Conventional broadcasters are looking for solutions to the difficulties they find themselves in. We are here to say that Parliament should ensure that regardless of the need for a short-term fix or a long-term solution, Canadian programming should not be sacrificed to pay for it. Canadians want Canadian programming. A Harris-Decima poll conducted last year showed that 78% of Canadians feel it’s important to them to have a choice of television programs that reflect Canadian society, values, and perspectives. Audience numbers show that when high-quality Canadian drama is on the air, audiences watch it in droves. This has been proven by series like Corner Gas and Flashpoint and by movies of the week such as Mayerthorpe and One Dead Indian.
Then why can't the market support the production costs of these programs? Why do we need regulation? Canada is a small market, divided even further into English and French, sitting next to the largest cultural exporter in the world. While every country in the world except the U.S. and India needs cultural protections, we are uniquely challenged by that proximity. Our television industry needs protection and subsidies if it is going to survive and thrive. That is why the Broadcasting Act was enacted and the CRTC was created: to ensure that Canadians can watch Canadian programming on their airwaves. Regulation is essential because broadcasters have demonstrated time and time again that their primary objective is profit. We want Canadian broadcasters to thrive as long as they remember they also exist to provide a public good: a Canadian broadcasting system.
Recently, local broadcasting has been hard-hit with station closures and job losses so this committee has made that a focus. But we ask you to remember that the Canadian broadcasting system is complex, with many interrelated components. Legislators and regulators cannot just look at one component and try to fix it without looking at the impact of those decisions on the other components. The broadcasters themselves have tied various elements together by saying reducing the costs of local programming, priority programming, and independent production could, together, solve their problems.
As you consider granting the broadcasters the relief they are asking for, bear in mind that Canadian broadcasters already have a number of lucrative benefits unavailable to U.S. broadcasters, such as mandatory carriage, simultaneous substitution, advertising deductibility under section 19.1 of the Income Tax Act, and program production costs subsidized by tax credits and the CTF licence fee program. Yet still they complain and ask for more concessions.
What will the end result be if the broadcasters are given all the concessions they ask for? Will we be able to tell the difference between Canadian and American broadcasters? We fear not. And if that is the case, why should we license Canadian broadcasters? Why don't we just allow the U.S. broadcasters free access to our airwaves with Canadian content conditions? This may sound like a radical solution, but a Canadian broadcaster is obligated, under the Broadcasting Act, and I quote, “to provide, through its programming, a public service essential to the maintenance and enhancement of national identity and cultural sovereignty”. If the broadcasters won't do that, maybe NBC or CBS will.
Prior to the CRTC's 1999 over-the-air policy, broadcasters had conditions of licence related to both expenditure and exhibition of underserved categories of Canadian programming, namely drama. That regulation created the thriving Canadian television industry with high audience numbers. Then, broadcasters demanded flexibility and the CRTC lifted expenditure requirements in favour of priority programming exhibition requirements. The results were devastating. Spending on Canadian drama plummeted from 5% of ad revenue in 1999 to a low of 2% in 2007, and that included the required spending from their benefits packages. In 1999 there were 186 hours of 10-point Canadian one-hour dramas on the air, by 2008 there were only 119.
Priority programming regulation affected both the amount spent on Canadian drama and the number of hours of drama produced. Why? Because instead of expensive, high-quality drama, they could now fill their hours with low-budget dramas like Train 48 and low-cost entertainment magazine shows. Today broadcasters are asking for even more flexibility in ways that would take the Canadian broadcasting system back decades, to the seventies, when Global and Baton made promises to license Canadian programming that they did not keep, forcing the CRTC to impose conditions of licence.
The public record demonstrates that Canadian broadcasters will only support Canadian programming, whether it is local or drama or priority programming, if they are required to do so.
Maureen.