Canadians Hold Crisis Talks Over Netflix

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/canadians-hold-crisis-talks-netflix-101035

A hobbled Canuck industry wants Netflix to pay for local production as an 
online broadcaster.

7:21 AM 2/17/2011 by Etan Vlessing

OTTAWA -- Canadian film and TV industry players are coming together Friday 
in Ottawa to discuss how to deal with Netflix. Local broadcasters, cable 
and satellite TV services, indie producers and unions and guilds will 
overcome rivalries and in-fighting to address concerns that the upstart 
Netflix Canada service undermines their industry's revenue model.

The crisis-era Netflix summit was called by the Canadian Media Production 
Association, representing indie producers meeting in Ottawa this week. 
CMPA president and CEO Norm Bolen said the CRTC, the country's TV 
watchdog, needs to order Netflix, as an online broadcaster, to help 
bankroll the local industry. "It's unfair competition," Stephen Waddell, 
national executive director of ACTRA's Canada's actors union, agreed as 
Netflix offers Canadian subscribers online movies and TV shows for $7.99 a 
month. Waddell said the industry needed to speak with one voice to 
convince Netflix to pay into a fund to produce homegrown content.

The U.S. video streaming giant is considered the canary in the mine as 
other so-called over-the-top online movie providers like Hulu and Google 
TV get set to enter the Canadian market. Currently, Canadian broadcasters, 
cable operators and other domestic content carriers must help underwrite 
local content production. But Netflix operates in the Canadian market 
without supporting Canadian production.

The current Netflix debate is only the latest instance of the Canadian 
industry clrlcing its wagons over new U.S. digital technology. In 1994, 
the Canuck industry protested DirecTV launching a Canadian service north 
of the border in partnership with Power Corp. Dubbed the "deathstar" by 
Canadian cable companies, the U.S. satellite TV service was deemed a 
threat to the Canadian industry for its technology and signal spilling 
over into Canada. In the end, the CRTC blocked DirecTV from operating in 
the Canadian market, even as illegal DirecTV dishes proliferated among 
local TV viewers.

Whether the CRTC can effectively regulate Netflix remains an open 
question. That door closed in 1999 when the Canadian regulator ruled it 
would not referee the Internet as it does traditional media. But the CRTC 
is taking another look at the Internet as Canadians increasingly view 
video online and reduce their consumption of traditional media. The Canuck 
industry's doomsday scenario is Canadians will continue to pay Netflix 
Canada $7.99 a month while reducing their cable and satellite TV bills to 
offset rising Internet data charges from consuming movies online.

The CRTC and the federal government are already butting horns over whether 
usage-based billing for Internet users should be introduced to deal with 
Netflix, Skype and other online bandwith-hogs. The CRTC will hold an 
invitation-only roundtable discussion on online broadcasting on March 
23-24 in Ottawa. The Canuck industry is betting Netflix may agree to help 
fund local production to avoid Canadian Internet bandwidth caps considered 
a drag on its Netflix Canada expansion.

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