Film Weekly 1956-57 year book : Canadian motion picture industry (1956)

TELEVISION CANADA, the second country in the world in the number of TV stations and territory covered, has 34 outlets giv¬ ing service in either English or French and eight are being constructed. Despite our small population we are third in the world in the number of TV receiving sets being used, 40 per cent of our 16,000,000 people being equipped, with service being available to 75 per cent of populated areas. Canada is the only country in the world which is developing TV in two languages at once. Because Canada is larger than the USA, which has ten times our popula¬ tion, one New York TV station can cover more people than our 34. Eight of the 34 stations are operated by the CBC, the rest being licensed through it by private interests. There are only three places in the world where more programs are produced than in either Toronto or Montreal— Holly¬ wood, London and New York. CBLT, Toronto, transmits about 50 original hours a week and about 160 of the 500 registered actors and actresses in the city will be employed in a good week. USA programs are produced at up to 15 times the cost of Canadian ones. The only TV resembling the pay-as-yousee idea on this continent is Rediffusion, Inc. of Montreal, a monthly-payment com¬ pany which provides sets, but there were 14 other community-antennae companies in the Fall of 1956, compared with six a year earlier. Rediffusion is a closed-circuit operation employing telephone lines, as do the others. Famous Players Canadian Corporation has a 25-year franchise from International Telemeter Corporation of the USA, its subsidiary being Trans Can¬ ada Telemeter Limited. It plans to erect community antenna towers for subscription television in Kitimat, BC and Kenora, Ontario. It is predicted that some form of pay-see TV will be employed in this country, where the comparatively small population living in an area larger than the USA makes needed revenue a great problem. What hap¬ pens in Canada will no doubt be dictated largely by what happens in the USA, where the FCC has held up pay-see TV pending certain decisions regarding its jurisdiction. In Canada there is also the question of whether pay-see TV is “broadcasting” under the Radio Act. If pay-see TV wins approval in the USA Canada, from a stand¬ point of economics, will have to fall in line — according to authoritative opinion. Famous Players, a movie chain with television interests, favored pay-see TV. Its spokesman and president, J. J. Fitzgibbons, said theatres could share it. He told the commission that there is little future for small theatres. The Theatre Owners Association of Quebec opposed toll TV squarely. No other exhibition group or firms made declarations to the com¬ mission. Representatives of Canadian and Ameri¬ can interests for and against toll TV stated their positions before an Ottawa session of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting in September, 1956. Famous Players also has the only perma¬ nent theatre-TV equipment in Canada, which is to be found in the Imperial, To¬ ronto, this country’s largest theatre. Using portable equipment, Loew’s Up¬ town Theatre, Toronto, offered Canada’s first and only theatre-TV program, the Marciano-Moore fight in September, 1955, to a packed house. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation spent $25,274,260 for television in its 195556 fiscal year on programs and got back commercial revenue totalling $7,403,438, it was revealed in its annual report. The $25,274,260 figure compared with one of $15,915,901 in the previous year. A consid¬ erable reduction in TV service is ahead “unless some additional special provision for funds was made” and the Government, anticipating this, had proposed a $12,000,000 grant in its 1956-57 supplementary esti¬ mates. Total income of the CBC was $38,942,402, such income being made up of all monies from any source, including government grants and the 15 per cent excise tax on radios and TV sets. Expenditures came to $38,572,512, this figure indicating a surplus until the addition of a $1,728,511 deprecia¬ tion allowance, after which a deficit be¬ comes evident. The net deficit of the TV 161