WHAT TURNED INTO A banal little experiment happened when I tuned into AMItv last month while guide-surfing. The Bourne Identity caught my eye and I stopped there to give it another look. At first, I didn’t realize I was on Accessible Media’s must-carry TV channel and was momentarily puzzled by the on-air commentary telling me what the characters were doing.
After I clued in, I did something I’m sure many others must have also tried. I closed my eyes. In very short order, I realized that without the described video commentary, anyone without sight would be completely baffled by what was going on in the movie. I mean, the dialogue bits were fine, but the settings and action absolutely need the additional description when it can’t be seen.
Of course, I can open my eyes and see the action and change the channel to find other options, but for many vision-impaired Canadians, AMItv offers their best choice in television. They can’t see it, but the channel helps them better picture it in their mind’s eye. So, it’s quite easy to support AMI’s continued mandatory carriage – along with its corresponding fee – on my cable bill – as well as to back its request to add a French-language version, too.
AMI has asked that its mandatory carriage be renewed under the Broadcasting Act’s 9(1)(h) provisions, which says the CRTC can “require any licensee who is authorized to carry on a distribution undertaking to carry, on such terms and conditions as the Commission deems appropriate, programming services specified by the Commission.”
It’s not the only one asking for that special status and the CRTC has set a hearing for April 23rd to sort through a bunch of them (plus a number of other applications).
Commission policy under the 9(1)(h) provisions state that any channel wishing such carriage must be “exceptional” in a number of ways and if the Regulator decides a license holder qualifies, it can force the channel onto any distributor – and extract a fee from each subscriber. However, those companies looking for mandatory distribution, according to the 2010 policy set for 9(1)(h) distribution, must satisfy a number of stringent conditions. Click here and scroll down to paragraph 11 to see them all – or just search for the word “exceptional” on that page.
So, what do you think? Is Sun News so exceptional as to warrant a mandatory fee of $0.18 per subscriber per month? Should APTN’s mandatory rate rise by 60% to $0.40 per month per subscriber? Should all Canadians be forced to pay $0.45 per month for an all-Canadian movies channel, as Starlight: The Canadian Movie Channel, has asked? Should Vision TV return back to a 9(1)(h) channel? Is a new youth-focused channel such as Stornoway’s Fusion application deserving of exceptional status and $0.32 per month? Should Canadians be made to pay one cent more per month for CPAC? (The CPAC fee request has been corrected from an earlier version of this story. The first CRTC hearing notice said that CPAC was asking for a two cent increase when it is in fact, asking for just $0.01. The Commission corrected its error inside its follow up release extending the deadline for comments, which we missed. We regret the error.)
Have your say here. You can either comment in the box below or send them to us at editorial@cartt.ca. We know this issue is a touchy one for many reasons and we promise all submissions to us will remain confidential. We’ll summarize and publish what we find – as well as our own thoughts on the matter – at a later (but not too much later) date. Thanks to all in advance.
– Greg O’Brien
