Don’t Tax My TV!
With all of the recent changes on the Canadian television landscape, its hard to tell what is currently going on. On September 1st, the CRTC ruled that Cable, Satellite and IPTV services would have to remit a 1.5% fee to the new “Local Programming Improvement Fund”. At the same time, the CRTC also opened the door for “fee for carriage” which basically translates to around $6/month per household to pay for the channels that currently, and will continue to show commercials! So the recap, you will be paying more money per month for television service in Canada, but you will not bet getting anything in return.
Keep reading after the jump….
Since September 1st. The CRTC has recieved 1000′s of letters from upset Canadians demanding that they not be taxed in order to fund a bailout of the big two Canadian Broadcast networks (CTV and Global). On September 17th, the Heritage Minister asked the CRTC to review their decision and consider the consumer in the debate.
With the above said, the CRTC still needs to hear from you! Please send your MP, the Heritage Minister and the CRTC a letter or email expressing your opinion. CTV and Global are lobbying very hard to try and charge you money for a service that is supposed to be ad-supported. (You are actually doing them a favour by watching on Cable and Satellite as they no longer need to build out terrestial transmitters…. think rabbit ears).
Shaw Cable has a great website with sample letters that you can send to your MP in the mail and via email (remember, postage to an MP or Minister does not require a stamp).
Please speak up!
Hey there – it’s ‘Global_Mike’ from the Local TV Matters campaign. Thanks for your interest in the issue. I read your blog and it seems like you’ve gotten a lot of your info from Shaw’s ‘Don’t Tax My TV’ website. It won’t surprise you to learn that we disagree with most of what’s on there. In fact, we would say some of their statements are misleading. The bottom line is that we currently give our product to cable and satellite companies for free. They, in turn, charge customers for our product each and every month – and they don’t pass any of the revenue on to local stations. We can no longer afford to give our product away for free. The vast majority of other channels on the dial (including the US cable channels like CNN and SpikeTV) show both commercials and get paid for their product by cable and satellite companies. We think this is unfair.
Specifically on a couple of your points though – the $6.00 scare tactic by Shaw. This is untrue. What we are asking for is the ability to negotiate a fair value for our signals from cable. We are not asking for a fixed amount. Even if you argue that they should be allowed to pass on whatever we negotiate (despite the fact that they already charge for our product, so it would effectively be double-charging for our product), how can they possibly arrive at a price before we’ve even negotiated? Don’t fall for this scare tactic. Only monopolies, such as cable, could play these games with their customers.
On the Local Programming Improvement Fund – the CRTC specifically told the cable companies that they should absorb the charge (check out Line 357 – link won’t work here!). Cable companies like Shaw, of course didn’t, and blamed the CRTC for the fee instead.
At the end of the day, they are not looking out for the consumer – they are looking out for their bottom line. And for them to feign outrage at any increase to cable bills is laughable when you consider that your basic cable bill has gone up more than four times the cost of living in the past five years.
Thanks again,
Global_Mike
Hey there – it’s ‘Global_Mike’ from the Local TV Matters campaign (http://localtvmatters.ca/). Thanks for your interest in the issue. I read your blog and it seems like you’ve gotten a lot of your info from Shaw’s ‘Don’t Tax My TV’ website – http://tinyurl.com/yew3u3d. It won’t surprise you to learn that we disagree with most of what’s on there. In fact, we would say some of their statements are misleading. The bottom line is that we currently give our product to cable and satellite companies for free. They, in turn, charge customers for our product each and every month – and they don’t pass any of the revenue on to local stations. We can no longer afford to give our product away for free. The vast majority of other channels on the dial (including the US cable channels like CNN and SpikeTV) show both commercials and get paid for their product by cable and satellite companies. We think this is unfair.
Specifically on a couple of your points though – the $6.00 scare tactic by Shaw. This is untrue. What we are asking for is the ability to negotiate a fair value for our signals from cable. We are not asking for a fixed amount. Even if you argue that they should be allowed to pass on whatever we negotiate (despite the fact that they already charge for our product, so it would effectively be double-charging for our product), how can they possibly arrive at a price before we’ve even negotiated? Don’t fall for this scare tactic. Only monopolies, such as cable, could play these games with their customers.
On the Local Programming Improvement Fund – the CRTC specifically told the cable companies that they should absorb the charge (check out Line 357 – http://tinyurl.com/y8bze93). Cable companies like Shaw, of course didn’t, and blamed the CRTC for the fee instead.
At the end of the day, they are not looking out for the consumer – they are looking out for their bottom line. And for them to feign outrage at any increase to cable bills is laughable when you consider that your basic cable bill has gone up more than four times the cost of living in the past five years.
Thanks again,
Global_Mike
I don’t have a problem with the local stations selling their product to the cable companies, but in return, I think we should have the right to turn down those channels, or just pick the ones that I want. If the local stations really want to talk about being fair though, I think we should open the market up to competition. Right now, they seem to get most of their viewers by rebroadcasting shows from US networks. Why not get rid of the override laws and let Canadian broadcasters stand on their own.
GPMatt – I agree, we should drop the over ride laws and make the Canadian Broadcasters put Canadian Content besides news into their schedules. That would be fair!
Actually, if they were forced to drop US programming, I would cancel cable and just watch Hulu
It gives me better video quality than Global and CTV do in HD.
Hi,
I’m X military, in receipt of a pension, and if I were to take another government job, some news reporter from some “local TV station” would be there all over my a’s for double dipping.
Well people, the “local TV station” want to do just that. They get good money for the 18 minutes per hour of commercials that we have to endure.
Now just who do you think carries all those commercials to the viewing public, well at least 99.9% of that public; It’s the cable and Sat companies.
If local TV wants money for their programming, then they should cough-up money to the cable & Sat companies for carrying their commercials. WHY should they double dip?
Maybe the cable & Sat companies could start blanking-out commercials; That works for me. Or, maybe drop some locals, then see how long they last with a loss of 99.9% of their viewing public.
I think the cable companies and the broadcasting companies need to sit down and address their financial issues a practical business like and common sense approach!
I have no sympathy for Shaw Communications after reading that five Shaw top executives were included in the the 2008 top 55 companies in Calgary with the highest annual compensation packages. Shaw compensated the 5 executives $43,621,965.00 for 2008!
This tells me that that the cable companies are charging the customers excessive amounts for cable service, which a large portion of the executive compensation could be directed to the local broadcasting companies and the share holders!