The revolution has yet to be televised

The hunt is on for the Canadian cable media executive with the swankiest luxury yacht and the sleekest private helicopter. Obviously the smart money’s on billionaire Pierre Karl Péladeau in both cases, but the competition is apparently thick. Jim Shaw, from the family that dominates western cable, once picked up a 52- ton beauty of a boat from Tim Hortons cofounder Ron Joyce. And according to Jean-Pierre Blais, head of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, this kind of luxe lifestyle is all too common among the glitterati of Canada’s coaxial cable services.

In a fiery speech to the Canadian Club the other day, Blais cranked up the class-warfare imagery to decry those vested interests who “disapprove of the course the CRTC is setting” because it “upsets their entitlements and threatens their livelihoods.” While ordinary Canadians want to “take back control over their communication system,” as Blais is learning from the CRTC’s nationwide “Let’s Talk TV” and “Let’s Talk Broadband” rap sessions, all the CRTC hears from those “corporate executives who own luxury yachts and private helicopters” is cries for more preferential treatment and subsidies. Preferential treatment? Subsidies? Surely these broadcast barons must have the CRTC mixed up with some other organization.

Blais deserves credit for wanting Canada’s broadcast system to reflect consumers’ demands, rather than those of the culture industry. But it’s a bit rich to fulminate against the temerity of industry leaders for calling up favours and handouts when, for 50 years, the CRTC has bred this very species of broadcaster that feeds on entitlements. It’s even richer since the CRTC continues to this day to micro-manage the communications industry through protectionism, subsidies and favouritism, with no evident plans to stop.

Whatever blinged-out yachts may now be ferrying media moguls to their black-tie industry awards dinners came of billions of dollars derived from government-granted cultural-protectionist decrees. Licences protected cable providers from any foreign competition, prevented foreign takeovers of Canadian broadcast assets and created monopolies on specialtychannel offerings that forced consumers to buy offerings like Treehouse TV, The Comedy Network and the Women’s Sports Network, even if they never wanted or watched them. Perhaps most lucratively, licences even now grant Canadian networks the astounding privilege of “simultaneous substitution,” to take over the broadcast of popular American programs and swap in their own versions with Canadian ads — a subsidy that has only resulted in our broadcasters, including the CBC, enthusiastically airing ever more American hit shows.

The CRTC last year announced that this “sim-sub” was no longer acceptable for just a single, once-a-year program: The Super Bowl. And although, under Blais, the CRTC has freed cable subscribers from having to buy many channels they don’t want and ended the genre-monopoly for specialty channels, the new “pick and pay” model still requires we buy several “mandatory distribution” channels. And while Blais recently softened longstanding rules requiring a minimum amount of Canadian content, responsible for the creation of so many mediocre shows, it wasn’t by much.

Meantime, in the same speech in which Blais demanded that broadcasters get with the market-friendly program, he warned them that they had better start spending more money on programming of dubious profitability. Lamenting nationwide cuts to newsrooms, Blais enjoined broadcasters to put aside concerns of “quarterly results, profits, balance sheets, share prices and other calling cards of private wealth” and begin reinvesting in TV news. This is, Blais believes “as relevant to and valued by Canadians as at any point in its history,” adding that “there is more than enough money in the broadcasting system” to support quality journalism. To show he means business, Blais noted that the licences for major broadcasters come due next year. Should they break faith with their “social contract” to serve the public interest, Blais warned, “we will not hesitate to take action.”

It’s a mystery how revoking any broadcaster’s licence would stimulate more newsgathering resources than what media outlets can already barely justify. Two days before Blais offered the Canadian Club these thoughts on the future of journalism, Statistics Canada released fresh data on our news-consuming habits, with the unsurprising message that we’re consuming a lot less news, with just 60 per cent of us following current affairs daily in 2013, down from 68 per cent in 2003. The proportion of those who consume virtually zero news nearly doubled from seven to 13 per cent. And anyone under 34 was far more interested in Internet sources than they were in sitting down to watch Dawna Friesen, Peter Mansbridge or Lisa LaFlamme.

Still, at least one media magnate with billions of dollars to spend on extravagant luxuries has proved a match for the cordcutters. Péladeau’s Vidéotron may have a CRTC licence to print money, but he’s also innovated with shows that managed to lure fully half the province to tune in. Who says tycoons can’t be creative, when they’re given the incentive to serve consumers, and not merely to extract money from the CRTC system?

Blais’s insists that this is exactly what he wants, for broadcasters to “put viewers — their customers — back in control of their televisions.” And yet his agency continues to meddle with new attempts at broadcast innovation. Just last month the CRTC relied on “net neutrality” justifications to block Bell from offering its mobile subscribers free Bell-owned video. It has mandated how cable carriers can market their Netflix-competing on-demand streaming services. It itemizes requirements for new investments in broadband — and now, evidently, investments in newsrooms, too. If the CRTC wants broadcasters to embrace a new, dynamic marketplace that rewards intelligence, creativity and daring, it could do a far better job of leading by example.

WHO SAYS TYCOONS CAN’T BE CREATIVE WHEN THEY’RE GIVEN

THE INCENTIVE TO SERVE CONSUMERS?