GATINEAU – Thanks to the NHL lockout, both TSN and Rogers Sportsnet couldn’t make their required Canadian content spending obligations and were granted license exemptions today by the CRTC to reflect that.
Normally, in any broadcast year, Sportsnet and TSN are allowed to spend up to 5% less than the minimum required expenditure for that year. If that happens, the channels must then spend in the next broadcast year of the licence term, “in addition to the minimum required expenditure for that year, the full amount of the previous year’s under-expenditure,” says their licenses.
However, with no hockey to broadcast, both channels fell far short of their spending requirements (by 21% at Sportsnet and 15% at TSN). In response, TSN and Sportsnet asked the Commission for specific 2004/05 license amendments allowing them to under-spend to such a degree.
“The Commission considers that the NHL lockout resulted in negative financial consequences… and that the applicant could not have anticipated those consequences,” says the decision in both cases. “The Commission notes that the new condition of licence, while granting the applicant some flexibility in its Canadian programming expenditures for the 2004/2005 broadcast year, will ensure that the applicant’s expenditures on Canadian programming achieve the required levels by the end of the current licence term.”
