I don't mind paying for TV............

.......if I'm allowed to choose which stations I could receive!

Let's see now ~ CBC, Knowledge Network, PBS from Seattle and Detroit (those Britcoms), History Channel, TSN, YTV (for the kids) and CNN.

As an aside; my friend picked up a supper antenna at a garage sale. It is motorized and when installed on the roof, can pick up Seattle (he now has a digital converter). He has canceled cable altogether and after about 2 weeks of withdrawal his family doesn't complain.

I am now looking for the same!

The CRTC should

just butt out of this one. Or...they could get the cable companies to cut their rates by the amount that the networks wish to gain and we (the subscribers) can pay the TV companies on the honour system each time we watch.

Aye Grumpy

That's another way of making the same point I was...and I totally agree.

The all or nothing nature of the basic cable subscription is an anachronism of the past - digitally there is no reason one shouldn't be able to select only the services one wants and is willing to pay for.

In fact, the CRTC would be doing a great deal more of value for Canadians if it began to re-analyze the whole operation - unfortunately, it has been turned into little more than another example of shilling for corporate welfare.

Again, there's an ethical parallel - no public system should be structured so as to use people as means rather than ends.

It's a slippery slope and our public institutions are really along way down at this stage.

kill your cable

I get CBC (French and English), CTV, Global, A-Channel and Omni from a pair of rabbit ears. One of these days I'll buy a better set and pick up USA feeds too. Since Cdn broadcasters are increasingly just rebroadcasting US shows, even that seems superfluous.

Local news wasn't quite so important to CTV when they cancelled Citytv's 6pm newscast during their short-lived ownership of Moses' baby btw.

A few thoughts

First, these local channels are available via rabbit ears.

Second, the cable companies are required by the CRTC to include the local channels in their basic cable packages. The rates for basic cable are regulated by the CRTC.

Third, over-the-air stations are allowed to air about 12 minutes of commericials per hour; specialty channels can only air about 8 minutes per hour.

Four, there is very little local programming on these stations other than the suppertime and late evening news. Some stations do have the news at lunchtime. The A-Channel in Victoria missed airing the voting results on election night. Instead, it chose to air US programs.

There is nothing local about this campaign. It all comes from Toronto.

Excellent Suggestion:

G West wrote:

Quote:

"Break ‘em up, bankrupt them, whatever - I can see all the stuff they broadcast now on one or another of the American services already available on basic cable...not that I care much about those either - I certainly won't miss their pathetic local coverage.

Sayonara!"

Slim's few thoughts

Very interesting Slim. I don't think I've seen the difference in commercial space between basic and specialty cable referenced anywhere else in this debate. Maybe the networks should be required to adhere to 8 minutes per hour instead of 12 if they accept a carriage fee.

Keep the media reporting coming, Tyee! This is exactly what's needed right now.

Rip-Off Cable

The program creators need to be compensated. As an example, for over a decade now the cable industry in Windsor Ontario set up antennas to grab the 4 Detroit channels off-air and redistribute them across the whole of Canada without paying a cent for the programing. I could agree with it if they weren't striping out the original commercials and inserting ones that they sold to Canadian company's. The same things happening in BC, with Rogers and Shaw striping out the Commercials and selling their own. The Canadian industry is following the US model where Direct TV and others redistribute the local area channels content with inserted commercials without compensating the program originators.
If your going to make money on the original content you should at least pay for it!!

Any suggestion

that limits the ability of the media and/or distributors to reap unconscionable profits from the general public (while simultaneously incurring the least possible cost to itself) will never be taken seriously by either the media, its distributors or the CRTC itself.

I'm for letting businesses

I'm for letting businesses fold that don't contribute much value. These stations are addicted to US programs that are already available. They also don't seem to offer much journalistic ability. Or reflect their communities very well in their local coverage.

Customers should already have choices other than locked in tier systems on cable networks. CRTC should have been on point already regarding that.

