Just who is the CRTC protecting? Articles / Editorial Posted by Steve_Hat on Nov 16, 2003 - 02:02 PM Opinion by Steve Hatton (TV Hat [1]) Canadian broadcasters everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief. The CRTC said no, on November 7th, to a request from the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) to carry some of the most popular U.S. cable networks such as HBO, ESPN, Fox News Channel, Fox Regional Sports Net Channels, Starz, Nickelodeon Kids… the list goes on and on. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) argued that they had our best interest at heart because competition wouldn’t be good for Canadian viewers. “It’s hard to imagine how [Canadian services] would have been able to continue to acquire program rights for broadcast in Canada when those American services would have been broadcasting those programs directly,” said CAB president Glenn O'Farrell. In other words, HBO might not want to sell The Sopranos to CTV or even The Movie Network if Canadian viewers could watch it directly from HBO. And since these U.S. services would have been available on digital cable only, many of us, in theory, would have had to pay extra for cable hits such as Oz and Sex in the City. But before we thank O'Farrell for saving our favourite American shows, lets examine the facts. Would someone like MTV Networks, for an example, really want to yank The Osbournes off of CTV if we were able to watch MTV on digital cable? Wait a minute! We already can watch MTV, or a Canadian clone of it at least. MTV Canada had already been carrying The Osbournes when CTV decided to purchase the rights. Craig Broadcast Systems, the owner of MTV Canada, was more than happy to share. Could The Osbournes just be a lucky exception? Well no. The CTV schedule is filled with American shows that are carried by other channels, not just on digital cable but even on basic cable. For example, in Montreal you don’t have to wait until 5 PM to watch Dr. Phil on CTV because it also airs at 10 AM via the local CBS feed. Canadians with digital cable can also watch Charmed on the WB almost a full week before it airs on CTV. History proves that the CAB argument just isn’t true. What the CAB has really done is a play a game of reverse psychological. Who else would argue that more American channels would somehow make it difficult for us to watch American television? But what is really disturbing about this CRTC decision is that it smells like blatant censorship. Even a die-hard sports fan, who already subscribes to every single Canadian sports network imaginably, even Leaf TV, still wouldn’t be able to subscribe to ESPN because that would somehow be considered a threat to very same channels that the individual would already be paying to support. Even if that person happened to be a millionaire and wanted to pay a million dollars, just to compensate the CAB for whatever ad revenue our industry would lose as direct result of watching ESPN (we all know that our broadcast system could sure use a million dollars right now), and even if that sports fan also promised to watch five hours of curling for every… Well you get the point. ESPN is completely illegal. The CRTC does need to protect Canadian content, but aren’t they doing enough already? ESPN isn’t going to come to basic cable on channel 13 and bump the CBC up to channel 105 any time soon. CBC Toronto isn’t about to suddenly switch affiliation to become Fox 5 Toronto. If it did happen, then most Canadians, myself included, would argue that the CRTC wasn’t doing its job. But until then, can’t we compromise a little. Let’s not totally disagree with the CRTC or the CAB over the logic behind blocking the U.S. channels. Their argument is that it needed to be done to protect both Canadian broadcasters and Canadian viewers. We know they were at least half right. This article is from CHANNEL CANADA   http://www.channelcanada.com/ The URL for this story is:   http://www.channelcanada.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=395 Links in this article   [1] http://www.geocities.com/tvhatton