OTTAWA – The CRTC Thursday agreed to allow TV Ontario to cut its level of Canadian content by five more percentage points.
In August, the Ontario public broadcaster told the Commission that production funding changes have made it difficult to hit the 65% Cancon level required by its condition of license and asked that it be reduced to 60%.
In 2001, the Commission allowed TVO/TFO to cuts its Cancon level from 70% to 65% but 60% is the level contained in the licenses of fellow provincial educational broadcasters: B.C.’s Knowledge Network, Alberta’s Access Communications the Saskatchewan Communications Network.
“TVOntario argued that its proposed 5% reduction in TVO’s overall Canadian content would provide it with the flexibility needed to optimize its investments in new, high quality Canadian programs,” reads the Commission’s Thursday decision.
“This flexibility would allow TVO to continue to fulfil its distinct educational mandate and obtain high quality programs in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The licensee added that a requirement for TVO to broadcast 60% Canadian content would be consistent with the requirement for other English-language educational broadcasters. “
TVO indicated that changes to the funding framework of the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) “have compromised the ability of educational broadcasters such as TVOntario to acquire CTF funding for new Canadian productions. In particular, TVOntario noted that one of the new, key CTF funding criteria relates to audience potential, and that it will have an impact on 30% of CTF funding in the 2005-2006 broadcast year. The licensee stated that funding formulae based on potential audience size would put TVO and other educational broadcasters at a disadvantage, since the programming designed for such broadcasters typically attracts a much smaller audience than that garnered by conventional television stations or specialty services.”
The Commission agreed with TVO partly because the CTF has no way to dedicate funding to educational broadcasters, leaving it to make its own or purchase foreign content. TVO produces its own kids content but told the Commission “this investment falls short of our needs, takes away from our ability to trigger new Canadian co-production, and must be supplemented by high quality, foreign acquisitions in order to retain our audience and fulfill our educational mandate.”
