Millions of Canadians will be unable to watch the Grey Cup
In recent months, conventional broadcasters such as CTVglobemedia and CanWest Global, have urged the federal government to slap a $350 million a year TV tax on Canadian consumers in order to support local television stations.
The private broadcasters claim that viewership on local over-the-air television stations is in decline and that a tax is required to keep the stations from being having to shutdown.
So it’s interesting that this Sunday, rather than airing the 97th Grey Cup Championship on local CTV Network affiliates where it will attract the largest audience, CTVglobemedia will be airing the big game on its digital specialty sports channels, TSN and Réseau des sports (RDS) TSN’s sister French language sports service.
While CTV stations across Canada are available in almost all 13 million TV households via over-the-air signals or cable and satellite, TSN is available in just nine million households and only through subscription cable and satellite television.
The result is that approximately four million Canadian households will be unable to watch the big football game.
Instead of airing one of Canada’s most watched sporting events, CTV and its local affiliates will air two episodes of Corner Gas, The Amazing Race, Desperate Housewives and CSI: Miami.
The decision by CTVglobemedia to air the Grey Cup on its profitable digital specialty channel (TSN earned over $52 million in 2008 on revenues of $211 million) with just nine million subscribers rather than on its less profitable CTV local affiliates which reach more than 13 million homes was clearly designed to maximize profits at the firm rather than viewership.
The decision by CTV to air a highly watched, profitable show such as the Grey Cup on its digital specialty network rather than its conventional network suggests the network is attempting to drive Canadians to subscribe to its very profitable specialty channels and away from their conventional over-the-air stations.
In simple terms, CTV is increasing profits at TSN at the expense of the CTV network. Should taxpayers, then be required by the federal government to support losses at CTV?
Call it a tax, or a fee or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Both sides are fighting over who has to be the bad guy and screw the consumer because of their bad management.
The bottom line is it’s a crock.
It’s the cost of doing business, and neither side wants to pay their share.
Well the fact of the matter is there is taxpayer money at pay, all these canadian broadcasters are eligible for production tax credits. And the CBC wasn’t outbid for the rights to air the CFL they weren’t even included in the bidding process. The grey cup for many households is a tradition in Canada. CBC had been airing it since the 1950′s, broadcast for free. I’m sorry but I don’t watch sports. I don’t subscribe to sports channels, the events that I traditionally like to watch are this and the superbowl, and you would never see NBC airing the superbowl on a specialty sports channel. The revenues are just too big, it’s the most watched program in the united states every year. Funny thing, So has the grey cup, with average audiences of nearly 1 in 3 canadians. This game should have been aired on CTV for everyone to watch, even if you don’t take into account the tax credits the networks are getting, you should take into account the taxpayer dollars the CFL teams get each year.
I don’t pay extra for TSN on my basic plan. Big deal. CTV can take their tax and shove it.
I bet all the people living out in rural areas that don’t receive cable just love that, I’m sure they all thank CTV for blocking them out of the big game.
Arguing about TV Tax/Fee is pointless, as all the cable/sat subscribers will keep calling canadian networks crooks, because they only think about it as another increase to their inflated cable fee. Instead they should demand a free basic cable service – this will ease financial burden and concentrate on more important things, like “Why shouldn’t Rogers/Bell pay CTV and Global, as they pay CNN and Fox? How come a canadian company doen’t want to support a Canadian company and rather send money over the border?” And don’t say that canadian networks don’t produce local content – anybody wouldn’t if they didn’t get any money for doing so.
The above article is full of crap, very opinionated, and doesn’t reflect the real situation in any sentence. Oh, and by the way, you’d be surprised how many OTA clients DO NOT want to watch American football and rather watch some other sports.
at the “expense” of CTV? by airing the Grey Cup on TSN CTVGlobemedia was able to get more viewers overall, viewers who like the Grey Cup could watch it on TSN, and viewers who like popular hit programming such as CTV Evening News, The Amazing Race, and Desperate Housewives, (all top rated shows airing new episodes) could watch those programs on CTV.
If the Grey Cup aired on CTV, not only would they pre-empt CTV’s local Evening News at 6:00pm (what’s a great way to get viewers to check out the other stations local news? pre-empt it!) but they would also need to pre-empt The Amazing Race and Desperate Housewives,. Fans of these shows would still watch them on American networks (not everyone including myself cares about CFL Football) so CTV’s post-release airings would be worthless.
Why pre-empt local news and a bunch of hit shows for the Grey Cup when you can simply air the Grey Cup on TSN, a channel that about 92% of Canadians get?
DigitalHome asks what about the over the air viewers who can’t watch the grey up? Well what about the over the air viewers that don’t have access to American networks OTA? What about the OTA CTV viewers who watch CTV Evening News, The Amazing Race, and Desperate Housewives? Why should they get their shows pre-empetd just because of a sporting event? I guess DigitalHome only cares about OTA viewers who like sports, not OTA viewers who like The Amazing Race & Desperate Housewives.
Really, if CTV decided to go and air the Grey Cup, DigitalHome would post an article bashing them for pre-empting their local 6:00pm news.
this debate is just the stupidest thing ever what we should be doing i letting American networks in and getting rid of the crtc all together nbc, cbs, abc, and fox at least they know how to run a station and we wouldn’t have to worry about this stuff. if you want to blame someone blame the damn cfl for taking ctv’s offer instead of cbc.
BLAME THE CFL NOT CTV
Well, it was the highest Grey Cup viewership EVER. So people whining about it not being on free cable clearly weren’t the people watching it for 50 years when it was FREE.
http://tsn.ca/cfl/story/?id=300593#YourCallTop
The article:
“CTV stations across Canada are available in almost all 13 million TV households via over-the-air signals or cable and satellite, TSN is available in just nine million households and only through subscription cable and satellite television.”
Wait you forgot RDS! If you assume Quebec is 25% of the pop, that’s 3.25million of the 13 Million, add that to the 9 million gives you about 12Million, that’s pretty good coverage.
Also to TSN credit they conveniently gave a free preview of TSN-HD just in time for the grey cup.
I for one, was extremely disappointed that the big game was on TSN only. Last year when they did the same thing, I was livid. This game has been “free” for as long as I can remember. I don’t watch a lot of football, but when i do, I prefer the Canadian game to the American version, and I would always catch the Grey Cup. When I was a kid, I used to watch it with my grand parents. I just find it sad, that’s all, for it to have to come to this. Its all about the money, which of course makes sense from a business standpoint. I find it unfortunate that I’d have to subscribe to a channel for a week (or less), then unsubscribe to catch a game. Its looking like that’s where things are heading. I don’t imagine it will be long before CBC “loses” the rights to NHL games, and Hockey Night in Canada will move to a subscribed channel too (after all, the theme music is already gone). If I recall, the Olympics have already gone to CTV as well, I wonder how much of that will be broadcast to the many of us on “basic” cable/satellite packages.