By Bert Zethof

The current battle between the cable companies and the TV broadcasters in Canada is so childish it makes me squirm with a mixture of embarrassment for our regulators and captains of industry and anger in the needlessness of this standoff(see localtvmatters.ca).

Making matters worse is dragging the public into the fray like divorcing parents using their children as pawns in a custody battle.

I can't pretend to understand the complex CRTC regulatory framework and the opponents' arguments. But from a big picture perspective, it's clear that the broadcasters' traditional reliance on advertising revenue for its business model is no longer viable. In contrast, cable companies have a money printing machine for its business model, yet they do not pay anything for the broadcasters' content that they transmit to viewers.

The broadcasters' local and Canadian content is valued by many viewers (as well as by government from a public policy perspective). Its availability benefits the cable and satellite companies by making their offerings more attractive to viewers.

Similarly, broadcasters benefit from the cable and satellite companies' distribution system. Even a rookie CEO would recognize that the logical relationship for the two parties is a mutually beneficial, symbiotic one.

A triple bottom line perspective by TV industry CEOs would lead them to make decisions that are in the best interests of the viewing public in the long term. They shouldn't even need the CRTC to arrive at the right decisions.

These CEOs can learn from nature: According to biologists Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan,"Life did not take over the world by combat, but by networking."

You'd think that if anyone knew about networking, it would be the TV industry.