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| Astral Media Presents Position to the CRTC |
| Posted
on Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - 09:59 AM |
At a public hearing held October 26th, Astral Media Inc. presented its comments to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regarding the five applications submitted in response to the CRTC's Call for Applications for a Broadcasting License to Carry on a National, General Interest Pay Television Undertaking.
Astral Media, operator of The Movie Network and Super Ecran, expressed concerns relating to the long-term negative impact that licensing additional pay-TV services will have on consumers, the Canadian production community and the Canadian broadcasting system overall.
In its presentation, Astral Media emphasized the fact that the new pay-TV applicants will bring no additional program diversity to the system and will only serve to duplicate or split the existing program offering. Under the exclusive programming scenario proposed by applicants such as Spotlight Television and Archambault, the consumer will have to pay more to obtain two or more services in order to receive the full menu of programming that they currently receive on a single service, such as The Movie Network or Super Ecran. Under the non-exclusive scenario proposed by Allarco Entertainment, consumers will be faced with channels that are duplicative of existing services.
"It's important to examine the definition of choice as it is being used by the applicants. When you strip away the rhetoric, you see that what the applicants are proposing is not new or different content, but rather just more channels showing the same content that is already currently broadcast in Canada," said John Riley, President of Astral Television Networks. "The Movie Network and Super Ecran currently offer the vast majority of U.S. studio films, including HBO and Showtime, together with every Canadian theatrically released feature film and a robust slate of Canadian dramatic series. Canadians have one of the most diverse, comprehensive and affordable pay-television offerings in the world. The applicants' proposals threaten to jeopardize this system, while offering no recognizable benefit."
In its written intervention and in today's presentation, Astral Media also put forth data revealing that Canadian film producers will not benefit from the addition of new pay-TV services and may in fact lose funds given that individual service revenues and commensurate Canadian content requirements are likely to decline in a multiple service model.
"U.S studios will be the only winners if new services are licensed, as competition for prime U.S. content, already available in Canada, will fuel a bidding war between services, driving up the cost of programming," said Riley.
Drawing upon the European experience, Astral Media argued that in a small market such as Québec the negative impact on the system would be compounded. "In a market like Québec, which is 42 times smaller than that of the U.S., the introduction of a second pay-TV service would have a devastating effect on choice, on content and on the ability to support Québec-based filmmakers," said Johanne Saint-Laurent, Vice-President and General Manager, Astral Télé Réseaux.
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