I find it funny (sort of) to hear people are atternding open houses when they are the ones who will ultimately pay for the increase in subscriber fees that is coming and or the government bail out that may also be in the works.

Local Tv vs. cable

I spent my working days in the TV broadcasting business and it's always been the same. We used to do a lot of good shows in Vancouver but as time passed and the costs went up and revenue didn't we did less and less. The CRTC has done little to help broadcsting in Canada except to make the cable co. rich. They have always been a license to print money and have done almost no programing with that money. Now the CBC can do nothing more than a talking head local news, they don't have any staff left, and the private companies gave up long ago. TV as an art form is long gone and it's our own fault, we would rather watch " I love Lucy' than 'Cariboo Country'. It costs money to produce even poor quality shows so if you are not interested good Canadian fare (like the CRTC) then you get what we have now and Cable companies get rich.
A thankfully retired TV Tech.

A pox upon the parasitical cable companies.

Even though I'm not a TV watcher, I'm well enough informed to know that the Cable companies operate without any other ethic than to make more money any way they can.

But then, isn't that what the Canadian public has come to expect from business? Just the normal and legitimate cost of "Free Enterprise"?

Entrusting regulatory bodies with protecting the public's interest in these days when gov't interprets that task to mean supporting any form of making money, is like letting the proverbial fox loose in the henhouse.

saltchucksteve

The stripping of commercials is limited to duplicate programs in the same time slot. This is an old battle that was fought years ago by the American stations and a compromise was reached.

Nobody complains any more except when we can't watch the super bowl commercials because they sold a Canadian network the TV rights.

pirates again

The CRTC is letting the cable companies pirate the signal. Remember the big mainstream media push to shut down the little guys grey market dish because they were nasty little pirates stealing their signal. Of course at the same time the cable companies were stealing American and Canadian feeds off the air. Nobody in MSM would comment of course.

One outfit down east put the local channels on the innernet and got shutdown right pronto by the CTRC. Since then numerous applicants have tried to get CRTC permission to be like the cable pirates and put the signals on the innernet. No go.

I doubt any CRTC member has bought his own lunch in the last 10 years with all the lobbyists lining up. Can it be the fix is in!!

Who are they trying to fool?

Local programing? There's very little in the way of local programing on CTV in prime time except for the watered down and partisan newscasts. Is it any wonder they are in financial trouble. If only they would spent as much time 'n' effort on providing fair and balanced and in depth news reporting instead of the thin guel they currently feed the public and have 'em pleading for more.

The CTV lookin' for handouts, which will ultimatley come out of your pockets, is akin to Larry Flynt grovelling for handouts for his product in the US. Both are out of step and irrelevant in today's society.

I have been using rabbit ears for years now and prefer CBCs more balanced news and a higher percentage of truly local/Canadian programing. Sure they broadcast some duds, but at least they're Canadian ne'er-do-wells.

right on Hughes!

"If only they would spent as much time 'n' effort on providing fair and balanced and in depth news reporting instead of the thin gruel they currently feed the public."

So true! I think we should let them go out of business and let communities take over the station. I never watch TV because the stuff on it is just so shudderworthy I can't be bothered to allow these companies into my mind.

They should pay

Who in their right mind would pay to produce a product and then give it away to someone else so that they can sell it for a profit. It makes no sense. Shaw Cable...it is time to pay your bill.

the odd thing about the media

"Who in their right mind would pay to produce a product and then give it away to someone else so that they can sell it for a profit"

Always important to remember commercial media operates in an unusual fashion.

TV station = supplier
advertiser = customer
viewer = product

We always assume we, the viewers, are the customer, but it's not the case.

We feed a hog for free, but in the long run, the future ham pays... big time. It's the same with TV. The programs are the feed, but your attention to the ads is the equivalent of your 'pay-back' to the system. Think about how many ads you've seen in your life and what that time would be worth (even at minimum wage) and you'll see the cost of our entertainment is extracted from us just as surely as Mr. Piggy is turned into breakfast links and pork chops.

