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CRTC plans to impose new fees on TV viewing; Bell Canada files submission to oppose these new TV fees.

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission or CRTC is planning to introduce a new fee for television, specifically named as a fee-for-carriage for those who receive signals from the television OTA or over-the-air. The CRTC is now examining the implementation of this fee as it is currently reviewing the rules and regulations that cover the broadcast distribution undertakings. This proposition or an imposition, as others view it has received opposition from several companies especially BDUs. The opposing companies include Bell Canada who has recently filed a submission to CRTC regarding their view on these fees.

According to the president of Bell ExpressVu, Gary Smith, the placement of a fee on these OTA signals given out by the television would have a bad effect on almost everybody and all sectors involved in the telecommunications and broadcast system of Canada. It is not only the people who are behind the scenes in broadcasting who will be affected but the consumers as well. He also feels that the only ones who will be earning from this kind of set up will be the giant broadcasting corporations.

The broadcasters whose views are quite conventional are the ones lobbying for this fee to be imposed. This issue is not new anymore to these people. In fact, they have already been pushing for this fee to be imposed for several years. They would like a fee to be charged to BDUs, cable providers and satellite providers for their delivery of the local channels, which are actually free of charge when aired in local television.

This fee proposal has already been previously rejected by CRTC last May 2007 and is now being reviewed again. Bell Canada stated in its submission that there is no justification presented for the imposition of this fee which will definitely affect all sectors in the community. In its submission, it also showed graphs and results of a survey conducted nationally on consumers by Harris/ Decima. According to the survey, a majority of the Canadians, around 84% are against putting a fee on OTA signals, which they believe subsidizes the major TV networks from their cable bills.

Also based on this survey, which was done last January 3 – 10, 2008, when asked what they would do if this imposed tax will push through, around 65% of Canadians who subscribe to TV viewing would stop their TV service or downgrade it if they find an increase of about $5 a month from the imposition of this fee since they do not find it appropriate to be billed for something that could be just left alone. Others will just find other sources of media, either on the Internet or using the satellite services of the US.

This Harris/ Decima survey was done by interviewing 1,793 cable subscribers or satellite subscribers, using several questions, and had the standard of error set at 2.5 percent using the 95 per cent confidence level.