With the first of the new-age distribution entities finally licensed, the crtc has held fast to the 5% line for contribution to Canadian production established by the cable companies.

Despite alternative proposals from some dth and dth ppv entities, individual contributions are hard to assess yet, but estimates for year one range from $2 million to ‘enough to get two or three scripts off the ground.’

ExpressVu, the only dth provider officially up and running, albeit on a limited scale, had proposed scaled contributions from 2.5% in year one to 5.5% in year seven, depending on the number of subscribers accumulated.

With the 5% criteria, ExpressVu projects contributions to an established Canadian program production fund yet to be selected will be in the range of $2 million by the end of year one, based on reaching 100,000 subscribers, says Chris Frank, director of regulatory and government affairs for ExpressVu.

Sports/Specials, a ppv sports and special events service licensed for dth distribution, had proposed a contribution to Canadian programs of approximately 4.3% of gross revenue, in amounts ranging from $50,000 in year one to $472,000 in year seven of the licence term.

According to Gary Maavara, vp, business growth and senior legal council at ctv, Sports/ Specials’ contribution to an established Canadian production fund will be minimal in the startup year, but will come in at about $120,000 in year two of operation based on a projected $2.4 million gross revenue. ‘We’re not talking huge amounts of money at first, but it’s enough to get two or three scripts off the ground.’

Penetration is projected at about 1% of the total dth subscriber pool by the end of year one and the service will likely launch this spring.

Power, although licensed for both a national dth service and a dth ppv service, Power DirecTicket, has yet to announce whether or not it will launch in Canada as planned. ‘We still don’t know,’ says Joel Bell, chairman of Power DirecTv.

The sticking point isn’t the size of the funding contribution but rather the issue of who will foot the bill for the cost of uplinking and transmitting the broadcaster’s signals, most of which have been digitized with the cable company’s chosen technology, General Instruments Digicipher. The different technologies chosen by ExpressVu and Power are incompatible with gi’s tech, and costs for reuplinking are thought to push $20 million.

For its part, ExpressVu is looking to share uplinking and transmission costs with individual broadcasters, but if cost-sharing arrangements turn out to be unworkable, ExpressVu is advocating that digitizing costs, folded into the wholesale fees charged the cable companies, be removed from the fees charged the dth distributors bearing the costs of retransmitting the signal.

Bell would not comment on whether Power would consider a similar arrangement.

The CAB is leaving cost-sharing negotiations up to its individual members, but as a group is hailing the directive to protect the program rights of the local and regional broadcasters contained in the dth licensing decisions as a major victory.