Quebec City: Just days before the Canadian Association of Broadcasters met in Quebec City for its annual conference, a great triumphant ‘boo-yah!’ went out among its members when the CRTC scuttled two very unpopular plans put forth by the cable companies and advertising upstart 49th Media.

CABers had fought hard against both groups and the federal ruling arrived like an early Christmas present for the nation’s TV execs. Unfortunately for conference organizers, it left very little for private broadcasters to discuss during their two-day stay deep in the local conference center. Lacking what had been the most urgent causes of the moment, the CAB conference, held Nov 11 and 12, instead looked ahead to the new government in Ottawa while rehashing old issues such as the continuing problem with signal theft and the need for copyright reform.

In his opening remarks to the CAB faithful, president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell spoke of the need to recognize ‘new realities’ in the broadcast biz, and to win the support of politicians and policy makers, many of whom may be shuffled when Paul Martin takes over as prime minister.

‘Now is the time to modernize our broadcasting policy environment and make it more effective. We need to reform rules and regulations so that they strengthen the system as a whole instead of regulating production or paralyzing innovation,’ he said.

Market fragmentation and the ever-growing selection of channels are the ‘new normal’ and need less ‘micro-regulation’ by Ottawa in order to grow, he added.

O’Farrell also spoke of the need for copyright reform and continued to bang the drum about signal theft, calling for stricter enforcement of program rights in the now ‘borderless’ industry.

Broadcasters and the CAB-backed Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft saw their efforts frustrated recently when a proposed bill, meant to stiffen penalties against dealers and users of black-market equipment, failed to pass before parliament broke in mid-November prior to the Liberal leadership convention.

Panel discussions at the conference veered more than once into bitter complaints about the failure to pass Bill C-52, blame for which has landed squarely on the desk of Allan Rock, the industry minister. There are believed to be 500,000 people receiving pirate signals in Canada, draining some $400 million per year from industry coffers.

‘It’s absolutely ridiculous. It was passed to them on a silver platter,’ said Shan Chandrasekar, president and CEO of the Asian Television Network, during one session. ‘All they had to do was sign it and they blew it. They really blew it.’

CRTC head Charles Dalfen seemed sympathetic in his Nov. 11 speech to the membership, congratulating CASST for its efforts and acknowledging the challenges posed by new technologies.

But Dalfen reminded CABers that the commission cannot guarantee success or market share to anyone. ‘As technology evolves there will be winners and losers, as there always are,’ he warned.

One early session – originally meant to go over the cabler and 49th Media plans – instead dwelt on those new technologies such as PVRs and high-definition TV and how they will affect business in the years to come. Digital video recorders, armed with ad-skipping features, are slowly catching on with Canadian viewers and eating into ad revenue. ‘Casters agreed they need to explore alternate cash sources – product placement, video on demand and other ‘transactional revenue’ – to stay in the black.

CHUM CEO Jay Switzer confessed, with exaggerated shame, that he recently skipped commercials during an episode of CSI. ‘I thought ‘What the hell am I doing?” he recalled, getting a nervous laugh from the crowd. ‘Don’t I have an obligation to watch these commercials?’

Another session tried to predict what genre or format might replace reality TV, given that its popularity seems to be slipping. Joe Millionaire had no trouble raking in 40 million viewers a night in season one, but is scoring closer to six million this year. But Doug Hoover, programming boss at CanWest Global, downplayed the change, arguing that while ‘hot tub’ style shows are losing viewers, reality TV, in its broadest sense, is still solid. America’s Funniest Home Videos, he reminded the crowd, has been on the air since the 1980s.

Judith Brosseau, senior VP of programming at Astral Media, added that reality is to TV what polyester suits were to 1970s fashion – both seem ugly and embarrassing at first but, given time, eventually adapt to people’s tastes.

-www.cab-acr.ca