Shaw Cable goes activist

Corporations lobbying government directly is one thing, but attempts at stiring up grass roots activism always strikes me as odd. In some cases, it can end up going horribly, horribly wrong.

Thus, I was semi-surprised to see Cable/Phone/Internet provider Shaw posting a call to arms on their website:

Shaw.ca: WHAT DOES SPENDING 2.5 BILLION OF YOUR MONEY TO FUND ORIGINAL CANADIAN TV PROGRAMS GET YOU? [NOT MUCH. WE WERE HOPING YOU KNEW.]

The Canadian Television Fund was created to help promote and develop quality TV programming in Canada.Butsomewhere along the line, they lost their way. Firstly, they give the CBC a backdoor to $120 million each year. Secondly, instead of promoting the creation of
better children’s programming or developing a series based on the icons and elements of our country that make Canada great, they pumped 2.5 billion dollars into shows about the dysfunctional residents of a mobile home park, shape-shifting aliens with a grudge against the government and educational programming that offers instruction on the right and wrong way to host an S&M Bondage party.

At Shaw, we believe television should entertain, inform, inspire and make you think. We support the development of original Canadian programming that reflects this great country of ours. However, this programming should be a lot more reflective of the audience that will ultimately watch it. We need a better way to create Canadian programming that has a broader appeal to our customers, and satisfies you as a Canadian taxpayer and cable customer.

They then go on to ask you to sign an online petition, and suggest other venues where you can vent your spleen, such as the CRTC and the Heritage Minister.

Pumping tax dollars into broadcasting is no way to improve the quality of Canadian programming. It's amazing how federal programs never quite achieve the desired effect. The only way to make shows that people want to watch is for production companies to pitch concepts that the networks think they can sell advertising for. Sadly, this is a double-edged sword, as what's popular and what's good aren't always the same thing, but that's a free market for you.

Sphere: Related Content

CRTC rolls over to broadcaster's latest attempt to tread water

Yahoo!: CRTC phasing out restrictions on how much ad time TV stations can run
GATINEAU, Que. (CP) - Canada's broadcast regulator says it's easing out restrictions on advertising time limits for conventional television stations but they won't be entitled to get fees from cable and satellite subscribers.
Currently, conventional TV stations are restricted to 12 minutes of advertising per hour in prime time, between 7 and 11 p.m. But the maximum limit will increase to 14 minutes on Sept. 1, 2007, to 15 minutes on Sept. 1, 2008, and will be unlimited after Sept. 1, 2009.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said Thursday that the relaxed restrictions is intended to "provide broadcasters with additional revenues to respond to the changes this industry is experiencing."

Translation: "Fewer people are watching television, so we need to make them watch more commercials. It'll all balance out in the end."

To a network executive, this makes more sense, and is a lot easier to implement, than creating great, original new programing, maybe even a new entertainment paradigm that would give more people a reason to watch television again.

To those of us with an ounce of sense, it's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Sphere: Related Content

Feds overrule CRTC, allow big telcom to squish VOIP upstarts

Canada.com reported in Paul Kedrosky's Infections Greed

OTTAWA - The federal government trumped the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Wednesday, removing price restrictions on telephone companies that allow people to make phone calls over the Internet.
The highly unusual move is the first time the federal government has overruled a decision by the independent telephone regulator in more than a decade.
The move will allow big incumbent telephone companies to cut their VoIP prices drastically, undermining pricing initiatives offered by smaller companies such as Vonage and Primus Canada.

Short version: Bell Canada and Telus Corp will be allowed to slut themselves out on the price of their VOIP services, potentially squeezing the little startup companies (who brought VOIP to market in the first place), so that the big, fat, lazy telcos can go back the status quo of locking up their markets and being unhelpful to their customers.

I'm no commie, and I'm a big fan of the free market (if one really existed), but as long as some companies can't be trusted to do good works, some level of government regulation is required. But government intervention that shores up poor business plans is never the answer. Naturally, it's too much work for Bell Canada and Telus to get better, so they need to have the threats to their business legislated away.

It's a pity, just as I had lauded the CRTC for finally doing something intelligent, the Tories had to go and muck it up. Between this, their ham-handed bungling (not to mention bald-faced lying) on the Income Trust issue, it's clear that the Tories are damned and determined to fumble the next election at any cost.

Sphere: Related Content

CRTC tells big telcoms the score on VOIP

again from the fine people at MarketNews

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has
asserted its previous
decision on VoIP services that regulates it just as a local telephone
service, essentially preventing incumbent telephone companies from pricing their
service lower than competing VoIP companies. However, the Commission said it
will reconsider the established threshold of 25 per cent market share that
incumbent local exchange telephone companies must lose in order to qualify for
regulatory forbearance.

It pleases me enormously to see the CRTC, a governing body that I have railed against for years doing something to justify their existence: encouraging the telcos to adapt to a new player on the block, and not get away with rubbing out the competition and going back to business as usual. Admittedly, the ruling comes with a large "but" attached to it. Frankly, the telcos need take a look at their outdated pricing models for their services and look for better ways to offer value to customers rather than seek legislation protecting their way of doing business.

Sphere: Related Content