Canadian Heritage committee  The problem is, our costs are going up because we're preparing our networks for the future. We spend half a billion dollars a year in programming costs. A lot of that money goes to Global and CTV. Those costs go up all the time. We have to upgrade and modernize our network or we

Canadian Heritage committee  It could, and I really worry that it would lead to a weakening of the entire broadcasting system. Once you start raising rates, then what people do is downgrade their packages, so you get people buying fewer packages. That hurts the specialty industry, it hurts us, and you end up

Canadian Heritage committee  This last year, that's true. This last year, they're down in TV, radio, newspapers, and billboards. The last year for which we have official CRTC data is 2008. If you look at the CRTC numbers, over-the-air television has had steadily increasing revenues every year, though they ha

Canadian Heritage committee  I know that Quebec does have some unique differences with its TV market, but I think the CRTC is capable of regulating both.

Canadian Heritage committee  In addition, as Mr. Viner was discussing with Mr. Angus, there may have to be some recalibration of the regulatory obligations on over-the-air television. In the past, over-the-air was a licence to print money, and the CRTC loaded them up with obligations. In some cases, they hav

Canadian Heritage committee  A lot of these things that you've heard aren't really true. Revenue is not down. Revenue is up for the OTA industry. It grows by about 2% a year. Fragmentation, even the presence of the Internet, has not decreased the amount of tuning. Television tuning is about the same. Over-

Canadian Heritage committee  I think with some modest adjustments to the regulatory process, the over-the-air business will get better. We spent a lot of money to buy those City stations. We never thought there would be fee-for-carriage. And we think we can make money from them.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, I think Rogers in its forty-year history has made a profit for the last four years. We had 36 years where we were losing money and we didn't come complaining. The struggle we have now, as the earlier questions pointed out, is to keep people on the system without go

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. There was no $6 increase. Basic went up by $1.50; the tiers went up by $1; The Movie Network went up by $2. For all of those services, we added channels. We're spending a lot of money to add high-definition channels and video-on-demand channels, and customers perceive benefi

Canadian Heritage committee  Our rate increases are related to increases in costs, but most of our cost increases do translate into added value to the customers, yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. We added high-definition channels at every stage along the way and we added on-demand programming as well.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would agree with that, sir. The reason that people are attracted to cable is not because of the over-the-air television signals. The over-the-air television signals are available free over the air, and 10% of Canadians don't subscribe to cable or satellite; they just use rabbit

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that's right. More money will just fund this bidding war, and it won't return the industry to financial viability.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the graph shows that there has been a huge bidding war for U.S. programming. If you check through the numbers you'll see it's the bidding war more than anything that accounts for the financial difficulties television finds itself in. As Mr. Lind mentioned, four years ago