in recent years.

CTV also would like the CRTC to radically reduce the Canadian-content requirements for terrestrial networks, which forces them to fill 60% of their weekly skeds with expensive, locally produced shows. CTV would like to see that quota cut to 35% to help their bottom line.

That's an idea that has Canadian screenwriters seeing red.

The response of Maureen Parker, executive director of the Canadian Writers Guild, is unequivocal.

"We'd say -- 'Good-bye, see ya, get out of the business.' They just don't want to make Canadian television. That's their bottom-line position. They overspend in L.A. and it results in a very unhealthy business environment for everyone because there's no money left for Canadian drama." 

Way to go, Maureen.

Agency party tonight, then off to Calgary tomorrow to research for the new project.  Take care, and if you happen to be in Toronto tonight, I dare say the writer-rip up to beat is Paul Quarringon and the Pork Belly Futures at the Dora Keogh.

We'll Always Have Chicken

DRIVING AROUND CENTRAL Florida last week was a bit of an unsettling experience.  A few of years ago, everywhere you looked there were blue tarps, and smashed trees, and the occasional FEMA trailer -- legacy of a recent hurricane. 


This time, the signs pointed to the financial tsunami that hit Florida harder than a lot of other places in the U.S.  Foreclosure sales, unemployment stories, storefronts left fallow and vacant, and even boarded up walkaways -- where people flew their underwater mortgages, seemed to be everywhere. 


Nothing caught my eye more, however, than the liberal sprinkling of men standing on Street Corners, waving signs for a retail chain. "This location: 70% off! Closing Sale! Everything including the fixtures!"   I counted four or five of them, advertising different locations where Everything Must Go, during my week away.  It was a sobering antidote to the Black Friday hype.


I'm the first to admit that my mind for business has never been a steel trap.  I think back to high school and my Intro to Business class. I don't remember a thing about it -- except for the teacher holding up a computer punch card, and soberly intoning, "no matter what happens, you're always going to need to know how to use these."


Seven days in the sun and the American mediascape, looking back on things here, following the testimony of this group or that group at the CRTC just made me realize with full force how much the supposed Captains of the Industry here are a bunch of old white guys waving punch cards.


First, let's talk about Hulu.


Like a lot of Canadians, I've experienced Hulu only sporadically. (The site is geo-blocked from Canada.) Now, even most of the proxy server workarounds you once could use to see content don't work.  They never worked that well anyway -- as the processing power the proxy sucked up made the video you'd watch stutter if you were on anything other than a screaming fast computer on a wicked fast broadband connection.


But last week, I got the full Hulu.  Late night, catching up on Modern Family, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Family Guy -- and a score of other shows.  A couple of streamed ads. Perfect playback, even on the "light" connection where I was staying.  It worked great. Give me a Boxee or Apple TV interface to my TV -- or hell, WiFi enabled TV, and I am over the moon and don't need another thing to get all the tv I want.   And the only reason I want to make that jump to the TeeVee is demographic -- teens and twentysomethings are just fine leaving it on the computer. 


A massive library of current content. Ready right now.  Whenever I want. New eps posted the day after they first air.  Without fail. Robust interface and playback.  Wicked.


Meanwhile, back in Canada, representatives of the broadcast networks, in pushing their "value for signal" -- made the following suggestions:  they want to extend the Simultaneous Substitution policy so that they can now "delete" programs that they buy the rights to, if they play on a U.S. channel at a different time.  So if you're a cable subscriber, you should get used to seeing a lot more blue screens and "this program not available" warnings.  Hmm. There's value for you.


Well, no matter. Maybe you could watch online too. Rogers just announced a Canadian Hulu, right?  Oh.  Uh. Except it only works if you're a Rogers subscriber. And there's not a lot of content. And like the clunky on Demand channels where programs disappear without rhyme or reason, the interface is kind of lame.  So, uh, it's not like Hulu at all, really.


So it's like the comparison of broadcast websites all over again?  With the Canadian offerings shoddy, scattershot, hard to navigate poor shadows of the American versions? 


Yup.


Hmm.  Let's explain that "value for signal" again?


But let's not be churlish here.  it's not just the broadcasters who've been running annoying ads for months. Let's look at the Cable side.


Bright House Networks is the cable provider in Central Florida.  The picture is sharper and clearer.  There are no artifacts. The HD channels "pop." TCM is a revelation -- I never realized how compressed and shoddy the quality of the signal I was getting from Rogers was.   Plus, when you call Bright House, they're efficient and friendly.  You book an appointment, you get a two hour window and they're always there.  They're pleasant to deal with, and customer focused. 


I don't know a single person in Canada who would use that phrase to describe their cable or satellite provider. 


What else?  Ah yes. There's the matter of the digital transition.  The U.S. has more or less completed the transfer of signals to the digital spectrum. Those analogue frequencies are being auctioned off. Everything's proceeding apace.


In Canada? One by one the broadcasters revealed that they don't really have much of a plan to make the transition, and that there's no way they're going to make the 2011 deadline the CRTC set. The deadline they've known about for years.


So there's going to be a delay in auctioning that spectrum here. So innovations in telephony, more communications choices for Canadians... none of that is going to happen here yet. Hurry up and wait. 


