Two cheers for Canada’s broadcast regulator for giving Canadians more choice over which cable TV channels they pay for. The “pick and pay” model for cable it unveiled this past week amounts to giving viewers what they’ve been demanding for years.

The move is welcome, and long overdue. Few things are as annoying as being forced to pay for a “bundle” of channels you don’t want in order to get the few you do. Thousands of viewers flooded the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) with complaints about that, and they’ve finally gotten their wish – more or less.

In fact, as was immediately apparent, the reality will almost certainly be a let-down. The CRTC ordered cable and satellite companies to offer a so-called “skinny basic” package of channels by next year for no more than $25 a month. For that, you’ll be able to get all “local and regional stations,” public interest channels, plus community and educational stations. In other words, not much.

For everything else – including, it seems, the big American networks like ABC, PBS and Fox that most people would consider to be part of “basic” television – you’ll pay more. Quite likely as much or more than you’re paying now.

That’s the experience in the United States, where consumer agitation against cable bundling has been even longer and louder than in this country. It shows that where à la carte pricing has been adopted consumers typically pay about the same overall for TV services because the price of the channels they really want goes up.

The CRTC will therefore have to guard against price-gouging by the cable and satellite providers – or risk another storm from disappointed viewers who mistakenly got it in their minds that “pick and pay” means “pay less.” Indeed, as CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais noted as he announced the changes this week: “People were hearing pick, but they weren’t necessarily hearing pay.”

The “pay” part of the equation will kick in when the cable companies announce how they will price the scores of channels not included in “skinny basic.” The CRTC promises that viewers will be able to buy individual channels or “small, reasonably priced bundles.”

Expect lots of fights over what “reasonably priced” means. And expect lots of work for the CRTC in sorting that out. If anyone thought the regulator was in any danger of putting itself out of a job, never fear. For one thing, providers will have to offer more Canadian than non-Canadian channels, with the CRTC looking over their shoulders to make sure they do just that.

A decade or so ago, all this would have rightly been considered revolutionary. Today, though, the CRTC is playing catch-up as viewers move briskly into the world of Netflix, AppleTV, YouTube and other non-conventional choices. As Blais put it this week, “We are forcing the industry to finally face that the world is changing.”

That – not unbundling – is the real threat to the big legacy TV providers, and they know it all too well. More and more consumers, especially millennials, are “cutting the cord” and doing without conventional cable or satellite altogether. That’s why companies like Bell and Rogers are rushing into the market with their own streaming services, Crave TV and Shomi.

It may be too little and far too late, but this week’s decision in favour of unbundling at least continues a positive trend by the CRTC towards more choice for consumers.

Under Blais’ leadership, the agency has already killed unpopular three-year cellphone contracts and pressed for lower roaming fees. In mid-March it dropped Canadian-content quotas for daytime TV, and called on broadcasters to “put the focus on quality rather than quantity” by creating great, compelling Canadian television. And now the decision in favour of pick and pay.

Not coincidentally, all this is very much in line with policies pushed by the Harper government. And unlike many other moves favoured by the Conservatives, the CRTC’s consumer-friendly agenda goes in the right direction.

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