By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is expanding eligibility for the independent news fund by including Corus’s 15 Global stations into the fold.
Because Corus is a large media company vis-à-vis other eligible services – and would likely receive the majority of the funding – the CRTC said it is also instituting a funding cap of 45 per cent to any one entity to ensure the other recipients of the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF) are not adversely affected by its inclusion.
“The Commission notes that Corus plays an important role in producing and broadcasting locally reflective and locally relevant news and information for Canadians,” the commission said on Monday. “The Commission also recognizes the costs Corus faces in operating a national news network. Accordingly, the Commission considers that, while it would be appropriate to impose a mechanism to prevent Corus from absorbing a disproportionate amount of ILNF funding, such a mechanism should also ensure adequate support for the Global stations’ news operations.”
The move comes after Corus became an independent broadcaster when Shaw was purchased by Rogers, and after the CRTC determined that foreign and standalone Canadian online streamers over a certain revenue threshold must contribute five per cent of their annual Canadian revenues to content funds, including 1.5 per cent to the ILNF, which translates to an influx of $42 million into the pot.
“As Canada’s largest independent news provider, we are pleased to receive confirmation from the CRTC of our position, which has been that we have been eligible for the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF) for some time,” a Corus spokesperson told Cartt. “We are in the process of working through the details and confirming the timing of receipt of our funds with respect to our 2025 financial year.”
The CRTC noted that it was unnecessary to further broaden the fund to absorb more eligible entities, including intervenors like APTN and CPAC, because of the other available mechanisms to access outside funding, including mandatory distribution and supports from funds controlled by Canadian Heritage and that are not available to private broadcasters.
While the fund will continue to serve just private independent television stations, the commission is also establishing a requirement that the news produced with the fund’s support be made available online “to ensure the broad distribution of locally reflective news and information” and an incentive mechanism to encourage original audiovisual online content that is reflective of equity-deserving communities, indigenous communities, and OLMCs.
The commission launched the consultation that led to this decision last summer.
Three commissioners dissented on at least some points. Bram Abramson of Ontario preferred a sliding scale on the 45-per-cent entity cap to take into consideration mergers and cost efficiencies. “Each additional station under common control would increase the beneficial owner’s entity cap, but each time by slightly less,” he said.
“This would make the entity cap more relevant for consolidators below the Corus scale; allow the cap to adjust as changes of ownership and control take place, maintaining its overall relevance; and, set properly, both recognize scale economies and respond to delocalization risks without punishing scale,” he added.
They also said they would have instituted research on news deserts and included a multiplier for allocations going to those areas. “A dynamic entity cap with a scale-dampening factor and, in future years, a news-deprivation factor, would, it is true, have been more complex than the static, across-the-board 45 percent entity cap adopted by the majority. But the latter is, in my view, too static an approach, and one that does not sufficiently take into account the ILNF’s changed circumstances. Simplicity is always to be favoured, all equal, but must here be balanced against scalability—especially where interim program structures have the habit of sticking around.”
Commissioner Ellen Desmond of the Atlantic Region and Nunavut said she disagreed with the majority maintaining the eligibility criteria of the ILNF, pointing to “several” independent community channels in Canada that are filling a gap by providing lcoial news and programming where it is not otherwise available.
“In my view, these independent community channels should be considered possible recipients of the ILNF, if certain criteria are satisfied,” she said. “For example, these stations would need to provide evidence of their current level of news production and adherence to journalistic standards. The stations would also need to be focused on serving smaller and underserved markets that otherwise do not have access to local news. There may be other appropriate criteria, all of which could be determined with input from stakeholders.”
Finally, Commissioner Stephanie Paquette of Quebec said the commission could have reviewed the funding allocation rules in order to allocate to small independent broadcasters “a portion that takes into account the reality of their business model and to allocate the remainder of the funding equitably among the major networks, taking into account the contributions already received directly from BDUs by vertically integrated players.”
The ILNF, which is managed by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), was established in 2016 and gets its funding from proceeds of 0.3 per cent of broadcasters’ gross annual revenues.
Two-thirds of the fund’s distribution is based on each station’s share of total expenditures on locally reflective news and information over the previous three broadcast years and the rest is in proportion to the total number of hours of locally reflective news and information broadcast by each station over that period. No station or group of stations operated by the same licensee in a given market can receive more than 12 per cent of the funding in any given broadcast year.
Currently, 19 television stations belonging to nine different independent ownership groups receive money from the fund, according to the commission.
