OTTAWA – It sure would have been weird last Friday to have seen an empty seat among the cast of five commissioners fronting the hearing into BDU and specialty service policies.
But, according to a couple of good sources, that’s almost what happened.
Commissioner Rita Cugini’s original three-year term as a CRTC commissioner came to an end on Thursday, April 10th, or day three of one of the most important hearings in the TV industry’s history.
If she wasn’t renewed that day – and she began the morning with it potentially being her final day of work at the Commission – another commissioner would have had to fill in, or the hearings would have been faced with an empty chair and just four commissioners.
However, the Conservative government (our sources tell us the Prime Minister’s Office was wanting to replace Cugini), forced into a sticky situation because she was put on the panel (we also hear chairman Konrad von Finckenstein was intent on keeping her), sent over Cugini’s renewal papers to the hearing room in Gatineau last Thursday afternoon.
We’re told she signed them just after lunch and the former Alliance Atlantis, Telelatino and OMNI executive has been renewed – and for a four year term.
– Greg O’Brien
