TORONTO – Some 88% of Canadians living in provinces with little access to French-language television programing say that they want more content in that language, while 56% say that they would watch a French educational television channel if it was offered by their TV service provider, according to an Ipsos Marketing survey for Groupe Média TFO.
The French-language educational media company recently applied to the CRTC to both renew its existing broadcasting licence for its TFO television channel, and to ask for “must-offer status” to make TFO a mandatory offering by TV providers across Canada. (A previous version of this story stated TFO asked for a "must carry" status. Cartt.ca regrets the error.)
“The CRTC received 712 interventions regarding our licence renewal, and 709 of those letters were extremely supportive of the work we do and of our applications. The three who opposed our plans to expand TFO’s educational television programming reach are large cable companies who are already carrying our signal”, said TFO president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell, in the news release. “If you consider our deep, existing support captured in the hundreds of submissions made to the CRTC, plus the huge, national appetite for access to educational French-language programming, and in particular the offering found on TFO, it is clear TFO should be given the opportunity to serve all Canadians.”
