Thank you very much, Dr. Fry.
I think these are both excellent questions. Let me deal first with the foreign programming expenditure question, and I'll speak from my own experience at Alliance Atlantis.
I'll grant you that specialty programming and conventional programming have differences. In many ways, conventional has advantages over specialty, and some of them were enumerated by my colleague, Claire Samson.
When I was at Alliance Atlantis we had Canadian content spending requirements, and conventional programming also had them prior to the 1999 change in the television policy. A certain percentage of our gross revenue was allocated to Canadian content by regulation. That meant every year when I put together my budget for programming and our corporate budget, the first thing I checked off was Canadian content. It was 40% of the previous year's budget. It was a fixed cost. We didn't see it as a tax; we saw it as an audience opportunity.
Second, I had overhead and other costs I needed to cover. I needed to make a profit to satisfy my shareholders. What was left I could spend on foreign content. That programming expenditure requirement forced me to put a brake on my foreign spending. It prevented me from accelerating my foreign spending to a point where I couldn't afford to meet my other obligations.
We don't have that any more. We have a system out of whack. They can flatline their Canadian content and spend more and more on foreign content. That's why their bottom line is so negatively affected.
We'll be speaking to the Canada media fund or the fee-for-carriage issue, but it will be a shame to see money going to those broadcasters who will bid up the price of foreign programming even more, or shift money into more foreign programming.