ACTRA encourages CRTC to "stand firm" against private broadcasters requests to cut Cancon

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...