Blank TV screens instead of programs?
p2pnet news view Politics | TV:- In the weeks leading to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearing on broadcasting licences, Canadians were inundated with splashy advertising campaigns claiming that new fees for local signals were either a TV tax or would save local television. With all of the major broadcasters and cable companies appearing before the commission, the fee-for-carriage (or value-for-signal) issue unsurprisingly took centre stage at last week’s hearing.
Yet those convinced that the broadcaster plan was limited to a new fee were in for a rude awakening. Fee-for-carriage is only part of the story, as broadcasters are also seeking to block U.S. signals, leave some Canadian communities without over-the-air television, and delay the transition to digital television transmission until 2013.
The prospect of blocking U.S. television signals will come as a shock to many, but both CTV and Canwest, Canada’s two largest private broadcasters, have asked the CRTC to establish a new program deletion policy.
For many years, Canadian broadcasters have benefited from simultaneous substitution, which allows them to air U.S. programs at the same time as U.S. broadcasters but to substitute their broadcast (complete with advertisements) on both channels. That policy is the reason programs such as House or Desperate Housewives air simultaneously in the U.S. and Canada, creating an important commercial advantage for Canadian broadcasters.
The broadcasters now wish to expand the simultaneous substitution policy with program deletion. It would provide that when a Canadian broadcaster purchases the rights to a U.S. program, they would have the right to air it whenever they choose within a seven-day window. The hook is cable and satellite companies would be required to block the U.S. broadcast of the same program if it did not air simultaneously.
The proposal, which would lead to millions of Canadians regularly encountering blank screens instead of expected programs, would perversely increase the attractiveness of U.S. programming. Moreover, given the increasing expectation of on-demand program viewing, it seemingly would send more Canadians away from broadcast television to the Internet where there are no blackout messages and most programs are readily available in both legal and illegal forms.
The broadcasters also confirmed some Canadian communities will lose their over-the-air signal as part of the transition from analog to digital. For decades, Canadian broadcasters have used spectrum to transmit over-the-air analog broadcast signals; estimates indicate ten percent of Canadians still rely on over-the-air TV signals.
The shift to digital transmission brings several advantages including better image and sound quality and more efficient use of spectrum that will open the door to new telecom services. Yet the broadcasters are not willing to invest in digital transmitters for all communities, leaving residents of Kingston, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, and Kelowna (among others) without over-the-air signals.
Moreover, the broadcasters admit they will not be able to complete the transition by the August 31, 2011 deadline. Instead, they now target 2013, four years later than their U.S. counterparts.
A delay necessarily will hold up the availability of new spectrum to be freed-up as part of the transition. This spectrum – known as the 700 MHz spectrum – opens up a host of possibilities for new innovation, competitors, and open Internet access. For Canadians anxious for new entrants into the wireless sector, delayed availability of the spectrum will mean more delays in spectrum auctions, keeping the market at a stand-still and costing taxpayers billions of dollars in lost spectrum revenue.
If the plan is fully adopted, Canadians would be left with blacked out broadcasts, lost spectrum revenue, and delayed telecom competition. After a week of hearing from broadcasters and cable companies, it is clear that the hearing is about far more than TV taxes and saving local television.
Michael Geist – Michael Geist’s Blog
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist @ uottawa dot ca]
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November, 2009
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November 24th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I’m in the US and about a year ago, my friend cancelled his cable service and decided to rely solely on an antenna for over the air signals. We’re located close to New York, so we normally get all the NY stations as well as local ones. So far, he’s gone through about 3-4 different brands of converter boxes. Some get more channels than others, some have better tuning, etc. He needed about 5 of them. One for each TV, plus another couple for his VCRs so that he can record stuff on other channels while watching something else. He’s on his third antenna. The original is a left-over one that was on the house when he bought it. The second was one he found in the trash and this he just bought.
When conditions are perfect, he gets a couple dozen channels with a nice, clear picture. Of course half of those are news stations or public broadcasting. If there’s bad weather anywhere in the area, he tends to lose channels. Or the picture through the converter box keeps freezing. The antenna also has to be turned to proper pick up some stations.
Two of his TVs have built-in digital tuners, but they pick up significantly less channels than the converter boxes do. Also, it seems like every couple of days, he has to re-tune the boxes, a process that takes 2-3 minutes each.
Digital broadcasting is hardly the trouble-free, TV miracle it’s made out to be. In general, it’s a royal pain in the a**.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Maybe a little off topic, but here’s a question I’ve been curious about. In the old days I would see videos on the news ( i’m in the USA ) of British authorities monitoring for unauthorized TVs using a van with a dish antennae of some sort on top. But this was when TVs had Cathode Ray Tubes which of course emanate in the EM bands. Has the LCD/plasma TV changed this avenue of enforcement ?
November 25th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
About the detector vans; here’s a 2007 Daily Mail article which shows some of the new advances in the field. Really Orwellian stuff; read that article’s comments. It all kind of puts recent events in the UK into perspective.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-468466/The-new-TV-detector-reach-home.html
December 5th, 2009 at 3:51 am
“Hello,
lets discuss about ecommerce usa.In the U.S, every city, county and state has their own separate sales tax with differing rates, limits and deadlines. This mean ecommerce merchants who sell their products or services in the U.S. could therefore be subject to all of these taxing districts. So how are online merchants able to collect their payments of sales tax with the varying sales taxes?
regards
hazz.hazz”