From the frontiers of broadcasting regulation...

The minutes from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage's March 1 session were released this morning. The meeting featured a discussion on the appointment of Konrad von Finckenstein, the new head of the CRTC, and began to debate the "role of the public broadcaster in the 21st century" with Jean-Pierre Blais, the Assistant Deputy Minister, Cultural Affairs of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

I'll talk about the CBC another time, but there are two quotes from the proceeding worth noting. Here is von Finckenstein on the subject of, ahem, media abundance:

You are looking at the one side, which is the concentration of media. We also, at the same time, have an explosion of fora in which you can express your views. When you look at whether major radio stations combine or not, and at whether this restricts the diversity of voices, you have to take into account at the same time that there are new avenues—I don't have to say the Internet, but blogs, and all of those—whereby people can express their views and communicate, and they do.... If we were still in the yesteryear, where we had very few outlets of communication for our voices, this would be a great concern. In our multi-platform world, this concern has to be looked at in that context. Therefore, what may at first blush sometimes appear to be a dangerous concentration does not on closer examination so appear, when you consider all the alternatives.

And on the question of ownership:

Therefore, in terms of ownership, I think the considerations are quite different when you talk about telecom from when you talk about broadcasting. It is our mandate at the CRTC, which is clearly on the broadcasting side, to ensure Canadian content. I don't see how you can foster Canadian content and have it part of your DNA if you're not Canadian. I just don't see that. I think the broadcasting industry and the Canadian ownership is absolute. But if you did separate totally telecom from broadcasting and just talked about carriage of signal, I don't see why you couldn't loosen the rules and ensure a greater access to foreign capital.

This should make for some interesting terminological wrangling. It looks like there's a pretty big line being drawn here between broadcasters (who contribute to citizenship by ensuring Canadian content) and telecom companies (who simply "carry signals"). What's also significant about the release of these comments is that they were quickly followed by a press release today from the CRTC stating that the regulator was going to undertake a study of "issues relating to the diversity of voices in Canada" against the backdrop of increasing processes of consolidation. This investigation will come after it makes a decision on at least 2 of the three major media mergers on the horizon. In other words, after likely increasing media consolidation in Canada, the CRTC will then look at the issue of the diversity of voices in Canada. Does that make sense to you?

The trade off for this is that the CRTC announced it was also withdrawing its "review of its common ownership policy" that was supposed to be conducted as part of the review of the CHUM/ CTVglobemedia merger. How will the CRTC handle provisions of that arrangement that inhibit ownership of multiple over-the-air television stations in a given market? Does this mean what many thought would happen when the merger was originally announced -- that A-Channel stations would likely be on the block -- are now likely? This also makes the Global/Alliance Atlantis purchase, made possible by the assistance of American investment firm Goldman Sachs somewhat problematic, because of restrictions on foreign ownership of Canadian broadcasting interests.

For my money, this looks like the CRTC may be more aggressive in trying to loosen the telecommunications marketplace but remain conservative when it comes to broadcasting. Maybe then I'll be able to buy a cell phone to call the CRTC to tell them how unhappy I am with the regulatory environment for broadcasting.

ps: I'm probably not the first academic who blogs to say this, but I'm aiming for shorter postings. It just doesn't seem to work out that way.