Live sports television is why I don’t cut the cord on cable.
I can find news, documentaries, series and movies rather easily and legally online and on demand, but the networks and major sports have collaborated to keep the big events either exclusively on, or expensively to bypass, the venerable TV set.
They’ve got me where they want me.
And the Super Bowl is the supreme broadcast, the biggest single TV show of any kind each year. Hundreds of millions of us watch, even if our favourite teams aren’t playing, even if we’re relative non-fans, even if we just want to get to the epic halftime concert – or even, in the U.S., if it’s just to watch the commercials uniquely created for that day.
We’ve had some great Super Bowls in recent years, but there are times I suspect the specially produced ads might have been more entertaining than what ran between them.
I can only say “suspect” because we Canadians have been unable to see the ads as they are revealed to the American audience on the big day.
That will change with Super Bowl LI February 5 in a one-time exercise that poses enormous economic implications for an industry in some struggle. Tread carefully, regulator.
For decades, denying access to U.S. commercials has been a price we have paid in Canada. Regulation permits simultaneous substitution of Canadian commercials on American channels on cable and satellite when the two outlets are playing the same program.
Canadian networks juggle lineups to simulcast programs and capitalize on so-called simsub.
There are compelling economic reasons. The extended reach of the commercials on multiple channels enlarges the Canadian audience for the Canadian ads, and over the decades that made ads more lucrative and sustaining for the Canadian TV industry – networks and the creative community alike.
It hasn’t been a consumer’s treat. Night after night, we’ve been essentially a Canadian affiliated station of what U.S. networks program.
There is a good cultural dividend. As a price for this larger revenue source, Canadian television has had to invest a reasonable percentage into Canadian programming. Undoubtedly many successes owe their financial footing to simsub.
But the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), bowing mainly to chronic consumer complaints, has ruled we will have access to the Canadian and American channels and their ads for Super Bowl LI.
Bring on the latest Clydesdales from Budweiser, the spot or two with objectionable humour, the celebrity cameos, the predictable tear-jerker. We really need so much more American culture in this country, don’t we?
Do not for a second believe that this experiment – this mere hint of impending change – arrives without kicking and screaming and litigating.
Bell Media (full disclosure: a former employer) has tried through the court and its political clout to get the trial run scotched. The National Football League has squawked, too. It fears that declining revenue for Canadian networks will mean lower licence rights for its property. A Hail Mary pass might be in the works as game day approaches.
Observations of an armchair quarterback: crocodile tears for billionaire owners and millionaire players, a bit more empathy for the massive telecommunications company that has been allowed to buy the massive broadcaster that has been allowed to buy all sorts of smaller stations over years and years of cultivated regulation ostensibly designed to build and shield an industry.
When in doubt, punt. A federal cultural review underway is presumably going to create a new framework for financing, so it’s unwise meantime for the CRTC to extend this simsub one-off elsewhere.
Every player realizes his time has come. Thus it’s inevitable that the advent of streaming technology overrides what had been an inspired application of coaxial cable technology. The anxiety of Bell is the anxiety of the broadcasters writ large and the creative community it fortified, but their playing days can extend if Ottawa is measured with the body contact drills.
Let’s be careful out there. A lot of people can get hurt on the field.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
