Would You Pay to Watch CTV?

CTV and Global Canwest are promoting the concept that cable and satellite subscribers should pay a mandatory fee to receive local television stations (read CTV and Global).

You can read more about this concept at: http://savelocal.ctv.ca/

CTV and Global are trying to make the cable and satellite subscribers appear to be the bad guy because they receive "free" signals from CTV and Global stations and then charge their own subscribers to receive the signal.

At first glance it seems the argument to save-local-tv makes some sense. But only if one assumes, the final user - the viewer - has the chance to accept the CTV/Global station and pay the fee, or decline the station and thus the fee. However, save-local-TV says that the subscriber must pay the fee, EVEN IF THEY NEVER TUNE IN TO THE CTV OR GLOBAL STATION.

CTV and especially Global have a business model predicated on one CRTC rule. That rule is that any show, originating from outside Canada on such networks as ABC, CBS or NBC, must have its commercials over-ridden with Canadian commercials even if the viewer is tuned to the American station. That business model failed with the advent of satellite TV. CTV and Global failed to produce any relevant programming except for local news, and even that is horrid outside of Toronto and sometimes Montreal. Now, with network viewing way down, the CTV and Global business model is failing.

The irony of the CTV argument is that the save-local-TV campaign is now necessary because of the success of the old CTV model which favoured repeats and streaming of US shows rather than production of valuable Canadian content.

CTV would have us think that unless they can get more of our money, they can't keep showing repeats all day long, and we won't get local news. In fact, in a typical one-hour CTV news program, nearly half the "news" is commercials, including the so-called entertainment and fashion news, which are simply commercials packaged up like news. In addition, far too much "local" programming is about events outside Canada which will likely NEVER impact on Canadians. Do Canadians really care about the Koreans setting off a nuclear test underground, a war in Sri Lanka, whales being beached in Africa, a fire in Tasmania etc. etc?

I have 59 TV channels available to me. I have only ever watched about 15 of them. Just 12 stations represent 100% of what now I watch. They are CBC & Newsworld, ABC, CBS, NBC, City-TV, The Weather Network, FOX-Seattle, TSN, CNN, SportsNet, ESPN, and ROB-TV. I know that CTV, Shaw, Global and Rogers do not want to read this but no-one watches the 500 channel universe. In fact, once a person has about 20 channel to select from, they no longer increase the hours they view TV.

This may surprise CTV and Global but I do not need to watch Friends, Seinfeld and the Simpsons, 10 times a day, 7 days a week. I could care less about Hindu TV, don't care about Parsi news, do not need to see local programming from Hull, Quebec, am not interested in the talking heads at Shaw proclaiming the need for or against needle exchange programs, etc. etc.

Let us pay for what we watch, but only for what we watch, not for what is made available.