OTTAWA – Last week, the CRTC issued a decision renewing the licence for ATN South Asian Television (SATV) from Sept. 1, 2022, to Aug. 31, 2027 and denied the licensee’s requests related to access rights and conditions of licence around accessibility.
SATV is South Asian Television Canada Limited’s (ATN) third-language ethic discretionary service. It provides 75% of its programming in South Asian languages and the rest in English, according to its application to renew its licence.
ATN, which is eligible to operate SATV under an exemption order for discretionary services with fewer than 200,000 subscribers, requested to remain a licenced service. It also requested it be allowed to benefit from a former buy-through rule and to be exempt from two standard conditions of licence and one expectation outlined in Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-436.
The CRTC decided it was appropriate for SATV to maintain its licence but denied ATN’s other two requests.
SATV previously benefited from the former buy-through rule, which stipulated “a licenced broadcasting distribution undertaking that distributes a general interest non-Canadian third-language service or a general interest third-language Category B service to subscribers shall also distribute an ethnic Category A service, if one is available in the same principle language,” the CRTC’s decision explains.
“Under this rule, Canadians could not subscribe to a Hindi-language service on an individual basis or in any package without also subscribing to SATV.”
The CRTC announced in 2015 it would phase out access privileges, including the buy-through rule, for Category A discretionary services.
ATN argued if it was allowed to continue to benefit from this rule, it could increase its Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) to 22% in the first year of its new licence term and to 40% by the seventh year. If the request was denied, however, ATN said it would have to reduce its expenditures through layoffs and would need SATV’s CPE requirement to remain at its current level of 15%.
Rogers submitted an intervention, which argued ATN did not sufficiently justify why the CRTC should deviate from its policy framework. The Commission agreed with Rogers, ultimately deciding “ATN has not demonstrated that granting the requested access rights for SATV would be in the public interest and warrant an exception to the Commission’s current policy.”
The Commission also decided to keep SATV’s CPE requirement at 15%.
The standard conditions of licence (and one expectation) ATN asked to be exempt from, as noted, relate to accessibility.
This includes requirements for it “to implement a monitoring system to ensure that closed captioning is included in its broadcast signal and that the captioning reaches the distributor in its original form,” and “to provide audio description for all the key elements of Canadian information programs, including news programming,” according to the CRTC’s decision.
It also includes an expectation it will “display a standard described video logo and broadcast an audio announcement indicating the presence of described video before the broadcast of each described program, and to make information available regarding the described programs that it will broadcast.”
ATN made similar requests for exemptions during its last licence renewal, which the CRTC denied. This time around, ATN did not offer any additional supporting evidence or arguments. As such, the CRTC denied the requests.
Additionally, the Commission imposed several conditions of licence on ATN related to issues of non-compliance over the course of the previous licence term.
This includes a condition requiring it to file by Nov. 30, 2022, missing financial statements for the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 broadcast years and another requiring it to file within 90 days of the decision “a report indicating how it is complying with the closed captioning requirements set out in Appendix 2 to Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2016-436.”
For the full decision, please click here.
