The free ride is over, for both parties
Greed makes the world go round. Keep that in mind, as the government changes the ground rules for how you watch television.
It used to be that being granted a license to operate a television station was akin to being granted a license to print money. The government, for a fee that seems silly, provided a frequency assignment that all the receivers in our part of the world could tune in. That same government policed the frequency for the station owner, making sure that nobody else encroached on the hunting grounds. Once the electrical bills had been paid, the station owner was free to sell as much advertising as the market would bear.
Think about it. Your frequency, a monopoly situation. If you provided the viewers, the world beat a path to your door. Money, enough to carpet the studio floor (good sound damping characteristics).
Along came the cable guy. He strung wire here, there and everywhere. He put up a great antenna system. He contracted to deliver many television signals to the consumer, and the rabbit ears (or rooftop antenna) were a thing of the past. If anything, he added value to the local television station, by extending the signal range. The advertising dollars continued to bunch up in the corners of the studio (you can never have too much money).
But, the cable guy broke the sacred trust. He also offered specialty stations. Content that the local television station would never air, for fear that an advertiser might take offense. Content that the home viewer was quite willing to pay an extra fee to access. The thing is, there is a finite number of viewers, and suddenly the TV people had a harder time harvesting money.
And here we are. After weeks of nasty “public service” ads by both parties, we have a free-for-all going on in front of the CRTC. The TV guy wants to be paid for his (hitherto broadcast for free) signal feed. The cable guy says that the local TV guy is only a portion of the content, and the government forces carriage. Neither wants to compromise, but both are willing to look for the imaginary shortfall in the pocket of the viewer.
May they both be buried in an avalanche of electronic snow, and smother.
