OTTAWA — Canwest and CTVglobemedia showed a rare unified front Friday when they again asked the CRTC for a fee for carriage from distributors for their over-the-air local TV signals. This time around, CTVgm has moved its suggested rate up significantly from the monthly 10 cents per subscriber per local channel it requested when the issue was hotly contested in 2006 as part of the CRTC’s over-the-air TV policy review.

At that time, Canwest was looking for 50 cents per subscriber. In a joint submission to the CRTC, the two broadcasters are now proposing 50 cents to 70 cents per subscriber per channel.

The CRTC announced in November that it would add fee-for-carriage to its review of rules for broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty TV services. It was surprising, given that the commission ruled in early 2007 in its over-the-air TV policy that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the need for Canadians to pay extra fees for conventional TV stations that are currently available for free.

A longtime advocate for fee-for-carriage of OTA signals dating back to the days when it had few specialty TV channels to generate subscriber revenues, Global TV continues to argue that conventional TV stations need the subscriber money because their audiences are fragmenting.

‘Audience fragmentation, the rise of new media platforms, new commercial-skipping technologies, and ongoing illegal downloading of content are resulting in a precipitous decline in revenues as advertisers shift their spending away from the conventional television medium,’ reads the joint submission.

The two broadcasters also blame a ‘complex regulatory regime’ for threatening the viability of the OTA sector. Canwest and CTVgm tell the CRTC that not only do they have Canadian content requirements, but they also have to source most of it from independent producers, which limits their ‘ability to control costs and maximize revenues’ across multiple platforms.

Unlike in the U.S., where distant signal retransmission is prohibited, Canadian OTA broadcasters must also contend with time-shifted TV signals that further fragment audiences, states the submission.

Both broadcasters also want distributors to have to obtain permission from local OTA broadcasters before they time-shift their channels, and to force a satellite TV distributor to carry a local conventional TV channel in all markets where it has 30% of TV customers.

If implemented, TV distributors say they would pass the additional fees on to consumers. The rates for basic TV could go up, as the OTA signals are currently sold in packages with specialty TV channels.

Bell Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus Communications jointly submitted a report Friday to the CRTC that indicates from 565,000 to 1.8 million subscribers — depending on the amount of the price increase — would cancel their BDU services and shift to unregulated sources of video content, including the Internet and the black and grey satellite TV market.

Also on the regulatory front, CBC says it will apply next week for a new digital channel dedicated to amateur sports, according to sources at the public broadcaster. The channel would carry FIFA events, amateur hockey under the Hockey Night in Canada brand, and programming such as figure skating, curling and Alpine skiing that is currently aired on the CBC’s diginet Country Canada. But Country Canada’s licence limits its sports programming to 10% of its schedule.

CBC’s announcement followed swiftly on the heels of the Canadian Olympic Committee announcing Jan. 21 that it would be unveiling details of its own proposed digital amateur sports channel in simultaneous media conferences in Toronto and Montreal on Jan. 30.