The way to save local TV programming?

Broadcasting companies, such as CanWest Global and CTV, are lobbying the federal government and the CRTC to allow "fee-for-carriage", a system where broadcasters could charge cable companies for the privilege of carrying the station. Supporters say it's essential if local TV operations, such as CH TV,  are to survive as the existing business model, where broadcasters make most of their money from advertising, no longer works and is not sustainable. Critics charge this alternative is unfair to consumers, as cable companies will just turn around and pass on the extra cost to cable subscribers. At minimum, consumers should be allowed to opt out if they don't want to pay what amounts to a subscription for local TV stations, critics argue. What do you think? Should the networks that own local TV stations be allowed to charge cable companies? What will it take to save local TV?

Comments

[Steveo]

If you strip down all the bravado the simple fact is that cable companies are charging us to distribute content they get for free from Canadian broadcasters and pay for from American broadcasters.

Soon anyone using rabbit ears won't be able to get any content, and will be forced to use a cable/satellite provider for any TV content.

They like selling something they get for free, and if they have to now pay for it, they threaten to pass those charges on because this impacts their profit margin.

While I appreciate the concept of Capitalism is to maximize profits, it is absurdly unfair to not pay for something you profit from selling.

And equally unfair to charge the customer more when your profits are very healthy when you have to actually pay for what you sell.

Sometimes corporations need to come to the hard realization that they need to do the right thing.

Usually they do it only when forced too... and this is where the powers that be here need to give them a "nudge"...

[Sue French]

I agree 100+ channels and nothing to watch ... mostly garbage. I want my local station with my local news and whew they want to get rid of it ... well you will get rid on me too. The only other station I watch is HPI and have to pay about $17 more a month for it ......think I will just have to watch everything online ...

[ches]

I agree with all of the above.Tv is already too expensive. Also when you can pick and pay for the channels you want they cost more than buying the packages of garbage that no one wants. We get about 3 local channels here but we mainly only watch one so do we end up paying for all local channels across the country??????????

[JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO]

CanWest offers no local programming worthy of the name.

It contributes nothing - absolutely nothing - to our city.

It is a junk network run out of Alberta and buying as much cheap, mindless programming as it can.

[JAMES HUNTER]

Rogers's fees are going up. Really TV in general is garbage. Y'all should try out this invention called the internet. You can watch shows on it and really don't have to see commercials if you don't want to. The reason soap operas are called soap operas is because the earlier ones were literally owned by soap companies. They dictated the script, they chose the plot. The Internet is about a free revolution where you can watch whatever you choose. When the time comes to pay, you can go to a website that has shows or films you appreciate and purchase a subscription. It's quite simple. All the money goes to the artist(s) or directors. With computer generated graphics, you don't often need the grand-Hollywood production budgets of the past and we have a film industry in this country. Let's start working on a new business model instead of playing these Time Warner rules that clearly even have influence on things like hockey. Down with advertising. Down with cable. Down with the misinformation and intentional stupidity of Faux News and CNN. Jamie is not kidding here folks. If you set up a completely level playing field like that, you allow for local programs to compete if there's truly a demand for it... If not, it'll die and our taxes won't be wasted keeping it running like GM. That'll give new opportunity for another local entertainment program to become popular. It's a natural cycle that we should not try to control. Same with newspapers and magazines like Rolling Stone. We need to show these newspaper-ad lords that we won't read their wasteful paper anymore either. You really gotta have good content now for people to read you... Not just a location on the street corner where you get free news stand advertising.

[Ernest T. Bass]

I like and subscribe to the "cancel your cable tv and download what you want to watch sans commercials"approach.the fta satelite is down because of digital broadcasting. .phew!no more commercials.You all may have noticed too that you can "buy" more bandwidth @$1.50/gig.after your initial 60gig/month or whatever it is in your particular case.Unlike other countries where bandwidth is unlimited.

[coupe6652]

Local stations are suffering for two reasons .....American Television shows and the ineptness of the CRTC. CTV, Global have been buying up American TV shows at huge costs. The CRTC in their own ineptness tells these networks they must have so much Canadian content in their weekly broadcasts. Now add on to this they allow these networks to buy up useless and underachieving pay networks that the idiots at the CRTC gave licenses to in the first place.

Canwest Global has been a disaster for many years. Greed by the Isper family has given in my opinion Canadian Television a bad reputation. How....I give Entertainment Tonight Canada! This is an original program that meets the CRTC Canadian Content rules. Even though most of the stories are about American Stars with a dab of Canadian content for the CRTC. How about the E! Network! Another copy cat of an American network. These guys have never had an original idea in their life. Where do they get the money for these shows, they move the money from local stations into their network budgets and say we don't have enough money to run the local stations. CTV is just as guilty if not more.

