Local TV: New rules, funding formulas, aim to save local TV news

By Perry Hoffman

CRTC addresses financial viability of news in local and community TV decisionGATINEAU – The CRTC is redrawing the local news and community TV landscape, however, it stopped short of creating a new funding mechanism for all local news operations.Rather, the Commission is giving vertically integrated entities added flexibility in how they allocate money, while independent broadcasters will get access to a new fund and some immediate financial help (however, the full, new funding mechanisms don’t start until September 2017).The Commission argued in Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2016-224 that the VI companies (Rogers, Bell, Quebecor, Corus) have the wherewithal to produce high-quality...