CRTC approves talks on TV signal fees

CBC News - Television - CRTC approves talks on TV signal fees - [Delicious]

Hmmm.  The CRTC has once again struck a blow against the cable companies.  This time it has empowered local content providers to negotiate fees for when cable hijacks their free signals and repacks them in your monthly bundle.  So in other words, the free content that your cable is making you pay for will eventually cost more.  Say what?

In short the CRTC has made a preliminary ruling to support a framework so that private broadcasters and cable companies can negotiate fees for repacking free over the air broadcasts into cable and satellite packages.  However the CRTC is first deferring to the Federal Board of Appeals to see if it has the jurisdiction to do so.  The decision might take as much as 6 months to be made.

What happens if some sort of fee is put in place?  I think it is safe to say your monthly cable bill will go up again.  Consider this; cable companies posted profits in the neighborhood of 2.3 billion gross last year while private broadcasters have been hit with at 116 million dollar loss. So when negotiations begin and your local station wants a couple of bucks to be included in basic cable the cost will be shifted directly to the end user.

Rogers Communications vice-chair Phil Lind reiterated that if the CRTC imposes any new fees, they will be passed on to consumers, just as they did with the commission's 2009 increase to the Local Programming Improvement Fund.

 

Sounds familiar.