Montreal: The future role of conventional broadcasters in the specialty arena has emerged as the primary issue displacing the murky debate over cable capacity after eight days of French-language specialty hearings.

One of the more useful and widely quoted documents at crtc hearings here, which wrap Dec. 15, is a Barometre study commissioned by Astral Communications. The study/poll says 72% of current extended basic subscribers in Quebec are prepared to pay an average of $5.65 for five to eight new French-language services. Most of the new round of applicants have based their business plans on a reduced 60% penetration level, as opposed to the current extended tier penetration rate of 82%.

Astral chairman Andre Bureau says the French-track specialty market needs five to seven or eight new licencees if it’s to interest a sufficient number of subscribers and attain the 60% level.

In terms of competing applications – in history, drama and business affairs – Bureau says preference should go to competent private-sector applicants, and Radio-Canada should largely restrict itself to its basic ‘mission.’

Instead of adding to the public bureaucracy, Bureau says business should take the risk. His counsel to Radio-Canada: ‘Put your money where your mouth is. Take the sports out. Put in culture, a lot of culture. That’s [your] mandate.’

Michele Fortin, src’s vp, French television, replies that the successful Canadian broadcasting system is a mixed system, ‘especially here in French in Quebec where the presence of Radio-Canada has raised standards and developed production.’

In French in Quebec

With the advent of specialties and fragmentation, Fortin says it’s essential the market evolve in a way that src and tva will continue to invest in big-budget programs, including filmed drama series and miniseries. ‘Tele-Quebec and tqs [Television Quatre Saisons] don’t do this anymore. We’re [src and tva] the only two still able to do it.

‘So what we say is that it would be interesting if this fragmentation wasn’t carried out uniquely against us, and that’s true for both the private and public [conventional] networks,’ says Fortin. ‘Talk to [tva president and ceo] Daniel Lamarre, he thinks the same way we do.’

Bureau, a former crtc chair, says the danger is src will ‘evacuate’ part of its mandate to new specialties, which might ultimately only reach 60% or less of cable homes.

‘Otherwise, at some point Parliament could look at this and ask, `Why are we subsidizing Radio-Canada, to compete with tva?’ It’s ridiculous that government would put a billion dollars into a company to compete against the private sector.’

Fortin says the issue is conventional versus specialties, not public versus private.

She says most specialty channels are essentially ‘parasitic’ in nature in that their product is either cheaper tv or they buy programs produced by others.

‘If you want an arts channel in French you have to build it close to a generalist channel which is committed to cultural matters because there is just no other way it can survive and be of quality,’ she says.

‘Television is moving into the specialty era and if you exclude us from that you’re saying, `You’re doomed to failure,’ ‘ says Fortin. ‘All our proposals [history, arts, consumer affairs] are public-service proposals. I’m not in the food industry, in how-to, humor or sports. I’m not excluding anybody. Why should we be excluded?’

Capacity takes a twist

Videotron has apparently reversed its ‘no capacity’ position in what it calls ‘the interests of a more constructive dialogue.’

In a Dec. 4 letter from Guy Beauchamp, Videotron executive vp, operations, to Pierre Roy, president and ceo of Reseaux Premier Choix (and delivered to the crtc and the other specialty applicants), the cable company says its invitation to explore ‘new market realities,’ including launching any new services on a digital platform, has been misinterpreted as a refusal to promptly add new French-language analog services.

Videotron says there is in fact room for a ‘realistic’ number of new analog channels, but they won’t necessarily be available on a basic tier, nor packaged with existing services.

Bureau says there are so many ‘qualifications’ to cable’s new capacity position that he’s asked the crtc to pursue the matter. ‘First of all, we don’t know how many channels they have in mind. They’re talking about a `reasonable’ number of [analog] channels. On Monday there was no capacity and on Friday afternoon there was.

‘So where are they coming from?’ asks Bureau. ‘We want to know whether they envisage the possibility of bumping some services, reducing the ppv channels, or whatever. Where will they get those channels?

‘Thirdly, we want to know how many subscribers will have access to those [new] channels, because in the letter they said they may have six [newly available] channels but reaching only 400,000 subscribers. . . .We can’t live with that.’

Others have raised the concern cable may be keener on marketing expanded and more profitable Internet services than simply selling more tv.

Other issues

At the hearings, src publicly invited Tele-Quebec to take an equity share [along with Bell Satellite and La Sept arte] in its Reseau des Arts proposal. Tele-Quebec has refused the invitation, but Fortin says if the rda bid is successful, t-q may be newly invited and may have a change of heart.

Both tva’s Lamarre and Bureau have said the French specialty offer must be increased otherwise imported foreign and English-Canadian services will quickly fill up any available capacity.

All the applicants – save one – envision advertising revenues, with a likely launch date for most or all in January 2000.