From reading the transcripts, it must have been an entertaining time in Winnipeg last Wednesday when the CRTC was looking at how to deal with erratic conformance from Harmony Broadcasting – radio station CJVW.

The station was in violation of its conditions of license and it ignored a variety of CRTC orders to bring it into conformance. The station closed in October, the company was dissolved, but then revived with an apparent change in control – absent CRTC approval. to it was sold.

But, as a campus station, one has to wonder how it could be sold in the first place.

The Commission has called Harmony to this Public Hearing to show cause as to why additional mandatory orders requiring the licensee to conform to the Regulations and to its Conditions of Licence should not be issued, why the Commission should not suspend or revoke Harmony’s licence under sections 9 and 24 of the Broadcasting Act, and why prior Commission approval for the apparent change of control is not required.

In the event that prior approval is required, the licensee is expected to show cause as to why the Commission should grant its approval to the change in control and why further measures, such as suspension or revocation of Harmony’s licence, are not warranted.

There is more.

Lots of intrigue at the opening – questions about who really owns the company, requests for subpoenas. surprise motions. This was not your average broadcast hearing.

Maybe some production company will look at creating a reality TV show modeled after the People’s Court blended with Canadian Idol. Regulatory cases will be presented and then home viewers will vote. A warning – the language in this episode would require the show to be aired after the kids are in bed.

Most of the time, going through regulatory transcripts is worse than reading instructions on how to fill out your tax return.

This one is an exception.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC

The AWS auction is moving to ‘Round Two’ as of Monday morning:

The auction will move to stage 2 on June 9, 2008 at 09:00 in round 35. The activity rule will be 90 percent. In a round, bidders must be active on licences covering 90 percent of their total eligibility points in order to maintain that level of eligibility points in the following round. The percentage bid increment will be 8 percent and the absolute increment will be $2000/point.

Recall that when the auction opened, the increment was 15%, then this slowed to 10% last week.

As a sign that we are starting to reach an asymptote around $3.25B, the total bid price has only been increasing by about $10M between round 34 versus 33.

What does the level of bidding mean for the future competitive landscape? Vince Valentini has cut price targets for Quebecor, TELUS and Rogers because of the spectrum cost.

Many analysts had thought the current AWS spectrum auction would generate bids of about $1.5B. As the week draws to a close, the federal treasury has already raised more than $3B. It seems that we are heading towards a windfall of about $1.5B – $2B more than just about anyone in Canada’s Department of Finance could have reasonably expected.

I find it interesting to look at where people are bidding and which spectrum blocks within certain geographies. While the situation may change by the time you look at it, one company has bid a third more – $80M for one of the 20 MHz block than another company bid for the same geography (Toronto), same size block.

Lots of folks have looked at what it means for service providers spending more on spectrum than they might have originally hoped.

I’m interested in hearing what the government plans to do with the extra money besides the standard line that it is paying down the debt.

I have some ideas. What are yours?

Technorati Tags:
Industry Canada, AWS Spectrum Auction

Last January, I wrote about a US cable industry standardization initiative, tru2way, intended to enable open development of new services and features that rely on two-way communication over the cable network.

In effect, tru2way will eliminate proprietary set-top boxes, allowing conforming open standard set-top boxes to run on any cable network. Alternatively, tru2way could be built into new TV sets, eliminating the set-top box altogether. That is precisely what Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, and LG Electronics plan to do, helping to eliminate at least one remote control and for many, simplifying household wiring.

Light Reading wonders how telcos will respond. As a cable industry initiative, how would IPTV networks interface to tru2way TV sets?

It might be in the best interests of cable companies facing IPTV competition to provide incentives for customers to buy tru2way equipped TVs. Will telephone companies need to develop a kind of plug-in-the-wall interface to enable IPTV to operate with tru2way TV sets.

With wall mounted flat panel TVs becoming more common room fixtures, I have to think that eliminating the extra device, the set-top box, has value for a lot of people. For cable companies, tru2way-enabled TV sets may help keep customers from churning away to IPTV.

Consumers in a Multi-screen World is the theme of one of our break-out sessions at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit on June 16. Have you registered yet?

I had a professor who said that you always had to test your questionnaire. Watch the face on the respondents to see if they understand what you are asking.

I have written before about the book “Art of Asking Questions.”

Ipsos Canada is part of one of the world’s leading survey-based marketing research firms. You would have thought that they would know how to test their surveys before releasing them to the field.

So tell me, how should I have responded to the very first question in a survey that said:

Please indicate below whether there are male adults present in your household in each of the following age ranges.

(Please select all that apply.)

☐ Under 18

☐ 18-24

☐ There are no male adults in my household

Hmmm. Hardly mutually exclusive and exhaustive. What do you answer here if you are a male adult aged 25 or older? How about, none of the above? The survey wouldn’t let me continue without selecting at least one response.

I asked the help line what they were expecting from me and they said that I should have clicked on the box that said there are no male adults. Right – that makes sense.

It was a lot easier for the survey help desk to answer my inquiry that way. The alternative would have been for them to tell the study director that they had to start this survey over.

The client will never know the difference.