McLuhan says it best:

"Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ear and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly."

Understanding Media - pg. 68

It's local alright....

..and biased and one sided. CTV and Canwest so called news is now just a cheer leading team for the Olympics and the Campbell Liberals.

I couldn't agree more with G West-
"Break ‘em up, bankrupt them, whatever...."

And thanks folks for you advice about getting an antenna.
I'm going to start looking too. The local cable provider had increased the cost for basic cable from $17 to $27 a month over the past 18 mos.

Couldn't resist another McLuhan quote

" When Europeans used to visit America before the Second War they would say,'But you have communism here!' What they meant was that we not only had standardized news, but everybody had them. …How could a millionaire be anything but 'middle-class' in America unless he had the creative imagination of an artist to make a unique life for himself?"(McLuhan. M., 1994, p. 298)

The Good News

And then there is the bad news. How about giving the news to a company as a monopoly? And then leasing your ears to the message?
Or how about putting public interest over the profit motive?
Public interest broadcasting cannot be produced by network and media monopolies nor can there be a diversity in views, voices as networks control over practices and content prevent such practices from happening.
www.fair.org
www.indymedia.org

It's not just about TV

There is a larger issue here that has potential consequences, even benefits, for other media sources such as The Tyee.

All media, The Tyee included, work on a model that requires subsidies in the form of advertising. What do you suppose this does to any democratic agenda? At best it reduces citizenship to a commodity (you are called a consumer or taxpayer, which bases your human worth on your net worth). Why do you think all magazines, most newspapers, and literate sites such as this one need to gather demographic information that shows their audiences are the best and brightest and richest and most acquisitive? To sell ads.

Selling ads is really selling audiences.

Now comes an opportunity to construct a mechanism so users, TV viewers in this case, can subscribe, just as most households used to do but no longer do with the daily newspaper. It is not a contradiction that broadcasters seek on one hand to lessen their CRTC-mandated content obligations while also seeking a second revenue stream through subscriptions. That is what newspapers, good and bad, do. That is what The Tyee does indirectly by selling ads and also fundraising among readers. Local news programming, and that is the local TV programming we are talking about, cannot possibly be produced as profitably as shows whose costs are amortized over mass nationwide and worldwide audiences. Can't be done. So local news always will be a money-losing service provided within some larger cost-recovery strategy. Potentially, paying local commercial stations - and similarly compensating the CBC would be a good idea - loosens the grip of advertisers a notch.

Recently the music industry approached the CRTC to ask for a download levy on Internet service providers, as an alternative way to compensate musicians and their labels whose work was being pirated. It was a reasonable attempt to create a user-pay model in a culture that otherwise is becoming one of rampant art theft.

If the CRTC can be persuaded to allow fees for CTV, Global (and CBC), it may establish a principle that then could be applied to Internet providers as well, one that, in concert with Michael Lithgow's idea of moneys for diverse news media organizations would give us a mechanism by which citizens (not just consumers, not just taxpayers) can finance the democratic dialogue free of the taint of either advertising or, as in the CBC's case, government bullying.

Think outside the (flatscreen) box.

Diverting revenues

Wait a minute, don't CTV and Global own a bunch of those specialty channels that a) continue to make heaps of money and b) are a big part of their local TV crisis?

Let's Make a Deal

I'm all for each station getting its own levy as long as every cable subscriber is given total control over which stations s/he receives.

For myself, of all the channels available presently, I watch five. So why should I be expected to pay anything at all for any more?

Cable providers like Shaw and Rogers must upgrade their filtering systems so we, the consumers, can decide who gets our money.

Media Mana

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/

MANA (the Media Alliance for New Activism) is Canada’s largest network of independent media groups. This website seeks to aid those who are looking for alternatives, or wish to get involved in building independent media.

There are thousands that have already joined and its like a new frontier for local commmunities who know positive change comes with making well informed decisions.

