Saving Local Television
All weekend CTV’s news channel and their ‘A’ channel affiliates put on their cheerleading outfits and grabbed the pompoms to rally around their self-serving ‘Save Local TV’ campaign.
The campaign is an orchestrated effort by CTV and Global to sway public opinion in favour of a CRTC amendment that would force cable companies to pay for signals from conventional broadcasters such as CTV, Global and the CBC.
The cable providers have not been amused. On Friday, Rogers, Telus, Cogeco and others have filed a complaint with the CRTC that CTV has violated the Broadcasting Act by airing one-sided and unbalanced coverage of its own advocacy campaign. Phil Lind, the Vice Chairman of Rogers called it “one-sided reporting masquerading as ‘real news’.”
The whole thing makes a mockery of CTV’s journalistic independence, Lind called a “blatant violation of respected journalistic principles.”
TV columnist Bill Brioux wrote a list of 25 worthier causes than the Save Local TV campaign, number 23 is hiring more middle managers at the CBC, and number 24 is bringing back Steven and Chris.
|
Email This Post |
| The CRTC, The Media Landscape |
Where in the Broadcasting Act does it say the privates have to be unbiased?
It’s probably important to note that the carriage-fee debate has been going on for quite some time, predating the economic crisis, and the CBC has been involved and in favor of it. It’s not like CTV and Global woke up last Monday and went “heeeyyyy, those guys have some cash…”
Chances are the only reason the CBC’s not involved in this campaign is because they would be the only player affected by the Broadcasting Act – so, yet another constraint not shared by the rest of the industry.
CTV,CBC,Global — I cannot recall the last time I watched any of them. “Local tv”? You mean, here in Kelowna, if I don’t pay extra on my cable bill, I might not be able to see what Britney Spears is doing? Pfui.
The problem is not who has the money. The central issue with the way this information is being presented is the fact that CTV’s argument is solely designed to bend public opinion by showing how the big, mean cable and satellite industries are hurting us by not paying CTV and Global fees that they certainly don’t deserve.
Let’s be reminded that the main reason why they’re not paid carriage fees is because they are available as free-to-air channels. In fact, these networks should be thankful that cable and satellite companies offer their signals to subscribers at all. How is a satellite company ripping off subscribers by carrying a signal that is available to them for free anyways? Wouldn’t they be ripped off if they actually had to pay for something that is free…?
@Chech: a basic cable package runs me about $40 a month all told. The infrastructure for it was already in place, it hasn’t required maintenance. It pretty much just has the networks and a bit of added value in the VOD offering, which again is mostly network television. So it’s not like the cable companies are not making money off it. And the way cable is packaged, I need to pay for that basic package to get at any speciality channels I might actually want. So it’s not like I can avoid it.
Then, if you look at more expensive packages, the cable companies rebroadcast local stations country-wide, which effectively allows subscribers to do a crude kind of timeshifting, adding significant value to the cable companies’ offering over OTA broadcasts.
It is amusing to watch CTV Globemedia trying to paint itself as the little guy, and this campaign has astroturfing disaster written all over it, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a point.
“How is a satellite company ripping off subscribers by carrying a signal that is available to them for free anyways?”
They are ripping off subscribes by charging them $34.95 a month for basic cable.
A locals only package should be available for maybe $9.95 not $34.95.
CTV,CBC,Global — I cannot recall the last time I watched any of them. “Local tv”? You mean, here in Kelowna, if I don’t pay extra on my cable bill, I might not be able to see what Britney Spears is doing? Pfui.
But Grandad, you’ll also miss out on info on what those darned kids are up to with their hoodies and such, not to mention updates on the next Kelowna apple sauce festival. This information is vital to continued maintenance of a decent level of crochetiness.
[...] It’s worth pointing out that the CBC doesn’t seem particularly interested in joining CTV and Canwest on this issue, despite the fact that they may benefit. addthis_pub = ‘mastermaq’;addthis_logo = [...]
Let me see if i get this right.
CBC, which gets one billion in taxpayer dollars a year, runs commercials, outbids for American programs, runs LESS local and network news, and commissions and sells LESS canadian produced entertainment than the Privates .. is NOT self serving.
But private stations pushing for fee-for carriage from the Cable Industry (which will also help the CBC) .. is the bad guy.
Here’s an idea.
Stop taking government funding, and then put on your hair-shirt.
I look forward to Canadian Public Broadcasting fundraising drives where you can hock Inuit throat singing cds for a $100 donation. Maybe you can get some DVD sales for those great CBC production successes like “Little Mosque on the Prairie” and “The One”
Sorry, a bit late to the party on this, but I noticed in your second paragraph you state the campaign is “an orchestrated effort by CTV and Global …”
This was a CTV initiative, as the site you point to within the same blog post reveals. Neither Global nor Canwest had anything to do with it.
Speaking only for myself, I have a real ethical problem with CTV turning over its news properties to promote a political stance.
I don’t agree that satellite companies should get to leech CBC/local content and force a profit off of it. Isn’t this why we have copyright? Maybe if CBC could get Bell ExpressVu et al to transmit these supposedly “free to air” channels without nagravision encryption, that would help make CBC more accessible to those not able/willing to spend $40/month on packages they’re not going to watch. Currently the only way to watch CBC outside of a big metro area is to have a massive analog antenna or c-band dish pointed at Anik F1. Also why in the hell are CBC not trasmitting ATSC or DVB-T in Nova Scotia yet. If regular folks could pull in locals unencrypted with a regular 18″ dish, that could win the fight, or at least even the playing field against satellite companies.