Major job losses seen with imminent TV changes.

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Major job losses seen with imminent TV changes.

Postby kal » Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:51 pm

A new report calls for reversals to the pending changes to television subscriptions in Canada. With a mandatory basic $25 plan to kick in at the end of March, and with pick and pay to be mandatory by the end of December there is concern that niche channels may fall by the wayside.

The new Liberal government has signaled that it will be supportive of the CBC. Now some are calling for that support to extend to other broadcasters.

http://www.broadcastermagazine.com/news/new-study-shows-planned-crtc-changes-will-cost-15-000-canadian-jobs/1003963542/?&er=NA
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Re: Major job losses seen with imminent TV changes.

Postby groundskeeper willy » Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:12 pm

The only reason the BDU's (Shaw / Rogers / Bell / etc) created so many of the specialty channels to begin with was because it was a huge cash-cow for them, they could force the channels on consumers through bundling, which generated a sizeable cash flow every month thanks to the carriage fees the bundling provided. Think about it, you get a license from the CRTC to provide a specialty channel, let's say "Book TV". You don't have to build out studios or production facilities or anything else traditionally associated with running a TV channel, all you need is a server rack, a handful of computers and a few people to do programming. But even that staffing is just part-time, because you have them also doing the same thing for your other "specialty" channels, like "Comedy Gold" or "Fashion Television".

So, using "Book TV" as an example, how many people actually work there and could potentially lose their job? According to the CRTC's Individual Pay, Pay-per-view, Video-on-demand and Specialty Services 2010-2014 report (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/ ... sp2014.htm), in 2014 there were no actual paid full-time employees -- zero, zilch, nada. Now of course, when the plug is finally pulled on "Book TV", the Bell employees working part-time for the channel, doing programming, admin, engineering, etc, will be missing that portion of their overall job duties, but nobody will actually lose their job, as their "Book TV" duties were but just a portion of their day.

And just how lucrative are most of these specialty channels? Let's drill down a little on "Book TV":

How many subscribers were paying for "Book TV" due to bundling? 823,283

How much pre-tax profit did Bell make in 2014 on "Book TV"? $2.6 million

How much advertising revenue was generated in 2014 on "Book TV"? $29,525 (not a typo, less than $30K)

How much did Bell put back into the Canadian TV industry via rights acquisitions and programming investment on domestic productions? $213,261

So you fill the channel with cheap, generic programming that few people would even want to watch if given the choice, much less actually subscribe to as a stand-alone channel.

But thanks to the miracle of bundling, Bell was able to artificially inflate your cable bill by forcing you to take something that took next-to-nothing to create and maintain.

This is why all of the BDU's are crapping themselves. The days of riding this gravy train are quickly coming to an end.

Will there be more job losses in the TV industry in 2016? Absolutely, but not at the level the Nordicity report implies.
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