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Tuesday April 17, 2012 |
Last year, when Bell's purchase of CTV was undergoing regulatory
approval, the company went out of its way to emphasize its support for
the struggling local channels it was acquiring as part of the deal. At
a CRTC hearing on the issue in February 2011, company officials stated:
the 'A' channels, which have
struggled tremendously over the last several years, require assistance
to continue to maintain their current programming levels. They also
require investment to be broadcast in high definition, which will
improve 'A' channel programming quality and allow for HD simulcasting.
Together these investments will help ensure that 'A' channel local
programming can be sustained and can remain available to these
communities.
The same hearing included an appearance from Randy Goulden, the
Executive Director of the Yorkton Film Festival in Yorkton,
Saskatchewan. Goulden extolled the virtues of a Bell - CTV merger for
local CTV channels:
CTV's local television stations are a
great part of the Canadian broadcasting system. They provide invaluable
promotion and publicity of our initiatives and our programs, raising
our profile to a level we would not have the opportunity to enjoy
without their support. The Yorkton Film Festival supports CTV's
acquisition by Bell as it will make CTV a stronger company and that, I
believe, will enable organizations like mine to continue to grow.
Just over a year later, Bell now
says
the Yorkton station is potentially on the chopping block. As the CRTC
conducts
hearings on the Local Programming Improvement Fund and the Supreme
Court of Canada holds its hearing on the fee-for-carriage, Bell says
that "we won’t continue to fund chronically unprofitable
stations, tiny stations in tiny little towns." Yorkton is on that list,
along with at least five other stations (which Bell says could grow
to 10 stations if the LPIF shrinks). Bell promised to keep the A
channel stations operational for three years during the regulatory
process, but no similar promises were made for local CTV channels. In
other words, the owner may have changed, but the game remains the same
- use threats to close local channels as the basis for demanding
additional revenues through regulation.
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Tuesday April 10, 2012 |
Consumers have become accustomed to lots of choice for entertainment
and information services. Music and movie services offer single
downloads and a range of subscription models, while newspapers and
magazines sell their content as individual issues or subscriptions on
multiple platforms.
Yet Canadian cable and satellite providers remain a stubborn holdout.
The broadcast community has long resisted a market-oriented approach
that would allow consumers to exercise real choice in their cable and
satellite packages, instead demanding a corporate welfare regulatory
framework that guarantees big profits and mediocre programming. My
weekly technology law column (Toronto
Star version, homepage
version) notes that
could have changed had the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission pushed back against Bell Media in a major
case involving the terms of broadcast distribution, but a ruling
late
last week indicated that it remains reluctant to do so.
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Tuesday April 10, 2012 |
Appeared
in the Toronto Star on April 8, 2012 as Should Canadians have to pay
for TV channels they don’t want?
Consumers have become accustomed to lots of choice for entertainment
and information services. Music and movie services offer single
downloads and a range of subscription models, while newspapers and
magazines sell their content as individual issues or subscriptions on
multiple platforms.
Yet Canadian cable and satellite providers remain a stubborn holdout.
The broadcast community has long resisted a market-oriented approach
that would allow consumers to exercise real choice in their cable and
satellite packages, instead demanding a corporate welfare regulatory
framework that guarantees big profits and mediocre programming. That
could have changed had the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission pushed back against Bell Media in a major
case involving the terms of broadcast distribution, but a ruling late
last week indicated that it remains reluctant to do so.
The case pits Canada’s largest broadcaster and a major broadcast
distributor against a group of cable and telecom providers including
Telus, Cogeco, MTS Allstream, and Eastlink. The common link among this
group is that unlike Bell, Rogers, and Shaw, who act as both
broadcasters and broadcast distributors, these companies function as
independents by only offering broadcast distribution through either
cable or IPTV services.
