Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
I guess Fred and I aren't reaching you, nfotiu. The problem is the government involvement up to this point, and how they are taking a problem that they created themselves, and adding to it.
In the 80s when CTV found that people were split between watching their show on NBC and their own channel, instead of finding ways to make us watch their broadcast, they asked the gov't to step in and force it upon us. There are many ways they could have had the same results using standard business practices; in fact back in the 70s and 80s it was common to see contest giveaways during prime time shows. That was how they did it then.
Let's look at other media. Say the Associated Press produces a news story; and both USA Today and Calgary Herald buy the rights to publish that story. The Herald does not have the right to force Canadian USA Today subscribers to not unly subscribe to the Herald, but also force USA Today to run the Herald article in their paper along with the Herald ads.
I don't mind that CTV wants to charge more for me to subscribe to their channels. What I have issue with is that in order to get Rogers Sportsnet or TSN, I am forced to buy CTV. Never mind the US channels; which as you point out can be a muddy area with respect to ownership of rights. So going back to my print media; it's like saying I cannot subscribe to MacLean's (Canadian political magazine) with also subscribing to the Herald. Then having the Herald; now being manditory subscription- tripling their rates.
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Cable re-transmission of American affiliates without simsubbing of popular programs wasn't going to last. It only existed because Canada was basically off the radar in the early years of cable. If the government didn't step in, the American networks would have. If abc owns a show, and they can sell it to ctv non-exclusively for 500,000, or sell it to them exclusively for 2 million, they are going to find a way to give them that exclusivity by preventing the abc affiliates from re-transmitting that signal to Canada.
Your AP example is very flawed, as they are a non-profit co-operative. A more appropriate example would be that the Calgary Herald pays a popular syndicated columnist a fee to run their column, and they have to compete with someone who is just photocopying an american newspaper and selling it on the street. A better example would be an American publisher sells the rights of a novel to a Canadian publishing company. The American company is not going to ship their version of the book to Canadian stores to compete with them, as it would make it much harder to sell a book to a Canadian company in the future.
I'm not sure of the ins and outs of Canadian publishing rules, but I'd guess that American companies are allowed to sell books directly to Canadian bookstores, so your argument would be abc should be allowed to sell their programming directly to Canadian cable companies, then you don't have to deal with the middle man. The problem is, abc wasn't selling directly to the Canadian cable companies, the spokane affiliates were, and they don't really have the rights to sell their programming outside their area. They just got away with it until the lost revenue was realized. If the crtc opened their doors and said, ok abc can go ahead and sell their stuff directly to Canadian cable companies, the you can bet abc would have started charging a fair price to the cable companies, and then the Canadian cable companies would have to pay for it either by overlaying commercials or charging a fee, and what has the Canadian consumer gained? In that scenario, they wouldn't bother selling their programming to ctv, so you'd lose the OTA option.
Sure bundling the channels is pretty evil, but that is between the consumer and the cable company, and as long as the consumer tolerates it they will continue. This is where internet solutions may win out. Although the cable companies here are fighting pretty hard to make this as tough as possible. Itunes is a pretty ubiquotous option for non sports programming, but $2.99 for an low quality hd show on itunes gets pretty expensive pretty quick.