OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has postponed the CBC’s licence renewal hearing from this September until June 4, 2012.
The Commission said Friday that the decision was made for two reasons. First, in response to a request by the Quebec English-language Production Committee (QEPC) for the ‘pub caster’s “aggregate financial production information”, similar to that made available by the private English-language television broadcasters for their group-based licence renewals last April.
“The (CBC’s licence renewal application and appendices) do not provide the data that the commercial broadcasters publish in their annual independent production reports, such as the number of projects, aggregate length, region of production, aggregate budgets, aggregate license fees, as well as titles and production companies by region”, reads QEPC’s letter to the CRTC, dated June 23, 2011.
The organization called the information “critical to measuring the success of the CBC”, and to making its licence renewal process “as useful and transparent as possible”. Its request was seconded by the Canadian Media Production Association and the Documentary Organization of Canada.
Secondly, the CRTC said that it had just learned from the CBC that the federal government has yet to establish the Corp’s future operating budget. “The CRTC believes it would be inappropriate to impose licence conditions given this uncertainty”, the Commission said in its decision.
A revised notice of consultation will be issued shortly with new procedural dates. No word yet on whether the public on-line consultation process, which is scheduled to wrap up July 18, will also be extended.
– Lesley Hunter
