MONTREAL – If you give it to them, you must give it to us, too.
That’s the gist of the message that Quebecor Media had for the CRTC on Monday when it called for the Commission to “reject the applications by CTV Limited in order to obtain regulatory relief for the ‘A’ stations and for the CTV Network or apply the requested conditions to all Canadian conventional television stations”.
As reported by Cartt.ca, CTV has asked that the Commission extend “interim regulatory flexibility” to its group of ‘A’ channels across the country which it claims have lost nearly $98 million. CTV has also applied to reduce overall Canadian content exhibition requirements for all its local stations part of the CTV Network.
"CTV was fully aware of the implications of its actions when the company acquired the ‘A’ stations in 2007 as part of the CHUM Limited purchase, depriving therefore other parties interested in operating these stations in accordance with the regulations and their current conditions of license and thereby preventing Canadians from having access to a broader diversity of voices”, Quebecor said in a statement.
Quebecor further urged that “based on the most elementary notion of fairness”, the Commission must “not discriminate between English and French language broadcasting”, even if the Broadcasting Act stipulates that English and French language broadcasting operate under different conditions and requirements.
