Sucking The Air Out of the Room

SO YESTERDAY WAS the deadline to write letters to the CRTC over the issue of carriage fees.

Can we all go back to worrying about H1N1 now?

Two articles tackle the subject and come to different conclusions. Andrew Coyne thinks both sides have a point.

John Doyle puts this one at the foot of the cable co's, while maintaining a healthy viewer-skeptic perspective on the "importance" of the issue. [And still managing to slip in a passive-aggressive dig at Canadian creatives. Wait, sorry. "Creatives."]

The Doyleian dyspepsia notwithstanding, it truly is unfortunate that this sad display of corporate tantrum-throwing has come up at all. We are, after all, talking about profitable businesses here. Yes, broadcast networks have taken it on the chin lately with the ad dip (after doing nothing to plan for it...did no one have the talk about the boom and bust cycle?) but if you ad that to a rebounding economy, wildly increased numbers due to the PPM sampling switch, and the new data that suggests, lo & behold, PVR viewing doesn't necessarily mean commercial skipping, it's a little early to call chicken little on that business. Oh, and the audience that the broadcast networks have lost have largely gone to specialty channels -- which they

all own.

On the cable side -- the CRTC specifically told them to eat the Local Programming Improvement Fee as a cost of doing business -- a business that made them $2 billion last year, thanks, and they basically said "Go fug yourself."

So the distortions of "Stop the TV Tax" and "Local TV Matters" was born.

The truth is that Cable/Satellite and Broadcasters in this country have been fighting this same fight for YEARS. It's been before the CRTC no less than three times. They've been admonished and told to work it out themselves, and instead we get this crazy display asking us to pick sides. Pick sides? Dude, I have car payments, rent to pay and personal relationships to screw up!

This arcane little business issue has monopolized coverage and attention on the broadcast front for a long time -- and meanwhile, real issues, big issues that affect people and jobs and policy and stuff -- get pushed further and further off. We haven't had a review of the Broadcast framework in this country since the disastrous policy changes of 1999. Doesn't matter. It's pushed.

Most of the broadcasters have done their cap-in-hand best in their license renewal hearings to make the case that Gosh, they just can't afford to make Canadian programs ... but the license renewals? Pushed. Nope. Nothing can happen, nothing can advance nothing can get talked about because we have to talk about carriage fees AGAIN.

The point that Doyle nosed toward in his article and didn't quite come out and say is worth exploring a little further:

Take note of this: Last week in the United States, Fox and CBS announced they're pushing cable companies for fees. The Canadian situation is not unique. Stop the grandiosity and the bickering and look at the big picture...

I urge you to find the report I saw in The Wall Street Journal. The gist is this: "Television-network owners News Corp. and CBS Corp. are pushing cable operators to pay monthly fees to carry their broadcast TV stations." Sound familiar? News Corp. owns Fox. That mean two of the four major U.S. networks, Fox and CBS, are demanding fees from cable companies that usually carry their stations free. According to the Journal story, CBS has been quietly pushing this agenda for some time and has had some success.

The extension that comes out of that last line is the true story here.

Why has CBS been "quietly pushing" the issue in the U.S. -- a country where "quietly pushing" isn't usually the M.O.? Because it's an inter-industry issue. It's conceded that it's something that the public won't care about, and shouldn't have to care about.

Contrast that with the loud, distorted, aggressive demands here that you be onside with one group's spin or the other's and I think you get an ugly window into the truth of media ownership and concentration in Canada. It goes beyond being out of touch; it actually translates into feeling that their concerns trump everyone else's.

These corporations feel such a sense of noblesse oblige that they feel that they should be able to seize the agenda whenever they want. They're not afraid of the CRTC, which cannot issue fines, unlike its American counterpart, the FCC. They're both used to getting whatever they want at the Commission. And along the way, they don't care if they compromise their news divisions, or if CBC's signing on to the Broadcaster side opens them to charges that they're trying to 'double-dip' from Canadians, or even if one side of the business harms the other...cause that's the crazy thing -- start digging into the ownership structure and you'll see that half the time, these are different divisions of the same corporate group fighting each other.

It's mad.

And it sucks up all the air, everything that could possibly be said about the TV business -- so we can't discuss our shows, we can't talk about new media opportunities or what comes next. And the weariness engendered in the public means that they go "pox on both your houses", painting the whole TV industry black.

Try, in that environment, to engage on the subject that we're actually making inroads with homegrown programming. Nope. Try being part of the Creative Guilds, who wait on the sidelines for this ridiculous Big Business Wrestlemania to conclude so we can have that TV business review we've been waiting a decade for. Or to present at the license renewals so we can fight -- again -- the chicken littles who want to complete the transition to being American re-broadcasters.

Now, we're guilty now and then of trying to appeal to the public too. With tiny emails, and blogs, and pathetic rallies in the cold and the rain, because we can't afford $50 Grand per commercial break. But what can you do? We're caught in a tough place. What's the alternative? Trundle up to the commission and get patted on the head with the usual "there there" paternalism, while Mommy Cable and Daddy Broadcaster pull Virginia Woolf out in the lobby... and then book ten lobbying appointments by the time the Writers Guild Staff can retire for a wee and a cup of Ovaltine?

It's an amazing mirror moment.

Oh. And then there's this. See? The business that should go on behind closed doors they want everyone to weigh in on...and the stuff that maybe should be, um, talked about -- happens in secret.

Unseemly it is, I tells ya.