Hull, Que. A week into the Canadian Television Policy Review hearings, ctv seems to have shifted camps.

In the ugly political game behind a hearing that could cost the private broadcasters tens of millions of dollars, allegiances are changing per presentation as the crtc works through its three-week process.

ctv, which made headlines at the hearings’ premiere as the one private broadcaster supported by and onside with the cftpa and offside with its lobby body, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, has backed away from its ‘agreement’ with the producers after the cftpa’s presentation put Global and ctv on equal footing.

The change in positioning apparently started with the cftpa’s oral presentation to the commission. In it, the producers frontlined their primary role in creating Canadian content without pointing to ctv as a broadcaster equally committed to the cause.

‘As producers, we are the storytellers,’ said cftpa chair Linda Schuyler. ‘We are the people who have the stories, the legends, the myths that we want to share with the Canadian public and we want to do that through a viewership.’

And although the cftpa was reportedly planning to name ctv as the only broadcaster enacting its 10/10/10 plan without the strong arm of regulatory requirements, it initially stopped short of endorsing the network.

‘I think it’s very important to look at one of the schedules that are launched this fall from one of the private stations,’ said Schuyler in her opening remarks. ‘It very much fits into our 10/10/10 plan in its phase-in level. We are seeing the level of programming commitment in primetime to Canadian shows that we are expecting in our first level of ramp-up. This has happened without regulation, without specific regulation tying [hours and expenditure] together.’

However, at the conclusion of the questioning process, commissioner David McKendry jumped in to ask for qualification on who exactly the broadcaster was, which garnered a response that took the wind out of a ctv/cftpa united front.

Responding to a question from McKendry as to the identity of the broadcaster, Schuyler said, ‘The reference was to the Baton schedule, but we should also point out that when we were making our remarks about tying spending and hours together that we also see the same from Global, that when the two are combined then we are achieving the results that we want from our 10/10/10 solution.’

McKendry said, ‘So you include Global in this reference,’ to which Schuyler replied, ‘I was referring particularly in terms of the schedule to the ctv, but I was also saying that in terms of making an argument for money and hours tied together, you can also see the same effect on Global. The schedules aren’t similar, butÉ’

Although ctv is mum on its position going into its presentation Oct. 14, word is that any support once potentially afforded the cftpa is now null and void.

’10/10/10 would put all the broadcasters in the poorhouse,’ says cab president Michael McCabe, who, after scrambling earlier in the week to reunite his association’s members, told Playback, ‘We talked to Ivan [Fecan, ctv president and ceo], they won’t be endorsing 10/10/10.’

Global persecuted

Meanwhile back in the Global camp, one good word from any group was likely a thing of beauty.

On the hook for Canadian content spending commitments that are 18% compared to ctv’s 33%, Global, the richest network in Canada, has been the topic of much dialogue when it comes to the issue of equitable contributions from the private broadcasters.

According to crtc data, tva spends 40% of its revenue on Canadian content and wic 30%.

‘Without CanWest Global dragging down the average, the other conventional broadcasters’ average Cancon investment exceeded 30% last year,’ says Ian Morrison, spokesperson for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

‘If CanWest Global were spending at that level, $44-million new dollars would be available to finance new Canadian programs each year. We are not surprised by CanWest Global’s failure to spend on Canadian programming. It’s a consistent pattern in their corporate behavior. But it’s the commission’s responsibility to ensure that major station group licensees make equitable contributions to finance Canadian content and your commission has clearly failed, until now, to do so in the case of CanWest Global.’

In the other camp to date is the cab (Global appears Oct. 14 following ctv), which went to lengths to illustrate the economic realities around Canadian programming and the impact of saddling the broadcasters with substantial additional spending commitments.

Scott Cuthbertson, a senior broadcasting analyst with TD Securities who spoke on the cab’s panel, points out that the Asian market impact has caused the combined value of the top five broadcasting stocks to decline by some $1.8 billion since June, erasing almost 26% of their value.

In tandem, he spoke about the status quo for Canadian programming.

‘With the exception of Quebec, basically, the sad fact is that nobody is really watching Canadian drama. It doesn’t rate. If we are ever going to get a Canadian message across, we have to produce programming that Canadians will want to watch.

‘Once there is a more equitable balance between foreign programming and Canadian programming, then we can perhaps deal a little bit, maybe fine-tune what quality means per se. But to put it bluntly, the facts of the situation are that from a financial standpoint, Canadian programming has been the cost of doing business and I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to turn it into a business, into a business that makes money.’

The broadcasters’ gloomy financial forecasts and inability to use the 10/10/10 plan were continued when wic president Jim MacDonald outlined the economic suicide of the cftpa-requested regulations during his network’s presentation to the commission.

‘When we work through the cftpa’s 10/10/10 proposal, for example, the impact on wic is to reduce the profit of wic television by a minimum – and I stress minimum – of $20 million per annum. The commission will recall that wic’s entire profit – now, this is the corporate profit – last year was $10 million,’ said MacDonald. ‘So, the ‘do more’ proposals you have heard are simply not consistent with the economic viability of the engine that pulls the system.’

But the broadcaster’s claim of economic woes were countered deftly by the cftpa’s Andy Thomson, who pointed out that between 1993 and 1997, English private broadcasters’ profit margins increased from 12.7% to 17.3% while their spending on Canadian programs decreased from 30.4% to 26.6%.

‘Looking at the decline in broadcaster licence fees and spending on Canadian programming, the (cab’s) `funding gap’ seems to be a shortfall in broadcaster spending,’ said Thomson.

Playback has learned that the cab took another hit Sept. 15 when the commission sent the lobby group a two-page letter requesting clarification and explanation of the analysis on some of the fundamental numbers in the cab’s Environmental Scan. The Scan, produced by Cooper & Lybrand, is a cornerstone of the cab’s submission. The association is required to file answers to the crtc by Oct. 15.