The independent providers want to be able to offer consumers the option
to customize their own programming packages. While the prospect of a
full pick-and-pay model for individual channels seems unlikely, tiered
packages that would allow consumers to create their own package of 15
or 30 channels might be on the table. This model, which is available in
Quebec and was used by Rogers in a trial earlier this year in London,
Ontario, gives consumers the possibility of some cost savings along
with far more flexibility in customizing a television package that
meets their interests.
Bell and Shaw strongly oppose the consumer choice model (Rogers is more
open to the possibility). Kevin Crull, president of Bell Media,
recently told Cartt.ca, an industry trade publication, that consumer
choice is wielded with a television remote as consumer choose what to
watch from among the myriad of channels they have effectively been
forced to subscribe to as part of most cable and satellite packages.
When asked about the possibility of extending the pick-a-pack model
outside of Quebec, Bell said at a recent CRTC hearing that it is
"dreadfully fearful of a penetration decline that would wipe out
revenues that are necessary to support the obligations of these
services." In case that wasn’t sufficiently clear, it added that
"choice and flexibility shouldn't come at the expense of the regulated
system for 30 or so services which are at the very heart of the
specialty system." In other words, Bell does not believe consumers
should have choice and flexibility if it results in lost revenues for
its specialty channels.
Broadcast distributors have grown fat over the years by forcing
consumers to purchase expensive packages that include channels they may
not want. In fact, the broadcast distributors became so profitable that
they ultimately purchased the broadcasters themselves.
With a vertically integrated marketplace now entrenched in Canada, Bell
is well positioned to grant itself significant advantages. The twin
goals of wide distribution of its specialty channels and the growth of
its broadcast distribution services could result in lessening
competition by offering packages that independent distributors can’t
match, charging uneconomic rates for the distribution of individual
channels, or forcing the independent providers to package unpopular
Bell-owned specialty channels with high-demand channels.
It falls to the CRTC to ensure that there is real consumer choice by
recognizing that choice does not come from clicking on a remote
control. The current system rewards market power over innovative
services or programs by guaranteeing broadcasters commercial success
based on the inclusion within a popular package, rather than based on
consumer interest. The time to prioritize competition and choice over
broadcaster self-interest is long overdue.
Michael Geist holds the Canada
Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of
Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online
at www.michaelgeist.ca.
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Thursday March 29, 2012 |
The CRTC has finalized
its anti-spam regulations,
retaining some notable new disclosure requirements for some software
installations. The requirements were opposed by the
Entertainment Software Association of Canada and Research in Motion,
who both asked for the requirements to be either dropped or
significantly changed. The regulation requires:
A computer program's material
elements that perform one or more of the functions listed in subsection
10(5) of the Act must be brought to the attention of the person from
whom consent is being sought separately from any other information
provided in a request for consent and the person seeking consent must
obtain an acknowledgement in writing from the person from whom consent
is being sought that they understand and agree that the program
performs the specified functions.
The functions
listed in 10(5) of the Act are:
(a) collecting personal information
stored on the computer system;
(b) interfering with the owner’s or
an authorized user’s control of the computer system;
(c) changing or interfering with
settings, preferences or commands already installed or stored on the
computer system without the knowledge of the owner or an authorized
user of the computer system;
(d) changing or interfering with data
that is stored on the computer system in a manner that obstructs,
interrupts or interferes with lawful access to or use of that data by
the owner or an authorized user of the computer system;
(e) causing the computer system to
communicate with another computer system, or other device, without the
authorization of the owner or an authorized user of the computer system;
(f) installing a computer program
that may be activated by a third party without the knowledge of the
owner or an authorized user of the computer system; and
(g) performing any other function
specified in the regulations.
While this is obviously designed first and foremost at spyware, it
targets many other possibilities including the infamous Sony rootkit
case and other attempts by software or app developers to unexpectedly
collect personal information or interfere with a user's computer. It
could also have an impact on some digital rights management systems,
raising interesting questions about the interaction between these
requirements and the digital lock rules in Bill C-11.
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