Producers called on the CRTC to put the brakes on foreign programming spending — echoing sentiments by cable and satellite companies — and said Thursday that over-the-air broadcasters would be better served focusing on Canadian content as a viable business opportunity.

Despite challenges, conventional television ‘still has lots of life in it,’ the producers group declared at the commission’s continuing hearings into fee-for-carriage, noting that new Portable People Meters show higher audiences than previously thought for OTAs.

‘Sky-high expenditures on foreign programming are a big part of the problem in the English-language market. Any business that grows spending more than its revenues is walking on a tightrope,’ said CFTPA president and CEO Norm Bolen in his opening remarks, pointing out that private conventional broadcasters spent 7.4% more on foreign programming, while revenues decreased by 1.5% in 2008.

The CFTPA put forth solutions it says will improve the financial health of over-the-air television, including an introduction of CPE or Canadian programming expenditure obligations — maintaining that the model works for specialty channels which generate audiences and derive profit from their homegrown shows.

Producers also called on the CRTC to implement a minimum spend on priority programming, a favorite refrain of the CFTPA’s, and to uphold the 75% exhibition rule on independent production.

CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein asked, if the regulator implements CPE, whether it obviates the need for value-for-signal — the highly contentious sticking point for cablers and conventional broadcasters.

‘That’s a hard question to answer,’ admitted Bolen. ‘But there’s no question that the profitability of the OTA services has been degraded because of excessive spending,’ he reaffirmed.

CRTC commissioner Stephen Simpson further pressed the CFTPA on the CPE proposal, noting that it puts a lot of onus on Canadian content to be a revenue generator and not just a cost reducer.

‘What happens if that doesn’t happen? If [Canadian content] doesn’t pull the numbers and revenues go down?’ he asked.

‘It’s a troubling scenario, but one that we think is less and less likely especially if OTAs are properly incentive-ised to concentrate on Canadian programming as the specialties have,’ replied Tom Cox, vice-chair of the CFTPA board and president of Alberta-based Seven24 Films.

He cited the success of CTV’s Flashpoint and Seven24’s family drama Heartland, the latter which has nearly doubled its audience in the last two years and has been renewed for a fourth season by CBC.