The CRTC’s latest annual report on the fiscals of conventional TV broadcasters is out, and it’s not a pretty picture. Revenue is stalled, expenses are up, and profitability is sliding. But no need to fear. The numbers are already out of date and the bottom line probably doesn’t matter much anyway. Why? Because consolidation will save us all.

Like Ugly Betty, what doesn’t look very nice actually turns out to be something of a feel-gooder. This is because, from broadcaster to union, our beloved regulator has produced some wonderfully spinable numbers. And second only to making TV (and that’s arguable), spinning is what these folks love to do.

The stat that really popped out this year was a 12% increase in foreign programming spending between 2005 and 2006, from $603 million to a record of $688 million.

This is a particularly useful figure, and nowhere else is it so readily available. The conventional broadcasters get to whine that these expense increases put their very business model – the one in which U.S. program revenues support Canadian program production – in jeopardy. Combined profits before interest and taxes have slipped from $242 million to $91 million, and the profit margin (again, before interest and taxes) slipped from 11% to 4%.

See, Mr. von Finckenstein? Their ribs are showing. It backs up their contention to the CRTC that the over-the-air services need that fee for carriage.

ACTRA, meanwhile, gets to work itself into a lather, something it does well and often. ‘CRTC proves Canada’s broadcasting system is broken,’ the union declared, pointing to a 13.7% decrease in Canadian drama expenditures, to $71 million.

‘Our broadcasters have decreased their spending on Canadian drama by almost $12 million over the past year,’ ACTRA national executive director Stephen Waddell huffed.

The Directors Guild of Canada’s number crunchers, pulling Quebec spending out of their interpretation, say that English-Canadian drama spending has declined even further, citing a 25% drop to $36 million.

Though the unions’ numbers may not be quite the same, their agendas line up well. They are calling on the CRTC to backtrack on its 1999 TV Policy and force broadcasters to step up to the Canadian dramatic programming plate.

‘It’s time the CRTC held these stations to account,’ says DGC national executive director and CEO Pamela Brand.

As a big-picture indicator, however, this kind of snapshot is becoming increasingly artificial, if not outright irrelevant. The first thing to note is that the numbers were taken up to last August, and much of the slide hinges on a lousy 2006 for CanWest. The current year-so-far is already looking better for ad revenue across the board, and CanWest specifically, the report’s loss leader, is on the rebound.

Industryites are also predicting that U.S. broadcasters facing challenges like fragmentation and a stalling economy are watching their wastelines, too, and as the TV production studios’ biggest customers (Canada matters not a whit to them), this promises to help moderate programming costs. So in theory at least, the spike in expenses is likely to return to something a bit more sustainable.

As for the Canadian industry, that which is going to save the day, ironically enough, is consolidation.

The two giant TV deals that have everyone’s lips flapping, the CTV takeover of CHUM for $1.7 billion and the Goldman Sachs/CanWest Global takeover of Alliance Atlantis for $2.3 billion (all of it subject to CRTC approval), promise to generate a chunk of change for Canadian production. Via the CRTC mandated 10% benefits package, an extra $400 million in production funds are headed down the pipe. Bitch all you want about the top of the pyramid narrowing, but if you’re a producer, having that sum in the wings – though temporary – has got to be reassuring.

And while the conventionals’ advantage over specialties is certainly narrowing, technology, and the rules by which they operate, are not only making the distinction between them increasingly artificial, but these takeovers are putting them all into bed together anyway. Even Global, the last guy to see the light on specialty TV, is jumping in with both feet.

So this fiscal snapshot of the conventional industry ends up being less than the sum of its parts. It’s a nice bit of fluff whose primary significance is that with CTV and now CHUM disappearing into larger corporate entities, these small-print stats are going to become increasingly difficult to source out. The bottom line means very little, but the data that took us there serves everyone’s purpose well. Thanks, Mr. von F. We do need that.