Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore has waded into television's fiery fee-for-carriage debate, directing Canada's broadcast regulator to hold a hearing and report back to the government.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission had already announced in August that it would once again wrestle with the contentious issue at a hearing beginning Nov. 16.

On Thursday, Moore charged the CRTC with producing a report on the implications of implementing fee-for-carriage — in which cable and satellite TV providers pay for the right to distribute the over-the-air signals of traditional broadcasters, which they currently pick up free.

"We've directed the CRTC to consider what fee-for-carriage would mean for Canadians, because this is an issue that affects them directly," Moore said in a statement, which asked the CRTC to specifically look at:

  • [Fee-for-carriage's] impact on consumers, and in particular, the impact on affordable access to a variety of local and regional news, information and public affairs programming.
  • How the application of such a regime would impact the various components of the communications industry as it adapts to the new digital environment, and in particular, the implications on current and emerging business models.

In a response issued later Thursday, the CRTC noted that "affordability for consumers is an element" of the proceeding it had already scheduled for November. The regulator added that it will consult the public regarding fee-for-carriage during additional hearings in December, following the industry sessions.

Contentious debate

The battle over carriage fees has raged over the past few years, with the CRTC rejecting the implementation of the proposal twice before.

Then, the global economic collapse arrived, at a point when TV broadcasters said they were already suffering from an increasingly fractured media landscape. According to broadcasters, fee-for-carriage is needed to help save their business and, more specifically, to fund the production of local programming.

However, broadcast distributors — namely cable and satellite TV providers — have vehemently objected the fee-for-carriage regime, saying they would be forced to pass the increased costs onto consumers. The distributors paint the scheme as "a bailout for broadcasters," blasting companies for earmarking the majority of their spending on buying foreign productions.