How you can lose money with over the air TV stations, and it is Global TV that filed for creditor protection is beyond me.
And here is how they did it.
They got greedy. They spent a disportionate amount of their time trying to milk their stations, most of which are repeaters, for example even though they are in every market in Ontario they only have one station, CIII in Toronto and repeat everywhere, they spent a disportionate amount of time trying to milk their stations with virtually no local content, no feel for the communities they served.
Global engendered limited brand loyalty.
They also spent a lot of time lobbying to limit competition in local TV. They wanted to have their cake and eat it. Go to any city in Ontario and you will see the fruit that lobbying bore. They cannibalized themselves while trying to protect themselves.
Not only was Global a series of repeaters in Ontario and elsewhere but they were repeaters that were repeating American programming which again did not engender brand loyalty. CBC has lots of stuff that says it is CBC; CTV too. Global, no.
They have been in the Ottawa market for almost 4 decades and have zero profile here. I don't know what they were doing with their time, wait, I do, nothing. Global is not alone in that regard. There are about 17 over the air stations in Ottawa and all but 4 are repeaters of either Toronto, Hamilton or Montreal stations. It is worse in smaller markets. These stations suck money out of the community whilst contributing nothing to the local fabric of the towns.
It is too bad that the public airwaves have to be abused in this manner and as Mark Bourrie writes on his Ottawa Watch blog:
This company is completely a creature of Canada's regulatory system. The CRTC -- along with Canadian academics and policy analysts -- bought into the flawed idea of media convergence. This absolute bullshit idea was engineered to break down the regulatory walls around broadcasters. Cross-ownership of media, decried in the Davey Report on Mass Media in Canada in the early 1970s, would not only be allowed under convergence, it would be encouraged. Media ownership concentration, the focus of the the Kent Commission on Canadian newspapers, would be ignored.
We could, as I have said repeatedly, do well by looking at the USA's way of setting up radio and TV stations. For starters, no more repeaters. If you have a local stick you have to do a minimum of local programming.
One, that would create identity, primarily through local news packages, for stations like Global Ottawa, Kingston, Thunder Bay, KW et. al. And it would create competition which makes businesses uh, more competitive and more likely to react to changes in the market place.
Not being corporate ostriches like CanWest Global Communications Corp.
They will blame the recession and competive forces; the fact is they sucked as keeper of the public airwaves.
WFDS
I'm sure you mean Oct. 13, 2009 instead of
ReplyDeleteNov. 13, 2009.
Thanks for reading.
ReplyDeleteNo, the delisting is next month, 13 November.
WFDS
How come no one is pointing fingers at past Liberal governments that restructured the CRTC enough to allow for the mass mergers that occurred in the 1990s and early 200s that led to this current mess?
ReplyDeleteI mean the Conservatives would have likely done it faster, but they'd likely get called on such shenanigans.
I will do you one better Ian and tell you that this is not just a problem in high profile industries like TV.
ReplyDeleteCompetition makes things better and stronger; elite accommodation does not and that is what has happened in many industries in Canada.
WFDS