OTTAWA – More than 85 pay and specialty services will be up for license renewals when the CRTC begins it hearing for license renewal of independent conventional, pay and specialty television services beginning April 23 in Gatineau, Quebec.
The license renewal includes applications of independent pay and specialty programming services as well as the applications of the independent conventional television stations whose licences expire on August 31, 2013. As part of its examination of these applications, the Commission will consider the licensees’ various requests with respect to their regulatory requirements (e.g. conditions of license, local programming requirements, Canadian programming expenditures, etc.), address potential non-compliance issues and determine the length of the licensees’ next license term. The Commission notes that it may decide to issue license terms of varying lengths depending on a number of factors, including the requests made by the applicant and potential non-compliance issues.
The applications set out in section 3 are organized into the following groups:
3 a) License renewal applications of independent pay and specialty Category A services
Pay and specialty Category A services offer programming in a particular genre and are protected from direct competition from other Canadian and non-Canadian programming undertakings. These services must generally be made available to consumers by all authorized distribution undertakings and then offered to subscribers in various packages based on terms and conditions negotiated between BDUs and the programming services.
3 b) License renewal applications of independent specialty Category B services
Specialty Category B services offer programming in a particular genre and can be in direct competition with other Category B services or non-Canadian services but not in direct competition with Category A services. Category B services are not necessarily made available by all BDUs as their distribution is secured through terms and conditions negotiated between BDUs and the programming services.
3 c) License renewal applications of independent conventional television services
Conventional television services offer all genres of programming and are distributed by distribution undertakings on the basic cable package in their respective local markets as well as being available to Canadians as free over-the-air signals.
One Category A pay service and a number of Category B specialty services have indicated in their license renewal applications that they wish to operate their services without any changes to their licences.
