OTTAWA – As first reported by www.cartt.ca, the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association has asked the CRTC for permission to drop local radio signals from cable license requirements.
Today, the Commission sent out a call for public comments on the cable industry’s request to repeal the section of the broadcast distribution regulations which requires cable companies to carry every local FM signal in their cable regions.
The CCTA says that so few customers (4%) actually listen to the radio on cable that it’s a waste of bandwidth that could be put to better use.
“As we move to into a world of satellite radio, digital music on television, this whole FM on cable model has become very archaic,” CCTA president Michael Hennessy told www.cartt.ca about the application in May. “Early in the days of FM, it made sense. It doesn’t any more. When you think about finding the most efficient uses of capacity in big centres, that policy gobbles up a lot of capacity that can be better used for video purposes.
“For me this was an easy one,” he said then, “but it will be interesting to see the response. I just think that the penetration of the service is so low, there just isn’t any economic harm to getting those out of the analog space.”
The deadline to respond to the call is August 25th, 2005.
– Greg O’Brien
