As CRTC decisions go, denying SUN-TV the special TV distribution status it was seeking is a good one. But denying a proposed Canadian movie channel (called Starlight) the preferred distribution option it was seeking is a bad decision.
SUN-TV and Starlight were among 12 broadcast outlets, including some non-profit organizations that had applied to have their TV channels granted what the CRTC refers to as “mandatory distribution.” Sometimes referred to as “mandatory carriage,” it is essentially a form of preferred status.
Cable and satellite TV companies must include mandatory distribution channels as part of their basic service bundles, while charging consumers a small monthly fee for each, which is passed on to the channel’s producers to cover costs.
There are nine such channels in the typical Canadian TV market, including the Weather Network, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), the Canadian Public Affairs Channel (CPAC), some French channels in English Canada, English channels in French Canada and a soon-to-be-launched channel for French-speaking visually impaired persons.
Most channels you subscribe to do not receive any money from TV service providers, such as the country’s cable companies, and rely solely on advertising. SUN-TV is one of those stations.
Leaking cash like crazy, including some $17 million in 2012, SUN-TV celebrities took to their own airwaves and social media this year to plead for inclusion as a mandatory distribution channel. Without that status, and the guaranteed income that would flow from it, SUN-TV claimed it would likely go under.
SUN-TV’s cable giant owner Quebecor agreed to the CRTC’s original conditions for operating based on its original application and sought preferred status only when things didn’t work out financially as planned.
It is bad news any time a news outlet struggles to find an audience and attract advertisers, but the idea that it should be rescued by being granted mandatory carriage status was one the CRTC rightly rejected. Two Canadian all-news networks are generally available to consumers and each offers national and local news.
“Canadians across the country will have [mandated] access to programming that meets a real and exceptional need, and that would not be widely available without our intervention,” CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais is quoted as saying on the regulator’s website.
There’s a lot of wiggle room in that statement.
The SUN-TV application didn’t meet the “real and exceptional need” test, while the service for the visually impaired did. So far, so good. The regulator then presumably applied the same test in turning down Starlight’s application.
Of course, there are folks out there who argue that there shouldn’t be mandatory distribution, and that cultural products should be subject to the whims of free enterprise. If Canadians want to watch the Walking Dead 24/7, the argument goes, then they should, and if they don’t watch Canadian shows, then so be it.
The counter-argument is the one that has prevailed for decades in Canada, which is that a small country with limited resources but a distinct culture needs to support its own artists, musicians and filmmakers or there won’t be any localized industry. It has been the CRTC’s job in part to ensure avenues exist for Canadian programming to emerge.
Starlight was a new proposal, made on the basis that it needed mandatory carriage to ensure success. It was asking for about $0.50 a month from all cable/satellite subscribers for its all-Canadian-movies, all-the-time programming thrust. It was pledging to reinvest 70% of its profits in new Canadian productions. The CRTC said Starlight didn’t make the case for needing an all-Canadian film channel, suggesting that Canadian films are available on various existing channels. Yes, there are Canadian films on TV, but the Starlight plan would focus on them and celebrate them in a way that is currently not done. It should have at least been offered the chance to do so.
Maybe the SUN-TV and Starlight proposals were conflated in some way in the minds of the CRTC commissioners, or maybe they just aren’t certain which part of their mandate is the most important.
SUN-TV’s future remains in doubt, though its vice-president is now saying it will hang on until further CRTC hearings are held in the fall to sort out the issue of where news channels are placed on the dial.
CBC and CTV have low dial numbers, such as channel 2 and 15; SUN-TV is usually number 177 or higher. It seems the CRTC now believes that our news channels should be grouped more closely on the dial, although it will still fall to the TV cable and satellite companies to decide what stations to include in their various channel bundles, apart from the nine mandatory distribution channels.
Starlight’s future is even more in doubt.
In the meantime, the country’s TV consumers could be forgiven for being uncertain about what this all means to them.•
