TORONTO – A number of multicultural organizations have added their voices to calls for a CRTC public hearing into cuts made by Rogers to OMNI TV's multicultural programming.
More than 20 organizations, including the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the South Asian Women?s Centre (SAWC), the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP), the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) and the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), as well as two federal MPs are reported to support an application made by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union requesting a public hearing into the cuts.
"The multicultural protections guaranteed by the Broadcasting Act oblige the CRTC to act. Rogers' cuts to its five OMNI stations have affected news programs and others in Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Tamil, Ukrainian, Cantonese, Mandarin and Punjabi," CEP's VP of Media Peter Murdoch said in a release last Thursday.
Murdoch also accused Rogers of reneging on its promise to serve multicultural communities with original news programming in various languages, particularly those communities that had lent their support to Rogers when it first applied for the OMNI broadcasting licenses.
The CEP's request for a public hearing follows Rogers' May 30 announcement of the closure of its 18-month old all-Toronto news station CityNews Channel, as well as some news programming cancellations at OMNI.
"?We started to get many complaints in early June when Rogers eliminated the South East Asian newscast,? said Maya Bhullar, CASSA chair, in a separate statement. ?The only way these complaints can be heard is if the CRTC calls Rogers to a public hearing.?
Other organizations that have reportedly lent their support to CEP's request to the CRTC to hold a public hearing includes the Urban Diversity Forum led by former CRTC Commissioner Andrew Cardozzo, the Canadian Ethnic Media Association, The National Ethnic Press, and Media Council of Canada, along with MPs Andrew Cash (Davenport) and Rathika Sitsabaiesan (Scarborough).
Rogers has not yet responded to Cartt.ca's request for comment.
