OTTAWA — Offering ‘I feel your pain’ remarks worthy of Bill Clinton, CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein told conventional broadcasters Monday that he understood why they wanted fees for carriage from cable and satellite TV operators.

He just didn’t agree that such fees are the solution to what ails them, so von Finckenstein last week denied their request.

‘What we heard was a clear-cut case that there’s a financial need. We heard conventional TV is in serious decline,’ von Finckenstein said during a keynote address at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters convention, with a nod to public hearings last April where Canwest CEO Leonard Asper and CTV CEO Ivan Fecan made a joint pitch for new revenue.

But the CRTC chair added that the broadcasters never explained how the subscribers fees they sought would help him further the aims of the federal Broadcasting Act.

‘The second part, how the fees would contribute to the system, we didn’t hear that,’ von Finckenstein, ever the judge looking to uphold the law, said.

Charlotte Bell, SVP of regulatory affairs at Canwest, also attending the CAB convention, was thankful for von Finckenstein’s empathy but not impressed with his solution.

‘I feel encouraged by the chairman recognizing there’s a problem. But he’s asking us to come up with other solutions,’ Bell told a panel on the CRTC’s decision.

‘You either add revenue, or cut the costs. I’m not sure how we will get there. We seemed to have turned the page on fee-for-carriage, or the door may be still open,’ she added.

Von Finckenstein said he would have wanted to see detailed business plans to explain why a general fee-for-carriage of over-the-air signals was warranted, and how it would reward Canadian TV viewers.

‘They made no commitment to use any fee-for-carriage revenue to improve Canadian programming, nor did they offer any plans for how this could be done,’ the CRTC chairman argued.

Von Finckenstein also said the current problems facing OTA broadcasters were due more to market forces, audience shift to specialty channels, VOD and the Internet, and will not easily be solved with a new tax on TV viewers.

‘This is clearly a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution and not a fiscal fix,’ the CRTC chair said.

Von Finckenstein said he’d entertain any new ideas to ease the struggles of conventional broadcasters, but not at the upcoming licence renewal hearings for CTV and Canwest.

What’s more, broadcasters and content carriers were left uncertain how they will successfully negotiate compensation for so-called distant signals with the CRTC at the table as a final arbiter.

‘This doesn’t make me warm and fuzzy inside about dispute resolution,’ said Mirko Bibic, chief regulatory officer for Bell Canada, as he scoffed at broadcaster arguments in opposition to TV viewers catching up on missed shows by viewing them on TV stations in other time zones.

For their part, cablecasters were left wondering why the CRTC proposed a $60-million fund for local, mostly news programming when the issue had hardly been raised during last April’s hearings.

‘The one thing that struck me about the [local-fund] decision is we needed more of a record around it,’ Ken Engelhart, Rogers’ SVP of regulatory affairs, told a Monday panel on the CRTC decision.

‘We have a $60-million fund going to news and small-market stations that may be a worthwhile use of funds. But we should have had a hearing on it,’ he added.

But Scott Hutton, executive director of broadcasting at the CRTC, defended the local-fund proposal, indicating recent hearings of the provision of local newscasts at struggling Quebec broadcaster Télé Quatre Saisons provided evidence of concern by Canadians over local newscasts.

The CAB convention continues to Tuesday.