CRTC LIKELY TO MAKE ITS RULES STICK Forcing better deal for satellite radio Antonia Zerbisias – Toronto Star There was no maple-syrup-pure Canadian solution to the conundrum of U.S. satellite radio.
But, with yesterday's decision, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission managed to ensure that at least some Canadian culture would adhere to American birds.
Now the question is, will the U.S. satellite operators tell their Canadian partners to stick it?
Throughout the history of broadcasting in Canada — and note that I did not say the history of Canadian broadcasting — the challenge has been to make the industry ours.
In the 1920s, when powerful U.S. radio stations were rolling over the Canadian airwaves, the government launched a commission that eventually led to the Conservatives creating the first broadcast watchdog and, later, the CBC.
In the 1960s and 1970s, when cable distribution threatened to overwhelm Canadian TV with American signals, the CRTC stepped in to ensure that Canadian stories were being told.
Incredibly, and against the most awesome odds, these efforts have been, so far, relatively successful, resulting in today's abundance of Canadian choices on the radio and TV dials.
But it's virtually all been accomplished by regulatory fiat.
I can't recall a single Canadian media mogul, except perhaps for the visionary Moses Znaimer, late of CHUM/City, standing up and offering to wedge in more home-grown entertainment between the U.S. simulcasts.
In every single licensing or licence renewal procedure, half the wrangling is over the Cancon requirements expected and avoided, satisfied and shirked. Media executives always end up wah-wah-wahing about how more is not feasible, not do-able, not possible, not profitable, not watchable.
Which is why, last fall, the two Canadian applications for delivery of U.S.-based satellite radio operations went before the CRTC with the line that only so much Canadian content could be carried on the services, both for technological/capacity reasons and cultural considerations.
After all, said Sirius Canada Radio, 20 per cent owned by Sirius Satellite Radio, and Canadian Satellite Radio, affiliated with XM Satellite Radio, the birds are American-owned. There are only so many channels available for Canadian content. We can't expect them to bump popular U.S. music channels to make way for unknown northern lights. Canadian artists should be thrilled that they'll be getting southern exposure on the four home-grown channels each applicant originally proposed.
What's more, said many satellite radio proponents, the medium doesn't use the Canadian public airwaves. So the CRTC should just butt out with its Canadian content demands. Which is actually not true since both services will rely on terrestrial transmitters to fill in the distribution gaps.
But despite that detail, the fact is that the CRTC really did face a new challenge with satellite radio: It could not control the distributors at source the way it can with Canadian cable or TV satellite operators.
But it could force the would-be domestic players to go back to their partners and negotiate a better deal for Canada.
That's exactly what yesterday's satellite radio licensing decisions demand when they stipulate that both Canadian Satellite Radio and Sirius Canada Radio can do better than what they had originally offered.
Instead of Canadian Satellite's four proposed Canadian channels (out of some 150) and Sirius's eventual five (out of approximately 120), now both have to program eight, with no more than nine U.S. channels for every Canadian offering.
There's more: each channel must contain a minimum of 85 per cent Canadian content, each must run 25 per cent new music, defined as having been released within six months, and each must ensure that 25 per cent of the playlists come from emerging talent, meaning performers who have never made it on a music chart.
One reason that the CRTC will likely get away with these increased demands is because the satellite radio technology is changing so fast that capacity is becoming less of an issue.
Consider that, at the time of the hearings, Sirius could only offer 78 channels. Now it is up to 125. Just this week, it announced it has developed new proprietary technology that would beef up its network capacity by 25 per cent.
This could explain why, instead of grumbling about the increased requirements yesterday, Sirius Canada president and CEO Kevin Shea said the CRTC delivered "a reasonable and creative framework."
As for Canadian Satellite head John Bitove Jr., he doesn't seem to believe that the new stipulations are deal-killers.
"We have some work to do with XM to try to renegotiate the deal we had when we proposed our licence to the CRTC last fall," he told The Canadian Press.
One consideration is, how do these licence decisions affect the application by CHUM/Astral for a more modest, terrestrial-based digital audio service consisting of 50 channels, all originating from Canada?
The initial signals don't seem promising, especially since the satellite services will reach more Canadians and offer greater channel choice and big-ticket programming such as Howard Stern.
But the larger issue is, what do conventional radio stations now do?
Already the Canadian Association of Broadcasters is making noises about the uneven playing field, and how its members must air far more Canadian music. But they must be grateful that the CRTC has decreed that the satellite players will not be able to cut in on their local news, weather and traffic turf. There will be no such content on satellite radio.
That, plus the satellite channels will be subject to the same rules regarding abusive content and offensive language.
In the end, the CRTC had to negotiate a very high wire on this decision.
It had to do it on the back of American giants.
Chances are, we have not heard the last of this. |