OTTAWA — Rosalyn Lemi has been working as a caregiver in Ottawa for four years now, but she can keep up with news and her favourite TV shows from home for as little as $12 a month.
Like millions of Filipino ex-pats around the world, Lemi accesses shows from the Philippines' major network, ABS-CBN, over the Internet.
"I watch everything," says the 28-year-old, who tunes into news, entertainment shows — "even sports!" — because it's "nice to know all that information and what's going on back home. It makes you feel like you're in the Philippines."
Going the online route is a no-brainer not only for Lemi, but for the foreign broadcaster as well. Getting ABS-CBN's shows into the Canadian homes would have been near-impossible going the traditional broadcasting route.
As the company's chairman and CEO Eugenio Lopez III recently told the Wall Street Journal, "we had been trying to get into the Canada market for 15 years, but the cable operators there said we must have Canadian content and use Canadian satellites."
By broadcasting over the Internet, ABS-CBN has been able to bypass all those pesky regulations — like paying for and broadcasting Canadian content. That's because the federal regulator has given broadcasting over the Internet a free pass for almost a decade.
But that may change at what could be watershed regulatory hearings over whether broadcasting over the Internet should — or even can — be regulated.
At issue, according to some, is the very future of Canadian content available on the Internet. Since 1999, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has exempted programming broadcast over the Internet from the same regulations that apply to conventional broadcasters, which include everything from licences, to the percentage of Canadian channels and programs aired — and at what hours those shows are on — to foreign ownership restrictions.
Part of the reason for this exemption was that the regulator believed "the effect of new media on television audience size would be limited, at least until such time as high-quality video programming could be distributed on the Internet."
That time is upon us.
Not only can viewers go online to see shows from foreign networks like ABS-CBN, they can also access major U.S. shows right here in Canada — usually for free.
Miss last week's episode of Gossip Girls? No problem. Go to CTV's website, and watch a high-quality live-streaming version of it — including a 15-second commercial for Dove's "Go Fresh" body wash — on your computer.
While most of the evidence is still anecdotal, it's clear that watching shows over the Internet is growing in popularity.
Earlier this month, for example, Glenn Britt, chief executive of Time Warner Cable Inc., told financial analysts that "we are starting to see the beginning of cord cutting. People will choose not to buy subscription video if they can get the same stuff for free." And considering the next generation of televisions will include USB ports for easy Internet connection, the draw of watching programming over the Internet can only increase.
"I think the future is more and more in front of a computer screen, with what is effectively on-demand access to programming and content," says Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in the Internet.
Which brings us to this week's hearings.
Although the CRTC will consider a wide range of questions regarding the regulations of professional, private broadcasting online — user-generated video of the type that appears on YouTube is exempted, and the publicly funded CBC is a special case — few believe the federal regulator will try to apply the same rules in this new media that it would in traditional broadcasting.
For one thing, it's near impossible. The CRTC can hardly require licences from everyone broadcasting over the Internet. And, short of becoming a quasi-totalitarian state, there's not much the regulator can do to stop songs, videos and movies from around the world coming into millions of Canadian homes.
The bigger question is how to promote — some would say, protect — Canadian content in an area in which federal regulators can't control the delivery of programming.
That's why much of the hearings will concentrate on whether there should be additional funding of Canadian programming for the Internet and other new media, like wireless devices.
There's some indication that the CRTC is at least open to the possibility. In a 2006 report on the "future environment" of Canadian broadcasting, the regulator determined that "public policy action" would be needed in three to seven years.
Indeed, one of the CRTC's reasons for a review of its current exemption is recent evidence that "Canadian content on the Internet was insufficiently available."
And a report commissioned by the CRTC on the role of government in overseeing the new media, especially as it relates to television programming, recommends financial support for Canadian programming online. Broadcasting over new media should be "largely unregulated, with a mechanism for public financial support for the production and distribution of content," says the report, called TV or Not TV: Three Screens, One Regulation? written by renowned Columbia University professor Eli Noam. He suggests, among other things, charging Internet service providers, largely cable and telephone companies, a fee to help fund Canadian productions. Cable companies already pay five per cent of their gross revenues into a Canadian content fund.
Not surprisingly, those working on the creative side of television programming couldn't agree more.
The Directors' Guild of Canada is "deeply concerned with Canada's flagging competitiveness in the new media broadcasting environment," and counsels the CRTC to "pay particular attention to the creation of high-quality, high-cost, scripted Canadian broadcasting content in the new media."
The Writers' Guild of Canada warns that the Canadian new media sector "risks being overwhelmed by the U.S. new media sector if it is not encouraged."
The guild, which represents about 2,000 screenwriters, says not only should Internet service providers contribute to "the creation of professionally produced Canadian content online," but that the CRTC should provide "incentives" to encourage broadcasters to promote and feature Canadian programming online.
"It is insufficient to merely fund Canadian new media programming: Canadians must also be able to find it."
Broadcasters and cable companies — again, to no one's surprise — oppose any form of regulation.
Cable companies argue it would be illegal to make the Internet service arms of their companies pay for content — and they have official legal opinions that say so.
"We're a dumb pipe," says Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory for Rogers Corp. "We don't know what you're downloading . . . so how can we be responsible for the content?"
ISPs also argue that consumers will bear the brunt of any levy imposed upon them. So while governments around the world are trying to find ways to make broadband more affordable for citizens, Canada would be making it more expensive, their argument goes.
And anyway, what's the problem? According to cable and broadcasting companies, there's plenty of popular Canadian content on the web.
On the other hand, goes another side of their argument, there's almost no high-end programming being developed anywhere exclusively for the web. Instead, broadcasters both here and south of the border repurpose programming from their traditional broadcasting companies for online, offering "web-exclusive" extras like bloopers, alternative endings and director interviews.
Why should the CRTC charge them for programming that doesn't yet exist?
Technology moves ahead rapidly, and the emergence of Internet-exclusive, high-quality shows is just around the corner.
Canadian private broadcasters, who last year spent $615 million on Canadian programming,may be motivated simply by the Internet's business model to be aggressive in creating their own content, says Geist.
He points out that Canadian broadcasters license the Internet right for foreign shows — like CTV does with Gossip Girls. But there may be a time, he says, when foreign broadcasters will want those rights for themselves. At that time, owning their own content will be more important than ever for broadcasters. By that time though, it'll be too late if the Canadian production industry doesn't start developing content for new media now, say proponents of regulation.
Whether it'll get a helping hand from CRTC regulations is what these hearings will determine.
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