LET’S TALK TV: Genres have long been monkeyed around with. Do they still need protection?

By Perry Hoffman

GATINEAU - Independent broadcasters are telling the CRTC that they will lose their spots on the broadcast dial if the Commission decides to eliminate genre protection rules and access rights for certain types of programming because the big Vertically Integrated (VI) media and carriage companies have the incentive to muscle their way in with copycat channels, causing “significant harm to the system.”Genre protection has been a staple of the Canadian broadcasting system for many years, giving niche services the opportunity a protected space in which to build audience share along with a stable source of subscriber revenue, but also to...