Jay Switzer (a self-confessed TV brat) is president of Toronto-based CHUM Television.

It’s no secret that the largest Canadian broadcast groups derive much of their operating profits from licensing and rebroadcasting hit, U.S. dramatic series. But over the next seven years, the Canadian business model will face some critical change.

With licence fees coming from Canada maxed out and paid in weak Canadian dollars, U.S. studios will start to consider not to license a program for Canada. Instead, they could look to enjoying the advertising and branding benefits from Canadian viewers watching these shows on the same U.S. studios’ networks, freely available across Canada.

And with the pending explosion of ‘high speed’ in the home, the next four or five years will see the speed of delivery and the number of subscribers increase to the point where many traditional national barriers will become meaningless in terms of regulation. If broadcasters and content providers don’t meet the needs of their customers, users and viewers will simply interact in a seamless way with content producers, or their corporate portals directly.

Many in the Canadian industry are worried about these threats, and rightly so. There are pressures to grow, to be large enough to survive. There are pressures on Canadian broadcasters to specialize in order to sustain viewership and not simply rely on the licensing and reselling of generalist Hollywood product for profit. This will force Canadian broadcasters to look at U.S. partners and various affiliation models.

Add to this the hugely expensive investment by television broadcasters to upgrade their facilities and transmitters to digital, and in five to seven years you have a situation with increased costs, higher risks and reduced margins.

So why am I still smiling?

I don’t worry about short-term economic bumps in the road. I don’t particularly worry about new in-home devices such as PVRs being launched by satellite and cable in Canada. I don’t worry about the huge explosion in choice for Canadian viewers with the recent digital launches and the knowledge that there will be more Canadian and foreign digital channels to come.

What I do worry about is international barriers coming down (due to politics or technology) and any loss of ability by our regulator to ensure strong Canadian channels prevail alongside the world’s best international services. And I do worry about the Sleeping Giants in Hollywood who may suddenly decide that they stand to gain more by building ratings of their U.S.-based channels in Canada than they do in receiving Canadian-dollar licence fees from third parties.

Nonetheless, I remain extremely optimistic about television in Canada and our ability to continue to reach viewers. And I believe that a strong Canada will always have a strong Canadian broadcasting system. I am a self-confessed TV brat.

Some friends suggest that having seven TV sets in our large, one-bedroom apartment is overdoing it. I listen to digital music channels on my Rogers and Bell ExpressVu digital TV receivers. Like many of my friends, I shamelessly enjoy watching good and bad television – it’s a 24-hour-a-day, non-stop cacophony of information, entertainment, strange voices and stories from around the world.

The conclusion I draw from living and breathing TV is that in the years ahead, what you make will count more than what you license. To borrow from my friend Moses Znaimer’s TVTV exposition, you must be true and connected to your viewers in a meaningful way, as the thing that will generate success in the future is an intensely local orientation. Strong, responsive, intensely local news, information and entertainment programming is the only kind of television that will be safe from the cannibalization and commoditization of hundreds of U.S. signals into every home.

At home, my program choice has expanded exponentially. I can watch any major U.S. network program at five or six different times, across many time zones, on many U.S. and Canadian stations. The traditional proposition of appointment television for hit series has changed. The only connection I have left with Canadian broadcasters is for their local service.

Local is more expensive to do than national television, and it is inherently riskier. But it is a key component for success in the future – at least in this TV brat’s opinion.

-www.chumlimited.com