GATINEAU – ACTRA underscored its earlier plea that the CRTC “stand firm and resist calls for rolling back Canadian content obligations” during its appearance at the Commission’s hearings on private TV broadcaster licence renewals on Friday.
ACTRA’s national president Richard Hardacre, who was joined by performers Julie Stewart and R.H. Thomson, accused the private broadcasters of “using the economic downturn to hold Canadians hostage” on the issue of fee-for-carriage, and insisted that Canadian programming “should not suffer in the rush to respond to current challenges facing the broadcasting industry”.
“Rather than cave into private broadcasters’ demands for far fewer Canadian content rules, we’re saying let’s not panic, let’s hold the line for one year and issue status quo licences,” Hardacre said in a statement. “Let’s not fool ourselves. Broadcasters want to get rid of content regulations so they can offset their outrageous levels of spending on Hollywood shows. Less Canadian content on our airwaves won’t make our broadcasting system stronger; it will make it irrelevant. We owe it to future generations to get this right.”
