I think that's a good question. I think it could have been prevented, but no amount of crisis can be thwarted or prevented without some pain. The pain may be for the local stations that lose some local service, the cable companies that have to pay a portion for fee-for-carriage, or the broadcaster that realizes reduced profits. There's no painless solution here.
I'd like to make a couple of points, though. The Canadian broadcast system is supposed to be in balance. At the moment it's out of balance. One sector has been given a government monopoly, and that is the cable companies. They are now enjoying profit margins of about 55%. Let's not confuse business acumen with a government monopoly. That's how they got there.
Another sector has cultural and news obligations to local markets but currently cannot afford to sustain them. In 2000, when, as mentioned, we bought CHCH, our profits were over $200 million. This year they'll be negative $10 million. That's a pretty dramatic change in eight or nine years.
We've got to wake up and smell the coffee. This is a secular decline that's been in place for a very long time. You cannot license 170 new stations and expect the audiences to remain the same or expect advertisers to continue to support CHCH or Global Television or CTV if the audience has migrated to TSN and Home and Garden. I'm sorry, but that's the way it works.
To answer your question without turning this into a rant, we've got to make some painful decisions. You can't make everybody happy.