Angry in the Great White North

The government is looking to help out Canada's private broadcasters:

The Harper government is considering help for Canada's troubled private TV broadcasters, including the possibility of looser regulations and tax changes.

Heritage Minister James Moore said yesterday the cabinet is aware of the threat to local news content should more local stations close.

He confirmed that the government is looking specifically at how to assist Canwest Global Communications, which is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. "We're mindful of that and we're thinking about whether or not there's anything the government can do, but I can't be any more specific than that right now," Moore said.

He hinted the help could come in the form of looser regulations and tax system changes, which would also help other private networks.

No mention of a bailout, which is good news.  Indeed, CanWest doesn't want a bailout.  [How do I know this?  Never you mind!]  CanWest wants fairness in the rules.  CanWest just wants the rules of the game changed so that there is a reasonable chance at succeeding as a broadcaster in Canada.

I've written about the mess the CRTC has created at some length.  These rules were set by the CRTC.  And yet, incredibly, the CRTC seems to think that there is no urgency to change the rules:

The Commons Heritage committee has struck a sub-committee to look at the issue of the broadcasting industry, and has summoned CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein to appear next week. Industry watchers expect von Finckenstein will be pressed to explain why fee for carriage is such a bad idea.

Von Finckenstein has publicly recognized that the conventional TV "model is broken" in an age when more and more viewers are watching specialty channels and Internet broadcasts, and with an economic crisis swallowing up advertisers. He has asked the industry to submit their views on how the regulatory regime should be changed going forward.

Submit their views?  And what has CanWest been doing all these years?

The CRTC has obstinately refused to listen to warnings from the industry that we would reach this point one day.  I suppose that as long as the government of the day (the Liberals) benefited from having grateful content producers peddling the Liberal version of Canada via broadcasters held hostage by the CRTC, the CRTC was safe.

I don't think the CRTC is safe anymore.

But if the current Conservative government simply throws money at CanWest and CTVglobemedia, eliminates their debts, guarantees loans, and otherwise wipes out the current debt problems, then it is the CRTC that is being bailed out.  The crisis will have passed without dealing with the root cause -- the CRTC regime under which broadcasters are forced to operate.

We must not allow that to happen, or one day, we'll be doing this all over again.

The CRTC has to be bypassed.  The government ought to directly rework the rules so that Canadian private broadcasters are recognized as companies in the business of turning a profit, and not a conduit through which government social engineers spoon feed unpalatable content to Canadians, all funded by frustrated advertisers.

Do you want to know who makes the best Canadian content being broadcast on television today?  Beer companies.   They really understand Canadians. 

They produce content for profit that is funny and engaging and true.

And they pay to put their content on the air!

I don't know there is enough beer commercial content to fill a schedule, but we ought to move in a direction in which clever profit-motivated Canadians are allowed to benefit from creating content or delivering it. 

Ideally, the CRTC sorts out which frequencies are used, make certain call letters are inadvertently duplicated by different radio or television broadcasters, that sort of thing.  Total staff required: maybe two or three people.  We won't reach that point, but we have to move towards it, aggressively.

I know what the first step has to be.  I want the government to publicly make it known that the broadcasters are not obligated to respond to Konrad von Finckenstein's call for broadcasters to "submit their views".  That has proven to be a waste of time in the past, and we no longer have the time to waste today.

We can still fix this.  It's not too late.  People at CanWest have been preparing for this moment and with timely action to nullify much of the CRTC's power, they can complete the work to save one of Canada's most important institutions.  Not just save it, but transform it in many important ways so that we don't have to face this situation again.

Just get the CRTC out of the way.  If that means a very public acknowledgment of the mess the CRTC has made of things, so be it.  No bailout for the CRTC from bearing a huge share of the responsibility.  Such a bailout would be too expensive today, and would cost us all again in the future.