Oligopolies are the problem

You don't need cable. You can get more TV and movies than you could ever possibly watch through bitorrents. In fact, Grumpy there are bitorrent websites that specialize in British TV. All you need is a high speed internet connection. And yes you pay for the connection, but all the content is "free".

The lack of choice with cable is a joke. But instead of making choice easier and cheaper for consumers cable companies and media providers are trying to do the best they can to restrict choice. It is utterly retarded the way they go about things. To take just one immediate example: last night I wanted to purchase an album from iTunes by Noelia a Puerto Rican pop singer. It is available on the US iTunes but not on the Canadian iTunes. This sort of restriction encourages piracy.

Many view the oligopolistic practices of these giant corporations (both media content providers, and access providers like cable companies) as something that needs to be destroyed, and that piracy is a legitimate means to that end. Take away their money, and they will die a well deserved death. Or they will adapt to the new environment and be forced to become responsive to customer needs.

Unfortunately the primary focus, particularly of the entertainment industry, has been to attack the pirates, instead of providing more convenience, more choice with lower cost. It is only recently they've very grudgingly started top provide content online. They've lost a huge amount of money as a result.

Now access providers are getting in on the action in trying to restrict customers by using traffic shaping. Going this route they are taking the same path the giant corporate content providers have. Instead of providing more convenience and choice they spend all their effort on restricting customers to squeeze more money out of them.

That path will just encourage the development of means to defeat the restrictions through encryption, and various forms of data piggybacking or simply cheaper competitors will come along providing service wirelessly or through other methods.

It will take time. And there will be a lot of effort and money spent on trying to control and restrict the public. But like telecommunications the trend will always be toward cheaper service. Canada may very well lag the rest of the world, as we have in telecommunications, because our elites force oligopolies on us. But that will only hurt us in the long run, as we fall further behind other nations that support small homegrown companies that emphasize choice at ever cheaper price points. They will gain experience and develop superior technology, and we'll be left in the dust, a tech backwater.

As long as CTV/Global etc

As long as CTV/Global etc are must carry the BDU's should not have to pay.

Forward to the CRTC

A strong consensus exists about the lack of attention to local programming of the BC stations. And this lack is getting worse. It's hypocritical for the networks to "threaten" a loss of local programming if they can't get their hands on the cookie jar.

What is getting lost in this battle between the cable Giants and the networks is that while cable has been tuned in to what viewers want, the networks continue to practice poor management principles and ignore what the public wants.

Did anyone really want to watch a Shopper's Drugmart commerical instead of a Budweiser commercial during the SuperBowl? The networks forced the cable providers to substitute their bad taste commercials for some of the best produced all year.

Plus the cable companies produced some of the best local news on the dial. The cable local news station in Victoria, for example, is far superior at covering local issues than either of the networks.

Maybe the Tyee could forward all these comments to the CRTC to let them know the dissatisfaction of western viewers with regards to network progamming.

Cable Companies are filthy rich

I pay $35.65 per month for a coax cable that runs from the Hydro Pole to my home. That stupid little cable cost about $90.00 for 500 feet. In the meantime, my cable company steals programming from space and feeds it to my television down this cable that I paid for quite some time ago. The content providers get nothing and the cable companies are filty rich.

Hey seen any Blue Jay games (owned by Rogers Communications) at the Rogers Centre (owned by Rogers Communications)?

Now tell me who is greedy?

Actually, I get charged by

Actually, I get charged by Shaw for receiving CTV and CBC in HD. Does the fact that it's enhanced resolution justify the charge?

Probably not given those expensive full-page ads Shaw is buying in all the national newspapers. That's where the money's going, not to the programming creators.

What we need is actually to follow the US and mandate broadcast-to-air of ONLY Digital & HD local signals right away, instead of waiting a few more years.

Then those ATSC tuners built into most current TV's would be of some use.

The delay is simply a monopoly extending manuevre. The enhanced visual quality of TV in Canada is and will continue to be the domain of the cable & Satelite companies, putting the broadcasters at a disadvantage.