OTTAWA – The CRTC has denied a request by Canwest-owned Slice network to amend its conditions of licence relating to levels of Canadian content and Canadian programming expenditures.
The female targeted station, formerly known as The Life Network, asked the Commission to drop its Canadian content from 82.5% of its broadcast year and evening broadcast period to 60%. It also asked to cut its Canadian programming expenditures from 71% of its previous broadcast year’s gross revenues to 45%.
The network said that its Canadian programming expenditures and Canadian content requirements are higher than other specialty services and that there is a correlation between these requirements and its financial performance. Slice said that it currently has the highest Canadian programming expenditures requirement of all specialty television stations, has the highest Canadian content requirement of all English-language, non-news specialty services, and that it posted the second-highest operating income loss of all analog specialty services in 2007. Slice reported a loss of $5.5 million in operating income from 2005 to 2007 and posted negative profit before interest and tax margins during that period.
But the Commission rejected those assumptions, and told the network that the upcoming licence renewal process would be “the most appropriate forum” to address the issues raised in Slice’s application.
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