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Can Canadian Broadcasters Compete with Free?
No-charge streaming over the Net threatens satellite and cable TV models.
Does free streaming erase 'market value' of video content?
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Fixing Canada's Uncompetitive Internet
Doing that will take more than a CRTC reversal on net metering.
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Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers
Only here, big telecoms get to say you use 'too much' internet and whack on more charges, the CRTC affirmed yesterday.
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Canada Needs a Serious Agenda for Media Innovation
Support an open Internet, and the creative efforts it allows.
Earlier this month, Bell and Quebecor, two giants in the Canadian broadcasting and telecom landscape, became embroiled in a dispute over Sun News Network, the recently launched all-news network. At first glance, the dispute appeared to be little more than a typical commercial fight over how much Bell should pay to Quebecor to carry the Sun News channel on its satellite television package. When the parties were unable to reach agreement, Bell removed Sun News Network, leaving a placeholder message indicating "the channel has been taken down at the request of the owners of Sun News Network."
While the dispute is now before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission -- Quebecor claims Bell is violating the legal requirement against "undue preferences" -- more interesting is Bell's claim about the value of the Sun News Network signal.
According to Mirko Bibic, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at Bell Canada, the market value of Sun News Network is zero because Quebecor makes the signal available free over-the-air in Toronto and is currently streaming it free on the Internet. Given the free access, Bell maintains that the signal no longer has a market value.
Bibic's comment may be posturing for negotiation purposes, but it highlights the larger problem for Canadian broadcasters and broadcast distributors such as cable and satellite providers.
The reality of the current environment is that all broadcasters must compete with free. Free streaming has become so common that devices such as the Boxee have popped up to offer users a seemingly unlimited array of legal on-demand television programs all streamed via the Internet. Indeed, if the value associated with broadcasts is directly correlated to its free availability online, a growing percentage of broadcaster content has no market value.
The implications for Canadian broadcasters are significant since their ongoing fight for a fee-for-carriage (or value-for-signal) is premised on the notion that their broadcasts have value, independent of their availability on other platforms.
Out on a US limb
Moreover, Canadian broadcasters continue to rely on foreign (primarily U.S.) content as their most profitable and high profile programming. Given the shift toward online streaming, it is only a matter of time before U.S. rights holders retain their Internet rights to stream content on a global basis. When that happens, Canadian broadcasters will be left vying for less valuable broadcast-only rights.
The situation is little better for Canada's broadcast distributors who view streaming alternatives with growing trepidation. Free online streaming, when combined with over-the-top video services such as Netflix or new video rental services from YouTube, provides an increasingly viable, low-cost alternative to traditional cable or satellite television services.
The Internet-based streams effectively reduce the value of a cable or satellite television subscription, since much of what is now offered through those services is, by Bell's own definition, of no market value.
Pressure to meter the Net
Claims that broadcast versions of free streamed programs have no market value may be an exaggeration, but there is a harsh truth in the reality that Internet streaming is having a disruptive effect on both Canadian broadcasters and broadcast distributors. Given these emerging challenges and the vertically integrated market in which Canadian broadcasters, broadcast distributors, and Internet providers are often part of the same corporate family, the backlash is likely to be fierce.
Internet providers already deploy usage-based billing schemes (so called Internet metering) to increase the cost of free Internet streaming by hiking the price of Internet access. On the regulatory front, there is the growing push to increase the costs to companies that stream content by imposing broadcast-like regulations.
These moves may create new challenges for online alternatives, but they will not solve the long-term broadcaster and broadcast distributor problems of relying on programs that by their own admission faces diminishing market value. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
8
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rantnic
1 year ago
fghgfhghfdhfh offensive
The e-mail address for fghgfhghfdhfh above is
may I suggest that you send a direct e-mail expressing your feelings about their use of this forum. Include lots of pictures etc. so as to fill their in-box with your message.
woodworker
1 year ago
commercial TV
Why should I pay big bucks to cable or satelite companies to watch TV programs loaded with commercials. Cut the commercials out or relegate them to a specific time slot. Say Last 5 minutes of the program and maybe I might consider watching. Generally watch movies on DVD, $5 at Walmart. no commercials and I can stop it to chat to my kids on the phone and then go again. I find the amount of ads on TV discusting.
Give it out free with ads or cut the ads.
Camero409
1 year ago
Too Bad
for the networks. If they were honest with themselves they will admit a bias in the news coverage they give, and useless programs they air. Let them die on the vine
gstark
1 year ago
TV content gets the value it deserves
We pay Shaw ~$100.00 per month for basic cable and Internet.
$60 is for the basic cable service - no HBO, HD, or specialty channels. For that we get 2 channels that we watch, Knowledge, PBS, plus rarely, CBC.
Most other channels are crammed with mindless drek - "Reality" TV mostly - that is not worth watching, never mind paying for.
PBS is being strangled by the US right wing with ever fewer good shows, leaving just Knowledge Network (with many repeated shows) and the occasional "The Nation" for our sixty bucks.
Depending on the month, we pay $1-$3 per watched show!
We get basic Internet service for $40, several MB/sec down, and 1MB/sec up I think.
We pay $8/month to Netflix and watch it more than the cable.
It clearly would make sense to drop the cable and spend an extra $20/month on a premium Internet connection.
My point in all this is that the content that we pay so much for is of no value to us...
Between the crap shows and the insane number of commercials, we have been driven away from the broadcast offerings.
If cable was free we would act exactly the same - there is no value there.
As for Net metering, I am an ex ISP.
The ISP cost per gigabyte delivered has been dropping steadily since the beginning. It keeps pace with the costs per GB of disk space and CPU costs.
Net metering is about the pipe owners wanting to force their subscribers to watch content that they own or license.
skeletor
1 year ago
Since moving to France last
Since moving to France last year I was realized I could not watch the few shows I kept up with plus the Canucks. I turned to illigally downloading them because i don't have another option. I prefer Free shows with Ad's. I find it astonishing a large internet company [google or apple maybe] has not bought up the internet rights worldwide and created a program to stream this content. I mean they know by our IP which countries we are in and likely which city. They could fairly easily just ad in localized content, they already have the customer base for advertizing!
Instead I'm forced underground to watch The Canucks get into the finals vie sketchy Russian website streaming the CBC.
Chris Keam
1 year ago
Who pays who
"Why should I pay big bucks to cable or satelite companies to watch TV programs loaded with commercials."
It's important to remember that as a TV watcher you're not the consumer, you're the product. Advertisers pay to get to you, not the other way around. The cable companies are the middleman offering access to your eyeballs and attention span, the broadcasters are selling you as a potential customer, hence the reason programming is generally rated by most-watched rather highest quality.
zalm
1 year ago
Thanks gstark
"As for Net metering, I am an ex ISP.
The ISP cost per gigabyte delivered has been dropping steadily since the beginning. It keeps pace with the costs per GB of disk space and CPU costs.
Net metering is about the pipe owners wanting to force their subscribers to watch content that they own or license."
Very revealing. Yet one more reason why Shaw doesn't get my money either - just another pipe owner metering my access...
caber1
51 weeks ago
No Options, Just Like Music
Cable and satellite providers like music companies of old just can not or will not embrace or initiate change and like all things in life, if you don't change or adapt you die.
For many years now customers have been telling these companies that they want to have more input into what channels they get, they want more movies on demand, more special broadcasting (sports, learning, and educational).
Internet gives this to a point and is improving everyday.
Cable and satellite are going the same way as any other technology that doesn't stay current and good riddance to them I say.