GATINEAU – Like CTV beforehand, Canwest – in its second appearance at the CRTC’s OTA licence renewal hearings – focused on obtaining relief from certain of its programming obligations Thursday afternoon in front of the Commission.
There was little tension in the Q&A session, but there were some requests for “changes” to Canwest’s licence obligations – repeated from the Tuesday appearance – and several specific requests for Global Ontario, Global Quebec and CJNT-TV in Montreal, a station focused on ethnic programming.
Again like CTV, Canwest asked for changes to its priority programming conditions. But where CTV asked that the definition of “priority” be broadened to include more genres, Canwest asked that the conditions of license requiring priority programming be removed altogether and specified that there be “no requirements for minimum amounts of original hours of specific types of programming such as drama or documentaries.”
The other two previously discussed requests asked: that the Commission standardize requirements for local programming for the broadcaster’s full-service licences such that a minimum of five hours per week be produced for markets smaller than one million people and 10 hours for larger markets; and that the regulator change the condition of licence regarding the use of independent productions from a minimum of 75% to a minimum of 50%.
Canwest EVP of content, Barb Williams, said the company wants to be able to own more rights and make more multi-platform uses of programming. When CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein asked, “You’re not going to move into in-house production?” Williams replied, “The contemplation is not to buy a studio, no.”
Thursday’s presentation also emphasized what Charlotte Bell, senior VP of regulatory affairs, called “licence anomalies within the system.” Global Ontario “does not have a home market and this means that it doesn’t have access to local revenues,” she said, which means that while all other Toronto stations can access local revenues while covering the province through retransmitters, Global Ontario cannot because it’s licensed as a regional station. The broadcaster wants Global Ontario designated as a local Toronto station.
For Global Quebec, “licensed to serve Quebec City with rebroadcasters in Montreal and Sherbrooke, there’s a “similar anomaly,” Bell said. Citing Statistics Canada figures for 2006, she noted that fewer than 7,500 people in the Quebec City CMA speak English at home while in the Montreal CMA, “the number is closer to 600,000.” Canwest wants the CRTC to amend the licence so that it reflects the majority of the audience served, which lives in Montreal.
As for the broadcaster’s ethnic station, CJNT-TV in Montreal, Bell lamented the failure to see it turn a profit. She said that because the ethnic populations are smaller in Montreal than in Toronto or Vancouver, “we have not been able to attract advertising revenues to support the ethnic programming.” Add to this the need to mix English- and French-language programming in the non-ethnic slots – when CJNT is already the fourth entrant in the French-language market – and the need to air ethnic content between 8 pm and 11 pm, limiting Canwest’s ability to share with its other stations, and it’s an uphill struggle.
Global is requesting the following changes: a reduction of the number of groups and languages to five per week; elimination of the requirement for French-language non-ethnic programming; and elimination of the requirement that 75% ethnic programming be aired between 8 pm to 11 pm.
Commissioner Peter Menzies wondered if Canwest is “sprucing up the licence” to make it more attractive to a buyer. Peter Viner, president of Canadian TV operations, said CJNT “might fare better with another owner” such as a company associated with the Rogers-owned OMNI stations. Bell added that Canwest applied for many of the changes years ago. In response to Menzies’ question as to whether “there’s still a market” for OTA ethnic services, given all the specialties serving the same groups, Bell replied that Canwest inherited the service in the deal to acquire WIC’s assets. “It was always hard to make it profitable.”
