Too many channels, too few viewers: not the best of years for Canadian TV

by John McKay

The scary-looking bald guy emerges from a dark alley.

"This man is about to steal something,'' says the text at the bottom of the TV screen.

It's not that elderly lady's purse. Nor is it the car he checks out as he passes by. Nor that bike.

No, baldy enters his apartment, sits down and picks up his TV remote. "He's stealing a satellite signal,'' we are told. "Theft is theft.''

The TV spot is part of an ad campaign sponsored by the Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft, a group that includes cable and licensed satellite carriers, the CBC and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

The campaign coincides with a recent spate of police raids against sellers of unauthorized American satellite gear that the Supreme Court of Canada last April declared was illegal.

TV piracy is blamed for siphoning off $400 million a year from the domestic broadcasting system, with an estimated 700,000 households watching the forbidden fruit of outlawed U.S. signals – from HBO to ESPN – instead of paying for a legitimate Canadian carrier service. That has a negative impact on Canadian jobs and on funding that would underwrite Canadian programming, the coalition says.

"We are facing a nationwide epidemic of electronic shoplifting,'' adds CRTC chairman Charles Dalfen. "Theft is theft.''

Janet Yale, president of the Canadian Cable Television Association, is pleased with both the campaign and the recent police enforcement efforts.

"We've thanked government officials for a good start and encourage them to ramp it up even more so that we can really see a chill in the marketplace.''

Yale notes that U.S. satellite distributors are escalating their electronic countermeasures, too, sending signals down the line that tend to fry the hacked access cards used by satellite pirates.

"Hopefully they'll just say 'This is as good as a dog dish. I'm going to go to a Canadian alternative.' ''

But the already-shaky coalition of the cable and dish folks showed signs of coming apart in December when Bell ExpressVu, one of the country's two licensed DTH satellite carriers, accused the cable industry of ignoring the fact it, too, has a piracy problem – also, coincidentally, to the tune of some $400 million. Yale puts the figure closer to $30 million.

The past year has shown that Canadian broadcasters are at a disadvantage in traditional ways, too.

Canadian drama has taken a noticeable nosedive in prime time, with only one new home-grown series debuting this fall and to a less than spectacular reception. CTV's The Eleventh Hour, despite slick writing and production values and near-unanimous raves from TV critics, debuted on Tuesday nights drawing little more than 400,000 viewers. This in a milieu where only a few years ago one million pairs of eyeballs was considered a minimum benchmark.

But Bill Mustos, vice-president of dramatic programming for CTV, has faith that the show will find an audience.

"We've got to show some patience,'' he says. "There's something there that's working.''

The CBC's New Beachcombers movie, meanwhile, nabbed twice as many viewers, despite harsh, even caustic reviews. Still, back in the 1970s heyday of the original series, before audiences were fragmented by all these new specialty channels, Beachcombers episodes were seen by some 3.4 million Canadians, almost unimaginable in today's TV environment.

If The Eleventh Hour tanks, it will only aggravate the cynical viewpoint that Canadian TV and film carries a stigma – that, rightly or wrongly, it is perceived as inferior.

It's never been more difficult for Canadian series, especially when in the U.S. millions are spent on a hit show like NBC's The West Wing. In addition, not only the TV signal but the accompanying monster American publicity machine's efforts spill across the border into Canada, too.

The situation has prompted Canadian industry unions to launch a campaign to lobby for more support for domestic drama. A disappointed ACTRA Toronto president Steve Waddell notes that the total number Canadian drama series on TV is down from 12 two years ago to only five this season, with 91 per cent of the programming watched being American.

"We're hopeful for the coming year but rather pessimistic that we're going to potentially see the same level of production and perhaps even less, because it happens to be more expensive than cheap reality shows.''

Actors' union members have the moral support of Dalfen who told them recently that he shares their concerns.

"Canadian TV drama is not only possible, but essential,'' he said. "We mustn't give up on drama.''

Yet it was Dalfen's own regulatory commission that licensed so many new channels that have eaten into the conventional broadcasters' ability to acquire a critical mass of viewers, enough to afford mounting a quality Canadian series that would pull in the required audience.

It was the CRTC, too, that in 1999 changed the rules, replacing the definition of drama with the term priority programming, to include dirt-cheap reality fare like Global's Popstars as well as documentaries, variety and entertainment magazine shows. In addition, the private broadcasters seem to burn off the bulk of their required Canadian content in weekend ghetto slots, especially Saturday night when everyone's watching CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.

Waddell does point out, by the way, that none of those CRTC-approved changes happened on Dalfen's watch, and agrees that Canadian broadcasters can't be forced by regulation to produce quality series.

"What you can do is provide to the Canadian public drama that speaks to Canadians,'' he says. "I believe that Canadian drama, if done well . . . that's the kind of product that people in Germany and elsewhere around the world will want to watch, because it's distinctive.''

Mustos says CTV has three domestic series on the air and that hasn't changed in years, despite the CRTC's relaxing of the content rules. And he cautions against mandated quotas.

"If you try and force any broadcaster to do a very specific and narrow type of programming, you're asking for trouble,'' he maintains. "It's very problematic for the commission to step in and say we must be doing x, y or z.''

Ian Morrison of the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, however, does believe force is the only answer, saying that in 1998 hearings the CRTC was "hoodwinked'' by private broadcasters into trusting them to deliver the goods on their own.

"As a result of the new TV policy, it's a huge drop in the expensive programming,'' Morrison says. "They've weaseled out of it, and it's not the broadcasters' fault – they're in a competitive environment – it's the regulator letting them off the hook.''

In typical Canadian fashion, the issue has provoked a series of inquiries.

The House standing committee on Canadian heritage is holding hearings. Longtime cultural bureaucrat Francois Macerola will also submit a report to Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. And former broadcaster Trina McQueen has agreed to a five-month investigation for the CRTC.

There were high hopes for media convergence as a possible solution to our on-air identity problems.

When BCE Inc., for example, bought CTV in 2000, it came with a commitment to plough $140 million into network programming. Similarly, when CanWest Global bought out the WIC string of stations (and the National Post) in the same year, a $24-million infusion was pledged.

But while the money is having an impact on "Cancon,'' in most cases the converging of media partners has been a financial and creative disappointment. In the U.S. the much-touted multi-billion-dollar AOL-Time-Warner merger has resulted in massive debt for that company as it has for domestic multi-media players like Global and Quebecor.

Rick Brace, president of CTV, says there have been benefits from the BCE acquisition of CTV, the Globe and Mail newspaper and the Web portal Sympatico. But he maintains that comparatively, they only dipped a toe in the water – convergence with a small c.

"We're still involved in it, but only where it makes sense,'' Brace says. "I don't think it's an aggressive core part of our business the way we maybe once looked at it.''

And while all those specialty channels continue to eat away at the audience numbers for conventional broadcasting, the digital-tier services are still a long way from paying their own way. Figures are hard to come by, but it's no secret that some of the diginets have viewership in the hundreds, not the thousands or hundreds of thousands.

"We're committed to them but, you know, it's going to be a long-term payout,'' concedes Brace, adding that overall though, it's been a year of turnaround for his network.

"We came out of the Sept. 11 year where we had a lot of impact on advertising, the economy was in kind of a tailspin. That has really started to reverse, we're seeing advertisers coming back aggressively.

"I guess it's the old story: keep your fingers crossed and hope the momentum continues.''

© Canadian Press