A border war pitting the Tennessee capital’s globally ambitious video channel against a soon-to-debut Canadian video outlet that will expand Canada’s country music industry reaches a showdown this week.
On Tuesday, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal is scheduled to rule on whether the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission must hear opposing arguments before legally expelling Nashville’s Country Music Television cable service from its borders, thus clearing the field of competition for a similar Canadian channel scheduled to begin operations Jan. 1.
Big-time country music’s few Canadian country acts-most notably vocalist Michelle Wright, the band Prairie Oyster and rising star Charlie Major-are trying to keep their careers from becoming casualties. The controversy has become such that the manager of Prairie Oyster and Major says the media rarely ask his artists many questions about their music, their records or their triumphs on the road.
“A lot of it boils down to, `What do you think about the CMT situation?’ ” Alan Kates says.
The Canadian regulatory commission’s abrupt decision banishing CMT, made at the request of a new Canadian country video channel to be called The Country Network, was reached under a law designed to protect Canadian businesses, institutions and culture dwarfed by those of the colossus to its south.
The CMT-TCN conflict is frustrating because all sides appear basically to be in the right, especially from their own viewpoints. For example:
– CMT finds itself being kicked out of Canada after having spent 10 years gaining entry to 2 million homes there. It has helped build the country’s video market and has earned $1.5 million a year from its Canadian service.
– Maclean-Hunter Ltd. and Rawlco Communications, the pair of Canadian media enterprises backing TCN, claim their new channel, whose playlist will be required by law to feature at least 30 percent Canadian videos, cannot compete against an entrenched rival that merely “dumps” made-for-the-U.S. product across the border, makes most of its money in America and spends virtually none of its earnings in Canada.
– Representatives of the fledgling Canadian country music industry are excited by the advent of a video channel partially dedicated to promoting Canadian artists, which obviously would help them build their own industry instead of having to pray for all-too-infrequent success in Nashville.
– Many Canadian performers, especially those who have attained a measure of success in the U.S., hope to see CMT remain in Canada, because loss of Canadian viewership on the network presumably would make CMT less interested in playing the videos of Canadian performers at a time when CMT is making international advances in Europe and Asia.
Accordingly, such artists as Wright, Prairie Oyster and Major have taken what seems to be the only tenable position left to them, an endorsement of both TCN and CMT.
“The more the merrier,” says Wright, who has written the regulatory commission two letters, the first in favor of a Canadian country video channel and a second professing disappointment over CMT’s impending expulsion.
So echoes Wright’s Nashville-based and Canadian-rooted manager, Brian Ferriman. Ditto manager Allen Kates and a CMT spokesman who hopes the service can remain in Canada after TCN hits the air.
“We wouldn’t mind so much if this were an issue where we were (just) trying to get into the country,” says Lloyd Werner, executive vice president of Group W Satellite Communications, co-owner of CMT with Gaylord Entertainment. “What we mind is, we’ve been there for 10 years, we’ve created the market, we’re in 2 million households, we don’t take Canadian advertising-and they expropriate our business without so much as allowing us the privilege to argue about it.”
Shaun Purdue, vice president of corporate affairs at TCN backer Maclean-Hunter, counters that when the first U.S. cable TV services were approved 10 years ago “the regulator said at that point in time that if they were to license a Canadian service that ended up being competitive with the American service, the American service would be de-listed (removed from the prospective services offered to cable operators). That was the rule under which all the American services came into the country.”
Purdue says TCN was willing to vie with The Nashville Network, which, like CMT, is owned by Gaylord but has a Canadian audience about three times as large. “When we applied for a license we said, `Look, we don’t mind competing, we’re not asking for a monopoly. Keep the Nashville Network. . . . Just give us part of our own back yard.’ Gaylord gets to keep the major (country) network in Canada and 95 percent of their revenue stream in Canada.”
One of the things Werner worries about is the possibility that TCN’s management may change its mind about TNN, which he says is in 6 million Canadian homes. He notes that although TNN’s programming tends toward lifestyle subject matter and weekend hunting, fishing and auto racing shows that “Canadians seem to like,” it also runs six hours of music videos daily.
There also is a much larger dimension to the dispute over CMT itself. Werner readily says that Canadian earnings aren’t needed for CMT to survive, but he is concerned about the effect of the impending banishment on the network’s effort to spread a country music television signal around the world.
“There’s an important international trade point here of having a government expropriate your business and throw a programmer out of the country. That means anybody could do it to us, so it becomes a real issue for all programmers out of the U.S. Maybe we’re carrying the flag.”
Canadians naturally worry most about their own “flag” and their own industry, which led the Canadian Country Music Association to issue a statement backing TCN while praising CMT and TNN. The statement, published in Billboard magazine, cited the lack of “an established, flourishing, working star system in Canada” and the fact that such a system is “essential to the growth of our industry.”
It described the advent of TCN as forging “a huge missing link” in the growth of Canada’s country music industry and said it also will mean “dramatically increased exposure in Canada for American artists.”
The extent of underdevelopment in the Canadian country industry is indicated by Kates, who says Charlie Major recently became the first Canadian country male vocalist to have a No. 1 hit in Canada and that Major, Michelle Wright and Prairie Oyster are the sole current Canadian country acts who have sold enough in Canada to receive gold or platinum records there.
If CMT is banished, it no longer will have the incentive of Canadian viewership to play Canadian artists, Werner says, meaning the artists will “lose their entire American (video) distribution,” which in turn means none of their videos will become hit videos, “and if they don’t become hit videos we won’t be playing them in Europe and Asia.”
TCN, on the other hand, is committed to pay $2 million a year to help Canadian artists create their videos, Maclean-Hunter’s Purdue says, adding that TCN will cost “about $8 million a year” to operate, “and that’s money that would be spent in Canada on jobs and Canadian videos.”
Purdue suggests CMT’s threat not to play Canadian artists could be an empty one, reasoning that the Canadian artists who get the most CMT airplay are ones with contracts with U.S. record companies, and they could be expected to be played just like American artists if their work is of sufficient quality. Canadian artists receiving CMT airplay without U.S. record contracts aren’t getting much “economic benefit” anyway, he says, because they have nothing to sell in the U.S. “where CMT’s predominant viewership is.”
Most Canadians appear to prefer seeing both CMT and TCN in Canada.
Kates, for example, says a Canadian country video channel “can tremendously benefit the growth of country music in Canada.” But CMT, he adds, not only has helped “break Canadian artists internationally”-Michelle Wright is on an introductory media tour of Europe-but also has helped “Canadian acts such as Prairie Oyster and Charlie Major become very successful in their home country of Canada” as well.
