If the rules are awol for the specialty channel applicants, maybe there’s a working model within the chosen ones debuting on analog this month. If one would like to have a licence more a tangible asset than ink on paper, perhaps it would help to have Rogers or Shaw in for a piece.

After much lip service at the application hearings about ‘fair access,’ ‘no preferential treatment’ and ‘giving consumers what they want,’ there’s an awful lot of cable in those selected from the digital list to beam up on the 17th.

Outdoor Life is one-third owned by Rogers. Treehouse tv is 100% owned by Shaw. An executive from Headline Sports called to correct the information in a story that appeared in the last issue of Playback: Clairvest, apparently, is no longer 66.3% owner of Headline Sports. The new partner: Shaw, which incidentally also owns a piece of The Comedy Network.

Self-interest being the point, it’s a longer reach on the American services, but Speedvision owners Cox Communications, Comcast Corporation, Continental Cablevision and Times-Mirror, are also the owners of Outdoor Life in the u.s., which partners with Rogers on Outdoor Life in Canada.

The point needs to be made that the cable companies can’t be blamed here. They have a business to run, debt loads to manage and perhaps, eventually, the realization of the convergence bogeymen. All of the above requires a channel offering of the size and scope being made available this month. The give-the-people-what-they-want mantra is thin considering no one this side of the border knows a Speedvision from their elbow, but the public’s interest in anything branded American and entertainment is legit. Doing deals which feed your own bottom line is also allowed.

The problem is that the crtc has seen fit to abdicate control now. Moving towards less regulation is fine and there well may be, five to 10 years from now, no limit to the number of channels that can access the Canadian market. If that’s true, then it would seem even more important now to employ the mechanisms at its disposal to get the Canadian contingent up in the air, to develop and entrench the local industry before the invasion of digital.

Instead, the commission seems to have shelved the Canada-first ideal which has been the heart of the Canadian regulatory agenda for 30 years, and the cablecos are able to maximize savvy business practices at the expense of the would-be Canadian services. One broadcaster who lost a bid for a specialty service puts it this way: ‘Every month I have to prove I serve Canadian potato chips on the set of a show I’m required to commission, but I can’t get a channel, and bet is going national.’

It’ll be weeks before the new applications are released for gazette, but bets are they contain the lowest percentage of Canadian production commitments on record for a specialty licensing round. Ideally, the production community could rely on the regulator to – at a minimum – ensure that Cancon investments rise proportionate to penetration. But the only ‘given’ evident right now is that specialty applicants are pitching more to the cablecos than the commission. You know where Canadian content weighs in there.