Everything about Industry News, eh?

You say quality, I say qualit … eh?

When the CRTC talks about creating more quality TV, when John Doyle talks about a golden age of TV, when Jesse Brown says Canadian TV has a quality problem, when I say there are quality Canadian shows no one talks about … are we all talking about the same thing? The short answer is no. The long answer is noooooooo, so be skeptical about all discussions on quality in Canadian TV.

With recent changes designed to focus broadcasters on bigger budget and less obviously Canadian primetime drama at the expense of other types of Canadian programming, it seems the CRTC is defining quality as big budget dramas that will sell to the international market — while also name-checking shows such as Reign and Beauty and the Beast which do have US broadcasters and have no visible Canadianness, but which are neither ratings behemoths nor critically acclaimed.

You know what doesn’t guarantee quality? A bigger budget. You know who buys international shows? Netflix. You know what buyer of international shows the Canadian TV industry thinks is the devil, and which buyer of international shows’ testimony the CRTC struck entirely from the TalkTV record ? Netflix.

John Doyle is looking for shows critics and a cult audience can salivate over, such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Yet in a country where we have less than a handful of professional critics, 1/10 the population of the US and non-existent marketing budgets, our critical acclaim can often be distilled to “John Doyle likes it” and our audience buzz to “no one’s heard of it because it’s on a pay cable channel 10 people subscribe to.”

I think we’ve had shows that stand up as golden: Slings and Arrows, to go further back in time than I’d like, but also Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays, Strange Empire, Less Than Kind, Intelligence, Blackstone, Hard Rock Medical, Call Me Fitz, 19-2. But all those choices are subjective, as in “Diane thinks they’re good.”

If we’re talking about what the Canadian TV industry should aspire to, the only way I can define quality  is “shows Canadians want to watch.” What US, UK or Norwegian show has become popular with international audiences without being successful at home?

So by the “good ratings for that particular network” metric, the only quality metric that matters, Canadian TV is doing well lately. In the last few months, the top 30 has included Murdoch Mysteries, The Book of Negroes, Rick Mercer Report, Motive, Saving Hope, Masterchef Canada, not to mention all the hockey and news I don’t care about. Bitten is among Space’s most popular shows — more so than critical darling Orphan Black, in fact. 19-2 is doing well for Bravo. Trailer Park Boys is getting its second Netflix-only season.

Few of those popular shows are personal favourites, but I’m not advocating for DianeTV: I’m advocating for a strong Canadian TV industry.

The industry needs to take more risks, to aspire to better, to have original content as a business imperative. There is much, much room for improvement. I’m just not sure the CRTC’s definition of quality — or any other definition that isn’t about what audiences actually watch — is useful.

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Link: CRTC defends ‘viewer-centric’ decision on TV subscriptions

From James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail:

CRTC defends ‘viewer-centric’ decision on TV subscriptions
Canada’s broadcast regulator is set on putting viewers in the driver’s seat like never before by aggressively unbundling television subscriptions, even as critics warn that may not be what’s best for a healthy TV ecosystem. Jean-Pierre Blais, the federal regulator’s chairman, made that clear on March 12 when he said in a speech that, “while content remains king, the incontestable truth is that the viewer is Emperor.” Continue reading.

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Pick and Pay Decision Impact? Who Knows.

There’s a lot of press on the CRTC’s pick and pay decision and a lot of different opinions on what it means for consumers and for the broadcast industry. I’m reluctant to throw in my 2 cents but here goes.

Only time will tell.

During the Talk TV public hearing there were a lot of studies submitted on the potential impact of unbundling. Many of them had differing opinions on consumer behaviour because of the variables at play. To what extent would the CRTC require unbundling and if it did, how would the cable and satellite companies price their individual services or packages? How would consumers react to their options? No one could (or should have) concretely said ‘if channels are unbundled, the consumer will do x and the result will be y’.

And we still don’t know.

Here’s what we do know. The cable and satellite companies have until March 2016 to implement a skinny basic at $25 that includes local channels, mandatory carriage channels (e.g. CPAC and APTN), educational channels and provincial legislature channels. It ‘could’ include the big U.S. networks but must be sold at no more than $25 per month. On top of that they must offer either the opportunity to pick and pay for individual channels or small packages that they either build or are themed. By December 2016 cable and satellite companies must offer both individual and small package choices on top of skinny basic.

Here’s what we don’t know:

  • How much will individual services have to cost when sold on their own
  • How much will they cost in build your own or themed packages
  • Will US networks be included in skinny basic or will you have to pay extra for them
  • How will the US specialty services react to pick and pay.  At the public hearing some threatened to cancel contracts due to breach if pick and pay was implemented. The CRTC is hoping that they will be ‘good corporate citizens’ and play along.
  • How many people will opt for skinny basic and a few other channels and will they be cord shavers or cord cutters re-entering the system?
  • How many people will only pick U.S. services on top of skinny basic once they are given that opportunity
  • How many smaller Canadian specialty services will have to shut down because their paying audience is too small

We won’t know what this means for the industry until the cable and satellite companies start to market the new offerings (possibly later this year) and consumers react to it and the dominoes start to fall. Or not.

One thing I do have to note is that it appears that the CRTC has given the Conservatives an election gift. It has provided them with the opportunity to say ‘look, we gave you cheaper cable bills’ before unbundling is implemented and the consumer has a chance to say, as may be the case, ‘no you didn’t’.  That could be completely unintentional but it cannot have been unexpected.

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Link: Cheap politics, cheap TV: CRTC hands Tories a populist election platform

From Simon Houpt of The Globe and Mail:

Cheap politics, cheap TV: CRTC hands Tories a populist election platform
The thing that apparently caused people to riot in the streets (or at least the modern equivalent: send angry e-mails to the CRTC) was the common industry practice of bundling TV channels. Most people regularly watch only a couple of dozen channels on a regular basis, and they are tired of paying for the hundreds of others available on their cable lineups.

So the Harper government, which is all for free enterprise except when there are votes to be had, decided to do something about it. Too bad they made the CRTC look slavish in the process. Continue reading.

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