TORONTO – ACTRA said that it is “concerned” by media reports that the government may offer financial support to local television programming, but not to the “struggling” CBC.
The Canadian Press and the Globe and Mail have reported that the federal government is considering a $150-million fund to help keep community TV in business, after national networks CTV and Global indicated recently that they were willing to walk away from money-losing TV stations in small markets rather than absorb further losses.
CTV has announced plans to close a station in Brandon and two outlets in Windsor and Wingham, ON, while Canwest Global Communications may shutter its five-city E! network, which includes local stations in Red Deer, AB, and Kelowna, BC, if a buyer can’t be found.
But the national broadcaster is also being forced to cut staff and programming, ACTRA said, particularly after its requests to the government for a bridge loan were “rebuffed”.
“Local programming is absolutely critical,” said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director, in a statement. “However the idea that Canadians who are already worried about paying their own bills being asked to pay for the private broadcasters’ financial mismanagement is appalling. We would hope that if there’s help for private broadcasters then surely the government will offer the CBC a hand as well.”
ACTRA also urged the government and the CRTC “not to fall for the private broadcasters’ requests for regulatory relief”. Accusing the private broadcasters of "lobbying to get rid of the regulations that require them to invest in Canadian programming", ACTRA said that the same broadcasters “seem perfectly happy with other regulations, such as the simultaneous substitution rule, that has made them so profitable for decades”.
“The great extent of (the private broadcasters’) challenges is largely self-inflicted,” Waddell continued. “Canadian private broadcasters blew more than $775 million last year snatching up U.S. programming and racked up billions in dollars of debt in acquisitions. Now they are using the economic downturn to hold the government and the CRTC hostage in order to get out of regulations they never wanted in the first place.”
The Canadian Media Guild (CMG), who represents employees at the CBC and other media employers, echoed ACTRA’s sentiments. It called any fund designed to help local television “a step in the right direction”, provided the CBC also has access to it.
Noting that any CBC layoffs would have a “significant impact” on local operations in small and mid-sized communities across the country, CMG’s president Lise Lareau said that such a fund “would be especially welcome in CBC operations such as Sudbury, Windsor, Thunder Bay and Sydney.”
"Obviously the government’s role is to be the caretaker of the public broadcaster on behalf of Canadians and so we expect it will fulfill that role and place the needs of the CBC high on the priority list when it considers any bailout for local news," Lareau added.
There has been no official word that such a fund will be created, and sources have told Cartt.ca that the government would instead prefer to increase the Local Programming Improvement Fund, and loosen the rules governing it.
Click here to read the full Globe and Mail story.