The first thing that is needed is to clean house at the CRTC. The second thing that is needed is to revoke licsencse of inane stations such as Deja Vu and so on. There are far too many to go on. Put limits on the amount of money that can be spent on American shows. Allow competition with cable companies. That would shake the foundations right to the core of the problem. The Canadian public has no idea how much the cable companies control the CRTC. An example would be the first Digital Televisons that were sold when digital television was ready to burst on the market. These original sets had the converters built right in them. If I am correct I believe they are built in them in Europe. The cable companies went to the CRTC and said they needed to make money so they got them to approve customers had to buy the converter boxes from them. Huge profits for cable and now you can not find a TV that can convert the digital signals that are sent via the cable companies.

I can go on and on but as far as I am concerned the CRTC has yet to make a decision that has been favourable to the Canadian public and I do not believe they will now. So everyone should get ready to shell out more money because the only ones that can help us are too worried whether they are going to get re elected.

[Ted]

Why don't local TV stations give away antennas and avoid the cable problem altogether?

[Brian]

If cable companies are forced to pay the broadcasters they will drop them, and, once they're no longer on cable they will completely lose the ability to sell commercials, since I doubt advertisers will want to pay for a station that is only picked up by people using antennas.

[Tiny Talent Time]

What do you think? Should the networks that own local TV
stations be allowed to charge cable companies?
What will it take to save local TV?

You're asking us hobby bloggers for television's silver bullet?
You must be joking! It's too late, they've already shot their own footage's.

Besides, the last I heard good consultants were being paid $2700 per day.
And got free tea!
Please don't look here for sympathy.

[Ed]

I have worked at a cable conglomerate and they find very creative ways to pass along costing to the consumer. Why should you have to pay for MULTIPLE channels you never watch in order to obtain ONE channel you do want? Reality is that the garbage channels could never attract advertisers to keep them afloat on their own. Now more than ever, infomercials are dominating the daytime slots. This is how badly new shows and creative writers are needed. I remember when the companies stated that carrying infomercials helped keep cable costs down. File that lie, along with the others the useless CRTC bought, hook, line, payola, and sinker. Reality shows. What a joke, they are embarrassing and insult the public. Formula shows, build a motorcycle, house, refurbish a car, relationships, all follow Jerry Springer’s formula.

Please tell me why I should support a Canadian embarrassment. I pay enough for garbage TV just to see a few channels. What next, the Paris Hilton, Britney, Madonna adopts trendy-foreign-pet-child, or Famous Idiots Scandal Channels. Hell, I already pay taxes to see that elected garbage from Ottawa, (CPAC).

If local TV would not become Local Tabloid Fodder, they would have no craving to find viewers, but to support a Channel of Underachievers is out of the question. Why do they superimpose the station logo? Am I so stupid that my memory cannot figure out the channel I selected, and why during movies and important information do they sideswipe the main image into a postage stamp window so that I must see what is coming up on the weekend. It is not an emergency notice of some impending life threatening situation.

We pay enough for underachievers who focus on profit over quality. Give us Rolls Royce TV and it will thrive, but to pay for Pinto TV, at Rolls Royce prices, thanks, but no thanks. I didn’t fall off the turnip wagon that just passed by.

I truly believe that TV Stations have become their own worst enemy at promoting an audience. We have enough abuse of citizen welfare, and now TV welfare wishes to become a thriving playground. I guess they took their inclination from eHealth, and Ontario Hydro.

[Donald J. Lester]

Saving local TV programming? Wow.. another plea from governments to impose further costs on the consumer. This is a private enterprise who reaps it's profit from advertising. This scenario is similar to the auto industry. Private enterprise that have public recognition and have political clout believe that they have the inherent rights to impose their economic failures of the public. While they use manipulative emotional arguments "save our local programming".

What seems to be transpiring is the reign of socialism that embodies this attitude. This foothold creates the everlasting hook, and that once this hook has been well secured it is the never ending mechanism for irresponsibility, and establishes an eternal right to over burden the public. Moreover it is the door way to the public's purse. Therefore, if private enterprise can't sustain it's self based on consumer demand, perhaps it's time has come to an end.

Fundamentally such industries adhere to the concept of a bottomless pit and rather accepting that their industry has met it's economic saturation point in time, it fails to hold it's overhead and attempts to legitimize is down fall through government sanctions. This being the beginning and down fall to competitive creativity in a free and democratic industrial state.

[Allan]

Only if they put on better programs and remove the trash they have on now!

[Michelle Hruschka]

I do not watch TV anymore, as most the stuff on it is garbage anyways. Keep paying more suckers.

[steveg]

the local stations should be able to charge the cable companies if the cable companies replace the origninal comercials with their own. The cable companies should not be allowed to get free programming and revenue from commercials they have sold to be dubbed over the originals

[Jamie]

I dropped my television cable because there is virtually never anything on worth watching & was sick of paying $50/month for crap. I still pay $54 monthly for high speed & from that I get about 7 channels. If they pass the charges along to the end user, more people will drop it & do what I do...download the shows I want to watch minutes after they air, commercial free!!!