by Steve Faguy
GATINEAU – It's the most important decision about private French-language television in Canada in years, but the CRTC's renewal of licenses for major broadcasters contained few surprises.
On Thursday, the CRTC renewed broadcasting licenses for Quebecor's Groupe TVA, Astral Media and the independent specialty channel Canal Évasion. The Commission also reviewed the licenses of the V network (formerly TQS), which was given exceptional relief from its regulatory obligations in 2008 when purchased by its current ownership while in bankruptcy. For the most part, the decisions were based on proposals made during discussions at the hearings in Montreal in December, (covered live by Cartt.ca)
"The CRTC is satisfied with TVA's performance," the Commission said in a statement announcing the decisions. Quebec's largest private television network spends about 45% of its gross revenues and 89% of its programming budget on Canadian programming (the vast majority of which is original productions), mainly because the demands of the Quebec market require a substantial amount of French-language programming that reflects Quebec's culture.
Recognizing this, the CRTC eliminated requirements concerning the types of programs TVA must air, such as "priority programming" like dramas that tend to be more expensive to produce. Satisfied that "the popularity of such programs on TVA will ensure that they will continue to be broadcast", the CRTC instead imposed a condition of license requiring 80% of TVA's programming budget to be spent on Canadian programming and maintained a requirement that $20 million a year be spent on programming from independent producers.
Though it didn't impose any conditions in this regard, the CRTC expressed concern that TVA and other French-language TV broadcasters were relying too much on Canadian adaptations of foreign concepts. "The Commission questions the impact that this growing trend could have on Canadian and Quebec creative talent, given that such talent is used less in an adaptation than in the creation of an original Canadian production," it said in its decision.
TVA countered that adaptations, like the mega hit Star Académie, adapted from a French singing competition show, are significantly transformed to reflect Canadian and Quebec culture.
The Commission also expressed concern about the "Montrealization" of French-language television in Canada, and asked each broadcaster to ensure their programming would reflect francophone life outside its largest metropolis. TVA, which has mandatory carriage across Canada, has a specific license requirement to produce programs reflecting francophone life outside Quebec, which has been maintained.
For TVA's regional stations, the CRTC kept local programming requirements largely the same – 18 hours a week at CFCM in Quebec City and five hours a week at stations in Trois Rivières, Rimouski, Sherbrooke and Saguenay. TVA secured a change allowing more local Quebec City programming be aired across the network in exchange for promising more local news at that station, including new weekend newscasts.
The CRTC also renewed licenses for TVA's specialty channels AddikTV, Argent, Casa, Prise 2 and LCN. Among the amendments to those licenses: Prise 2 – whose license limits it to programs that are more than 10 years old – can air new original variety shows that fit its license theme.
Though not licensed as a vertically integrated group like Bell and Shaw, TVA's license renewals are for three years ending Aug. 31, 2015.
For V Interactions, which is owned by Remstar Diffusion and whose license had already been renewed to 2015, the CRTC opted not to change its obligations even though the network revealed at the December hearing that it had become profitable for the first time since it was purchased, broke, from Cogeco Inc. in 2008. Part of this is because of its reduced commitments to local news, but also because of its counterprogramming strategy, putting entertainment shows during the 6pm and 10pm hours when Radio-Canada and TVA have their local and national newscasts.
At the hearing, V promised to increase the amount of local news it broadcasts, from two to two and a half hours a week in Montreal and Quebec City, and from one hour to an hour and a half in Saguenay, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières. V also committed to not counting repeats of newscasts toward these minimums.
At the hearing, unions brought up the fact that V does not produce its own newscasts, preferring to contract them out to independent producers. Its license requires it to "produce and broadcast" local news, but it wasn't clear whether hiring a company to produce news meets this criterion. The CRTC decided that V could continue to contract out its news, but it remains fully responsible for what it puts on the air. V committed at the hearing to hiring a manager who would be responsible for overseeing news programming, and recently signed a deal with Transcontinental's TC Media to produce local newscasts.
V, which has recently been the subject of takeover rumours by Bell (for $70 million?), does not own any specialty channels currently in operation.
Astral Media is unique in that it's a large broadcasting group whose assets are about equally divided between French and English. All are specialty services, except for two small conventional television stations in British Columbia it assumed control of when it purchased Standard Broadcasting in 2007.
Astral had asked the CRTC to be licensed as a group, allowing it the same flexibility in sharing resources between its services as is given to Bell, Rogers and Shaw. But the commission and some interveners expressed concern that this might lead to Astral shifting resources between language groups, since French-language services profit more from original programming while English-language services profit more from U.S. imports. The commission, in approving Astral's request, did not set any conditions in this regard, but did say it would monitor its Canadian programming expenditures. Astral will be required to spend 30% of its gross revenues in a year on Canadian programming for the following year.
The commission largely denied a request from Astral to cut the minimum amount of Canadian programming on all its Category A specialty channels (except Séries+) by five%. Astral argued that with the same amount of spending on fewer hours of programming, the quality of that programming would increase. The CRTC denied this request, citing the channels' profitability, but allowed it for music channels MusiquePlus and MusiMax, which will now need to devote 55% of their programming schedule to Canadian programs.
Astral also asked that the minimum amount of music video programming on MusiquePlus and MusiMax be reduced from 50% to 30%. In exchange, Astral offered to ensure that at least 50% of its music videos on those channels be in French, up from 35% under their existing license. With the blessing of Quebec's recording industry, the CRTC approved Astral's request.
The CRTC also denied requests to amend licenses for two other services, rejecting a demand to allow more U.S. programming on Séries+ and to remove restrictions on advertising to children on the youth network Vrak.tv.
Astral's licenses have been renewed for five years, ending Aug. 31, 2017. Astral announced in March it had reached an agreement to be purchased by Bell Media. A hearing to consider that deal has not yet been announced by the CRTC.
Finally, the CRTC issued a five-year license renewal to Canal Évasion, one of two channels owned by Groupe Serdy. Évasion had asked for more programming flexibility, including the ability to air what the CRTC calls professional "stick and ball sports" like hockey, baseball, basketball and tennis, as well as feature films and music videos, provided that they fit with the nature of service and that they each take up no more than 10% of the broadcast schedule. The CRTC approved the license amendments, but warned Évasion that all programming must fit the channel's theme of tourism, adventure and travel.
