The CRTC has announced a series of decisions stemming from last year’s “Let’s Talk TV” hearings, including the reduction of quotas for Canadian programming and the elimination of “genre protection” for specialty services.
Announcing the mammoth 323-paragraph decision at the Canadian Club in Ottawa Thursday, CRTC chairman Jean Pierre Blais described both programming quotas and genre protection as “relics of the past” that must be scraped away in order for the Canadian TV system to advance.
“Television quotas are an idea that is wholly anachronistic in the ‘Age of Abundance’ and in a world of choice,” he said, noting that Canadians now have access to over 1,300 hours of traditional TV for every waking hour.
Consumers, he said, are empowered like never before, thanks to technologies like video-on-demand, streaming video services and PVRs. “While content remains king, the incontestable truth is that the viewer is Emporer.”
While noting the international success of shows including Orphan Black, Vikings and Degrassi, Blais said Canada has yet to establish a “winning and sustainable” brand that is poised to compete with foreign broadcasters.
“We are now at a fork in the road,” he said. “We can choose the status quo, which has as a lynchpin vision of the television media as being essentially linear. That path is known, it is tested; but it does not prepare us for the inevitable future – one that is wholly viewer centric.”
The policy changes, he said, mark a shift in emphasis from the quantity of Canadian programming to the quality, with an intended outcome of providing viewers with access to what it called “quality original Canadian programming” in their chosen viewing environment.
Under the CRTC’s new ruling, quotas for the overall amount of Canadian programming that local TV stations must broadcast during daytime hours have dropped from 55% to zero, while regulations stipulating that 50% of all programming airing between 6-11 p.m. be Canadian made remain in place.
Blais told the audience that while quotas have helped create a “thriving” television industry, they have also led to a situation where programs are repeated on the same channel or recycled on sister channels, with single episodes repeated “numerous times” over the course of days, weeks, months, even years.
The CRTC is also harmonizing Canadian quota requirements for specialty channels, which had ranged from 15% to 85% depending on the service. Going forward, the CRTC will require specialty services to ensure that 35% of all programming is Canadian, with no specific requirement for prime time.
The federal broadcast regulator also announced it is eliminating genre protection for specialty services (ie: music programming for Much), saying it is no longer an effective tool for ensuring programming diversity, and has, in fact, become a “regulatory burden” that compromises programming innovation.
Though some independent broadcasters argued during the “Let’s Talk TV” hearings that removing genre protection would enable vertically integrated companies like Bell and Rogers to launch competing services and/or preclude their existence or entry into the system, the CRTC noted that many of these services already operate within “more niche” genres that are unlikely to foster competition.
In the ruling, the CRTC noted the market would self-regulate in order to ensure programming diversity.
“In such an environment, services must necessarily differentiate themselves from others and provide programming of interest to Canadians in order to maintain or grow their audiences,” it said, noting that branding, marketing, promotion and investment in “service-defining” programming will be the key to future success.
“Given the challenges the genre protection policy has faced in recent years, there is no evidence that maintaining genre protection would serve to ensure programming diversity in the future,” said the ruling.
The CRTC also tweaked its policy towards the use of U.S. ad avails, ruling that BDUs must open up 75% of availabilities to Canadian TV programming services, “in an equitable manner and on a cost-recovery basis,” to promote first-run, original Canadian programs.
BDUs can use the remaining 25% to promote their broadcasting and telecommunications services. The Commission said it would use random audits and a complaints system to ensure BDU compliance.
The Commission also lent its support to the idea of a set-top box based audience measurement system, noting that viewer information will be essential in the “viewer-centric” TV environment that is emerging.
In its ruling, the CRTC asked the industry to create a working group to begin no later than April 13. It charged the group with developing a plan for a set-top box measuring system that would be developed by, and for the benefit of, the broadcast industry, that must:
• Permit broadcasters to make informed programming selections and scheduling decisions;
• Provide broadcasters with new opportunities to effectively monetize advertisements;
• Place BDUs in a better position to tailor the services offered and content of packages;
• Place the Canadian broadcasting industry on a more equal footing with the international and online video markets; and
• Ensure the privacy of individuals is protected
The Commission ordered the working group to report back by June 10 on conclusions relating to the types of data being collected, governance structure, privacy protocols and a system for addressing funding and cost recovery.
Noting that more must be done to connect Canadians with the best programming, Blais also announced a “Discoverability Summit” that will convene “innovators and thought leaders” from the public and private sectors, both in Canada and abroad, to discuss potential technical solutions to the challenge of discoverability.
