ANALYSIS: Hundreds of millions in benefits a golden opportunity for Canadian TV, which needs NSS

By Mario Mota

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN THIS much money available at one time for the development and production of Canadian television programming. According to the newly available 2012 report of the Canadian Television Benefits Monitor, Canadian broadcasters must spend more than $450 million on new television programming or programming-related tangible public benefits over the next seven years (by Aug. 31, 2019). When the benefits associated with the BCE-Astral Media transaction currently before the CRTC are factored in, that number will be almost $600 million. This is over and above the hundreds of millions of dollars in baseline expenditures television broadcasters must make...