BANFF – In a wide-ranging speech this morning at the Banff International Television Festival that covered all the touchstones and hot buttons, from the CTF to the OTA regs to Friday’s CTV/CHUM decision, to the diversity/media concentration study to impending reports and hearings, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein told delegates that getting all this done will take more resources than the CRTC currently has.
For example, CRTC broadcast vice-chair Michel Arpin is in the midst of a task force report on the Canadian Television Fund. Getting the Commission to issue a decision on the CTV purchase of CHUM in 39 days “pushed the system to the hilt,” he said. And, the regulator recently hired a pair of lawyers, Christian Leblanc and Laurence Dunbar, to write a review of the CRTC’s policies and practices which is due at the end of July and will be made public thereafter. Plus, rules surrounding media ownership and the diversity of voices in news is also being examined.
Arpin and his team, for example, have met with 60 organizations and 145 individuals, trying to find consensus on the future of the CTF, identifying areas where there sure isn’t, and will file a report by the end of June with public hearings to follow.
Also on the docket this fall is a policy review of the broadcast distribution undertaking regulations and the specialty & pay, pay-per-view and video on demand regs.
“All of this,” noted von Finckenstein, “costs a lot of money… we’re pushing against the edge of our budget.” He didn’t, however, say how much more cash is required. The Commission received approximately $25.1 million in Part I fees in the 2006 broadcast year.
So, the Commission has hired the Public Policy Form to talk to the broadcasters to get their feedback, “rather than us talk to them directly – because it’s very hard to tell your regulator some tough truths,” von Finckenstein told reporters after his speech.
The PPF will hold industry roundtables this summer to set out the Commission’s case and will then take the report filed by the PPF to the Treasury Board and ask for an increase in the amount of the license fees directed to the Commission.
The many hundreds of millions of already collected Part II license fees, as has been reported, is money that is off the table for good, thanks to last fall’s Supreme Court decision, noted von Finckenstein.
“We need more resources… to finance how we deal with the issues that keep coming down the pipe, whether that be diversity of broadcasting, or new media etcetera,” he concluded.
