OTTAWA — Canwest and CTVglobemedia brought their case for fee-for-carriage to politicians this week, met again with fierce opposition from Shaw Communications and Cogeco Cable. The two sides presented conflicting evidence to parliament’s Heritage committee, which is studying Canada’s ailing conventional TV industry.

Fee-for-carriage is ‘a matter of survival,’ said Canwest Television president and CEO Peter Viner, backed up by CTVgm’s Ivan Fecan who argued that allowing conventional nets to collect fees from cablers, ‘does not need to impact the consumer nor will it invoke undue harm to the cable and satellite industry,’

‘This is a an industry-to-industry matter,’ said Fecan.

But, echoing remarks made by Rogers Cable on Monday, Shaw Communications countered claims that over-the-air television is in crisis, and that fee-for- carriage is a necessary solution. But if implemented, then the fees would have to be passed on to consumers, said Shaw Communications president Peter Bissonnette.

‘A regulatory regime based on subscribers is not sustainable in the long run,’ he said.

Cogeco VP of corporate affairs Yves Mayrand also noted that fee-for-carriage would simply delay needed structural changes to the OTA system, allowing broadcasters to continue to ‘overspend on American programming and underspend on Canadian.’

But Liberal MP and committee vice-chair Pablo Rodriguez referred to the opposing arguments — which have been circulating around Ottawa for years — as a ‘form of blackmail.’ He noted the broadcasters are threatening to shut down local stations and programming if fee-for-carriage isn’t passed, while distributors vow to pass the extra fees onto consumers and possibly cut jobs if the status quo doesn’t remain.

Fecan told the committee that CTVgm had vowed before the CRTC to tie fee-for-carriage to local programming. Canwest regulatory VP Charlotte Bell said the Winnipeg-based broadcaster had made a similar pledge.

Aside from fee-for-carriage, CTVgm also recommended that satellites should carry local TV stations, and that a hybrid digital transition strategy should be developed and implemented. This would allow broadcasters to save money because they wouldn’t have to upgrade to digital OTA transmission towers in smaller and mid-sized markets. Instead, rural residents would have to subscribe to cable or satellite to get the OTA stations they can now get for free with rabbit ears.

Shaw Communications said possible solutions include implementing the CRTC’s Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF), eliminating Part II licence fees, and decreasing the regulatory burden on OTA broadcasters, for example, by lowering local programming requirements and expanding advertising opportunities by allowing commercials on ‘local avails’ and removing current restrictions on pharmaceutical advertising.