So the Canadian picture seems to be: poor BDU service & innovation, substandard on demand delivery, bad pictures, bad customer service, bungled "Hulu-like" service launches -- everything, in fact, relying on the protections afforded by the fencing of the CRTC, while not living up to any promises or responsibilities under the Broadcast Act. 


Broadcasters solutions to the new reality that people want to be able to watch programs when they want, how they want? Lock down and restrict them more. 


Who are these guys?


I don't mean to be impertinent, but it strikes me that there might be somebody you guys could talk to to get over this hump you all seem to be having with thinking outside the box a little bit, as the world you've known comes down around you.


Maybe you could talk to us.  


Creatives.  


Crazy idea, I know. But think about it.  A few years ago the knock on Canadian shows was that they looked cheap. And they were cheesy. And slow.


So we had crews that busted their ass and upgraded their skills. D.O.P.'s raised their lighting game.  Now, you rarely see the kind of flat, Shoppers Drug Mart lighting you used to see on Canadian TV.  Instead, there's the brilliant and vibrant frames you see on Flashpoint, or The Border, or Being Erica. 


Writers heard the knock of the slow moving story -- and many of us committed to our craft, studied, and worked to try and figure out a way to come up with excitingly paced stories that can still deliver at a lower budget.  Do we always get there? No. But we get there a lot more often than we did. We saw the need, and we changed. We also looked at the structure of how things worked and said, "well, if you want something that has pacing and where the creative fires on all levels, you have to empower us a bit."  So we slowly began the process of educating a reluctant industry here about what a Showrunner is, how it works in the U.S. system, and why it has a better chance of delivering your audience a vibrant product than the bad old way of doing things. 


There's been lots of pushback on that, of course...but there are also lots of veterans who've stuck around here who are more than capable of taking on that role.  We just need to get to the point where they hire them off the top -- not once the show is already in chaos in production.


There were other changes too.  A recognition of the importance of source music, of faster editing and more dynamic shooting.  Producers and writers on the other side of the aisle studied the lessons of Reality TV, and changed the kinds of shows they pitched.   Quietly, around the margins, Canada became a place that does great lifestyle and reality shows.  


I also watched HGTV when I was in Florida.  And I saw, literally, that half the shows on the air there are made here.  That doesn't get written about a lot. But it's true.  There's also an explosion in animation, in tween shows, in children's. Quietly, around the margins, creatives who live the most precarious of existences here have looked at the challenges of the market over the last decade -- the collapse of first-run syndication, squeezed license fees, the rise of internet-ancillaries -- and tried to adjust our way of doing things.


It's not perfect. We're not there yet.  There's deadwood and nepotism and people who shouldn't be doing what they're doing, sure. But at the same time, there is Battle of the Blades, Flashpoint, Corner Gas, Dragon's Den... I could go on... while broadcasters get up there in Gatineau and proffer no new ideas and refuse to even acknowledge the new world they're already living in -- the post Hulu, TV Everywhere world that there's no going back from -- Canadians are watching homegrown programs in numbers not seen in years.


And events like a FIVE MILLION audience for the Grey Cup game show that -- whatever the broadcasters want to claim -- that there is a hunger out there for something to watch that isn't just a rebroadcast of a U.S. show.  Canadians will watch them if they're good.


The problem is, of course, that our partners up to now have had a vested interest in, well, making sure they're not too good. And even when they are, claiming that they don't make money.  


It's pretty ironic, in fact, that just about the only part of their business these guys have mastered as well as their American counterparts seems to be the "Hollywood Accounting" part.


The comparisons and contrasts from my week in Florida were eye opening in the extreme.  But it wasn't until my last night that it all came together -- when the power went out.


Day after Thanksgiving, seven p.m.  Whoosh.  Total darkness.  Too early to go to bed. What to do?  


Rummage through the hurricane kit. Find the batteries for the radio.  Put 'em in, and tune the dial...


...And there, in the dark, for forty minutes or so, we listened to the clear, bemused voice of Ira Glass and This American Life.  


A couple of great stories -- about Poultry and the Supernatural.  A hiliarious anecdote about an Orthodox Jew who goes to heaven only to find out that God is, in fact, a huge chicken.  And the archangel Michael's job is to feed him and keep his cage clean.  "All that praying, all that suffering, and for what? God is a chicken!"


"Not A Chicken.  Just... chicken."


See, I'm really not doing it justice. And that's the point. Reaching back to an earlier form, the rules are different, the delivery different, but what was there, gloriously alive and vibrant and entertaining -- was the story.  The story will survive, no matter what form or challenge we throw at it.  For those of us whose business is story, that's got to come as a comfort, no matter how backward and antiquated and maddeningly out of touch the captains of the industry seem, it's we, who have rolled with the punches and changed what we do already over the last few years...it's we who will survive.


So maybe the business mind isn't the be all and end all. Because a business mind that can't see the change coming and get on board isn't going to be around much longer.


Don't believe me? 


Man I wish you could have seen those guys on the corner.  70% off. Everything Must Go! Fixtures Too! This location only.


This location on Hiawassee, or International Drive, or South Conroy, or Colonial...


This location only. 


Everything must go.


Blockbuster Video.