Bell files Part 1 against Super Bowl simsub order

With six months until kick off, BCE Inc. and its supporters are asking the CRTC to put a freeze on its decision to ban simultaneous substitution of American commercials on Canadian feeds of the National Football League’s championship game. In a Part 1 application filed with the CRTC Tuesday, Bell — which owns the Canadian broadcast rights to the Super Bowl through its media division's CTV network — said the decision, first announced as a result of 2015’s Let’s Talk TV proceeding and formalized in 2016, has “caused significant harm to broadcasters, creators and Canadian businesses.” The complaint asks the regulator, which will be under new leadership as of Sept. 5 with incoming chairman Ian Scott, to not only rescind the decision, but to suspend it right away until after the next broadcast on Feb. 4, 2018, “given that the sale of advertising inventory in the Super Bowl began in June” and it isn’t likely the CRTC will consider the new application before the end of the summer. To address the CRTC’s pronouncement that the advertisements are an integral part of the Super Bowl broadcast, Bell proposed that in exchange for clawing back the simsub decision it would “produce a curated show of the ads airing during the U.S. Super Bowl broadcast.” This show “will air on linear television the day of the game, will be included on CraveTV and will be made available to all BDUs to offer on a video-on-demand basis free of charge.” The application also said it would also mount a public awareness campaign to let viewers know that the ads are available on online platforms before the game even airs. This was done for this year’s broadcast, which also included in-program incentives for viewers to watch the game on Bell’s CTV, CTV Two and TSN. Public opinion research commissioned by Bell Media suggests that of those who watch the Super Bowl, about 54 per cent find watching commercials as part of the broadcast to be valuable or somewhat valuable part of their experience. Of those, 58.6 per cent said they were aware the ads were available online and on TV in the days leading up to the game, while 58 per cent also said watching the ads during the game would be less important if they could be watched before the broadcast. However, another 58 per cent of those who find the commercials valuable or somewhat valuable said they would not be interested in “having a TV broadcaster package the Super Bowl ads as a programming special so they could be watched all together in the lead up to the game.” The figures were culled from a phone survey of 1,000 English-speaking Canadian adults, conducted by Nanos Research between June 22 and 28, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Bell and the NFL have launched multiple court challenges against the decision, beginning in March 2015, and the CRTC and cabinet ministers have been lobbied by the industry and politicians on both sides of the border. In response to a question about why they were going the Part 1 complaint route now, Bell spokesman Marc Choma said in an email that “due to timing considerations at the conclusion of the last CRTC proceeding, in light of the then upcoming Super Bowl 2017, we proceeded directly to the court rather than filing a Part 1.” The 2017 Super Bowl was broadcast Feb. 5 under the new rules, which Bell and its backers — the NFL, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), the Association of Canadian Advertisers, the Canadian Media Directors’ Council, and Unifor — said in press release Tuesday resulted in a 40-per-cent loss in audience and $11-million decrease in advertising revenue. “What is the fuss over one program out of 52 weeks of television? It is because Super Bowl delivers a huge audience which is irreplaceable,” Janet Callaghan, president of the Canadian Media Directors’ Council, said in the release. “This audience can be monetized because the almost 8 million 2017 viewers are 100% Canadian despite the origin of the program, which begs the question as to why the CRTC made a ruling which does not appear to be evidence based on stable consumer data and which returns no financial benefit to the Canadian economy.” The decision also translates into less money for Canadian programming, Bell said in its complaint, noting that $11 million “translates into a reduction in required spending of approximately $3.3 million”— an issue in a landscape where conventional TV revenues, and subsequent CPE contributions, continue to fall. Any “analysis of simultaneous substitution must extend beyond estimate of impact on the television industry only,” said an accompanying report by Communications Management Inc., commissioned by Bell. “If advertising is a catalyst for commerce, and if removal of simultaneous substitution would shift the balance within commerce from Canadian to American, even to a small degree, then that, too, must be part of the impact assessment.” The report estimated that by removing simultaneous substitution, “the total potential loss is estimated at $45 million in the economic footprint of Canadian television, $113 million in retail sales, and almost 500 jobs.” Banning simultaneous substitution during the Super Bowl goes against the cultural protection aims of the Broadcasting Act, Bell argued, as well as trade obligations in the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. “While Canada is dramatically different than the U.S. culturally, Canadians want access to the same content that our neighbours south of the border enjoy,” it said. “Consequently, broadcasting policy has sought to balance this reality with the need for a domestic broadcasting industry and home grown content.” Former chairman Jean-Pierre Blais, in a response to MPs petitioning for a decision reversal, said the new rules didn’t raise any trade issues. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Bell files Part 1 against Super Bowl simsub order

Broadcast | August 1, 2017

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Bell files Part 1 against Super Bowl simsub order

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