ONE OF THE big arguments of history is what drives human history more -- great events or great people. It's a fascinating argument. But an equally interesting little eddy is how critical mass is achieved for an idea. When Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point, he sort of put into words something that most of us sensed, or knew from our own lives. We're taught that things change slowly. But they don't. Not really. Things kind of tend to stay the same, and then something happens and suddenly there's a critical mass and whooosh, change happens faster than you could possibly imagine. The Soviet Union and communism had been on the ropes for awhile, but when that Wall fell, it was game over. We heard about subprime mortgages in crisis for a long time -- but Bear Sterns went down, and suddenly the whole financial system quickly imploded and we plunged into recession. The British Colonists had been grumbling and complaining for years, but when Great Britain passed the Intolerable Acts, the tea went into Boston Harbour and British North America began to unravel.
Canadians are a largely complacent people. A little smug, and not prone to rash displays. There might be some people who get a little bent out of shape about subjects like media concentration and taxation levels, but very few people are actually moved enough to do something about it.
So we have the situation we have today. Cell phone service in this country is some of the most expensive and least robust of anywhere in the industrialized world. On Text messages, the industry markup is 4900 percent. Cable and satellite services for most people have gone up something like 30% since the sector was largely deregulated a few years ago. The big three or four companies control most of the pipe money -- delivering tv and internet to the majority of the country. They've made record profits over the last few years, $2 billion last year -- off you and me, while enjoying robust regulatory protection.
On the broadcast side, well, if you've read this blog before, you know the drift of that. They've done more to spend money on U.S. programming, while consolidating, and cutting local TV coverage to the bone. My part of the industry has suffered a lot. And the broadcasters spent huge amounts of money gobbling each other up, and made, again, hand over fist profits, until they latest downturn where they decided the sky was falling -- and brazenly turned around and said that the active strategy of consolidation that they'd been pursuing for years, wasn't the reason that local TV had become so anemic. Nope, apparently everything was fine until Bear Stearns went into the tank, and GM pulled the plug on advertising.
We've been treated (okay, I concede, it wasn't much of a treat, and you probably weren't paying attention anyway) to an ugly squabble for the last couple of years between the cablers and the broadcasters. It's over money, as everything is. The broadcasters want to get paid for their valuable signals that duplicate what you already get on the U.S. networks, and the Cablers say they shouldn't have to do anything to support the system, and if they're made to pay into a fund that saves local tv or promotes Canadian creative drama, or buys pony rides for sick kids, well, that's a tax and they're just going to pass it on to you and me -- like they've passed on those massive increases over the last few years, for substandard service.
Oh there's other neato stuff around the rims, too....like the fact that they want to be able to shape internet traffic -- so they'll sell you on blazing hot speeds and then cut off the faucet when you try to get what you paid for. They also want to set rates that favour their businesses -- specifically, usage-based rates for internet pipe that makes it very difficult for the 20% of the market that isn't one of those big five Telecommunications behemoths to try and offer better service to Canadians.
In any case, with all those regs in place that mean you can't seek out a real competitor, (I mean, wow, I can choose between Rogers and Bell? Lucky me. Now, for my next choice, I get to choose between death by hanging or drowning, right?) aren't we all lucky that we have somebody watching out for us?
Who am I talking about? The CRTC, of course.
Except, of course, they don't. They never have. The CRTC doesn't work for you and me. They're a bureaucratic organization that's basically bought and paid for by the industries they regulate.
Little brushfires over things like net neutrality might have started the ball rolling, but a few recent, very tin-eared decisions and processes have stripped the veneer away from the game. First, there was that wonderful case in the last broadcaster hearings where they went behind closed doors and then erased the redacted transcripts of what was said. Then there was the screw up of the Do Not Call list, and the fact that now the CRTC is going behind closed doors AGAIN, in order to PROTECT the companies that have violated that list.
That's what they do. They protect companies. Not you. And not me.
In classic netgeek fashion, it's the internet decision last week that started an ugly ball rolling. A very slick, quite professional campaign to Dissolve The CRTC. When the light is shone upon the dark recesses of the commission, it's pretty hard to argue against the point that the commissioners are clearly too close to the industries they regulate.
But yesterday, the other crying baby, the broadcasters -- were served up a slice of failure pie that takes that grassroots campaign and elevates it to something else.
In the midst of a horrific local storm, with Tornadoes touching down all over the city, local TV failed in the most profound way possible to inform its citizens. If you ask "what am I paying for?" then based on yesterday, the clear answer is nothing. Nothing at all. As Jim Henshaw put it:
Since the lightning was now crackling the radio so much it was unlistenable and local television was in news hour mode, I went back to the TV to find out what was happening. I learned that the Lockerbie bomber had been released, the Prime Minister was enjoying his trip through the Arctic and Hurricane Bill was threatening Bermuda. Nothing about what was happening right outside my window and less than 30 clicks from where these broadcasts were originating. To be sure, there had been a mention of Durham, where the first Tornado had hit an hour earlier and that there were “suspected” touch downs of funnel clouds in Vaughn and my hometown of Newmarket. But no details. No raw video from a courageous videographer. No field reporters ducking flying cows. In the centralized model of Canadian local TV I’d predictedmonths ago but never thought might ever personally affect me, the two million people who live just beyond the Greater Toronto Area had no television service addressing the imminent threat they all faced. Instead, I was treated to the same pre-packaged news segments, the same smiling meat puppets and the same banal “Sparky, what the heck’s happened to my Blue Jays?” banter.
People who grow up in Toronto are used to the frequent storm crawls and radar
messages that run on the Buffalo stations whenever there's a storm. Our local stations here couldn't even muster that much yesterday -- except in one case, long after the storms had already crested.
Interestingly enough, I have to say that I was out on the road yesterday, listening to my Ipod, and had no idea how really bad the storm was, until I got an email alert on my phone -- from CBC.CA. That's right. The poor, maligned, complained about CBC dropped an alert in my inbox that said Tornadoes in Toronto and spelled out the severity of the storm in dire enough terms that I immediately found a parking garage and waited out the deluge.
Go read Jim Henshaw's justifiably livid accounting of the utter failure of local TV during the storm. Better yet, print it out, mail it to your MP with a big red "WTF?" written across the top. Remember, this is local TV in Toronto, a city of TWO MILLION people -- not Regina or Red Deer or Saint John. Ask yourself if you think Michel Arpin and the merry band of CRTC commissioners are sweating yet?
A big bowl of #fail with sadness sauce. And maybe, if we're very lucky, and people keep the heat on-- a tipping point.
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