OTTAWA – The CRTC has suspended its public hearing into CBC’s re-branding of its specialty channel ‘Country Canada’ to ‘bold’, after the public broadcaster acknowledged that bold’s programming may, in fact, be inconsistent with its nature of service condition of licence.
The hearing, scheduled for June 2, was to determine whether the way that CBC re-branded the channel had negatively impacted “the integrity of the licensing process”. CBC re-launched its category 1 specialty Country Canada as bold on March 27 2008, after telling the Commission that the change could be done without amending the nature of service of Country Canada.
But on May 1, 2009, the CBC filed a letter with the CRTC saying that it "does not contest the Commission’s preliminary view that bold’s programming may be inconsistent with its nature of service that was communicated in [Broadcasting] Notice of Consultation 2009-132”, and that it believes that an amendment to bold’s nature of service condition of licence “is the appropriate course of action."
The CBC then requesting that bold’s nature of service condition of licence be revised to read:
The licensee shall provide a national English-language Category 1 specialty television service for rural Canadians. The service will provide information, interaction and entertainment.
Following consideration of the application, the CRTC said it will determine if a mandatory order requiring CBC to conform to its original condition of licence concerning the nature of service definition for bold should be issued.
