We also don't know that there will be sufficient money at the Canada Media Fund to adequately support the new programs funded under the new TV policy. Each one of the CMF's programs is oversubscribed.
You heard from the CMF that the revenues from the cable and satellite companies used to grow substantially each year, but have now slowed to an expected growth rate this year of only 2% over last year's revenues. They expect the stagnation to only worsen as more people unplug from cable or downgrade to basic packages and take advantage of the opportunities to view content online.
The CMF has been mandated to fund both digital and television content because this government has seen that Canadians are on both platforms and need to have the choice to see Canadian content on those platforms. Both broadcast and digital platforms should therefore be responsible for contributing to the financing of Canadian content.
Is it logical to treat a new media broadcaster such as Rogers on Demand Online, or RODO, differently from VOD? Both services offer Canadians the ability to watch film and television programming at the time of their choosing. The only difference is that one functions through the television set and the other through the computer.
VOD services are required to make Canadian programming available and to help finance its production. Rogers VOD, for example, is required to ensure that not less than 5% of English feature films available are Canadian and not less than 20% of television titles are Canadian. RODO has no such obligation. Rogers VOD has an obligation to pay 5% of its gross revenues to a Canadian program production fund such as the CMF, yet neither RODO nor Rogers, as an ISP, has to contribute to Canadian program production.
The situation is the same for all of the major cable and satellite providers who have both online and VOD services. And let's keep in mind that while Rogers, Bell, and Shaw express concerns about the competitive threat of an unregulated Netflix or Apple TV, as ISPs they are benefiting from consumers' increased bandwidth use due to these services as well as their own online services.
In fact, while Rogers, Shaw, and Bell promote their online services as free to subscribers, use of the services will cost subscribers more if they go over their bandwidth cap. If you watch a few TV shows a month, you will go over your cap. So Canadians are being enticed to use large amounts of bandwidth-streaming television shows, some of which are supported by the CMF. While the revenues to the ISP business units are increasing, they contribute nothing to the creation of the content.