OTTAWA – In a decision announced Friday, the CRTC ordered that Corus-owned OWN Inc. must comply with the educational mandate of its original licensing conditions or risk losing its license.
The Commission issued a mandatory order, stating OWN must fulfill its mandate to “provide formal and informal educational programming and learning opportunities that generally focus on adult education and that come from a full spectrum of basic, credit-based, skills-related and life-enhancing programs.”
The CRTC found the channel to be in non-compliance in July 2011, just months after Corus rebranded the channel from Viva to OWN. Not satisfied with Corus’s assertions that it had been compliant, the commission called a hearing last December, where Corus executives defended their programming decisions as fitting the licensing requirements for the OWN channel. They did, however, also propose some programming changes to demonstrate their commitment to the commission’s licensing processes, including the development of two new programs.
In its decision, the CRTC describes its concern that OWN’s programming features a disproportionate amount of “‘enhancement programming’ rather than offering a ‘full spectrum of basic, credit-based, skills-related and life-enhancing programs,’ as contemplated in its nature of service definition.”
The Commission also criticized Corus for failing to bring its license in compliance despite having had “ample time” to do so since it renewed its license in 2011. It said that it views “any non-compliance as a very serious matter,” adding it would consider suspension, non-renewal or revocation of OWN’s license if the channels fails to adhere to its licensing requirements.
Last summer, we at Cartt.ca had a bit of a different point of view on this…
