BANFF: If the Banff World Television Festival gave an award for delivering a clear, can’t-miss-it message – word to organizers, think about it – this month’s meet-up in the mountains would have seen Konrad von Finckenstein go home with a new trophy for his mantel.

The still-new and delightfully unpredictable CRTC chairman opened the first full day of the festival with a few words about media buyouts – specifically why the feds forced CTVglobemedia to sell off the Citytv stations as a condition of its takeover of CHUM. Von Finckenstein cited the ‘two-stick’ policy that prohibits companies from owning more than one station in the same language in the same market – a rule CGM had hoped to dodge, offering a benefits package of just over $100 million to grease the wheels and upping it to $123.9 million when those wheels (read: commissioners) continued to squeak.

‘Approving the whole deal no doubt would have led to a perception that any rule of the CRTC can be overcome if enough benefits are offered,’ von Finckenstein told the crowd.

Meaning rules are rules, no matter how much money one throws at them. The perception was very different during the tenure of von Finckenstein’s predecessor, Charles Dalfen.

Von Finckenstein also spoke of the need for a ‘smarter, lighter’ CRTC, marked by speedier decisions that will keep the feds and the industry in pace with the rapid changes brought on by media concentration and digital media.

Digital media was the common thread between the Banff festival and its little sister, nextMEDIA. The fests were straddled by an appearance by Heritage Minister Bev Oda, who announced a two-year, $29-million renewal of the Canada New Media Fund, and saw TV-makers continue the Great Guessing Game about how to do business in the era of broadband, semi-professional user-generated content (‘SPUG’) and a possible ‘telepocalypse.’

On the ‘TV is doomed’ side, the slides and pie charts presented by digital natives such as Current TV and Joost noted that Canuck Internet usage is climbing 20% year over year, and that the average Canuck now spends nearly two hours per day online. Spending on online advertising hit $1 billion here in 2006. On TV, ad skipping is at an all-time high – thank you very much, TiVo – while ad recall is at an all-time low.

‘We’re not at the beginning of the end, we’re actually at the middle of the end,’ said Michael Kasprow, creative director and VP of Trapeze Media, during a nextMEDIA sit-down on interactive content.

So-called digital immigrants countered that TV is still growing, that the web could not handle even 10% of the traffic carried by traditional broadcasting, that new media producers still can’t make any money and, according to Charles Zamaria of Ryerson University, they probably never will.

There is also the cultural element to be considered – that despite all the hubbub, ‘social networking’ is nothing new, and TV, like radio before it, has equal power to bring people together.

‘We need broadcast, linear broadcast, because we need common moments,’ said Peter Cowley, managing director of digital media at Endemol U.K.

The consensus? The overall picture has changed very little from what media-watchers have been saying since the earliest days of the web. TV’s not going anywhere, though it will take a step or two to one side to make room for the net, which is still having a hard time paying its bills.

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