GATINEAU – It’s shades of 2002 as Rogers Media and MVBC Holdings (owner of Vancouver’s ethnic station channel m) are once again vying for the same thing out west.
Actually, the companies will go toe-to-toe for ethnic stations in two cities, Edmonton and Calgary, this time, as each has applied for ethnic TV broadcast licenses to serve the two cities. The hearing is set for February 12th in Calgary.
In 2002, Rogers wanted to launch OMNI TV in Vancouver, copying the business plan of its ethnic station in Toronto and applied for a license there. However, the Commission, citing local ownership, awarded the station to MVBC, which launched channel m.
Rogers has since entered the Vancouver market with the OMNI brand after purchasing religious station NOW TV in 2005. OMNI is also a religious station in Winnipeg, another license that came to Rogers with the NOW purchase.
Two of the country’s other religious stations, Miracle Channel and Crossroads TV have also applied for OTA licenses under the same proceeding for new religious stations.
CanWest Global is also in the mix, asking for permission to build on its CH brand and add transmitters in each of Calgary and Edmonton in order to extend its Red Deer broadcast signal, CHCA-TV, into both larger communities.
“This is certainly an opportune time to introduce multicultural television into Alberta due to the continued growth in the province’s multicultural communities, and the fact that no ethnic television broadcaster is currently operating in Alberta”, said Art Reitmayer, channel m’s president and CEO, in a press release. “Channel m is poised to bring high-quality multicultural programming, a strong commitment to local communities, and western-based leadership to the Alberta market.”
Each station, says channel m, would offer news, information, lifestyles, entertainment and educational programming in 17 different languages, including English. Programming would reflect the unique diversity of each city, with a daily live German show and local Mandarin and Punjabi newscasts in Calgary; and a daily live Ukrainian show and local Cantonese and Hindi newscasts in Edmonton.
Statistics Canada is forecasting ethnic population increases in Calgary of 20% by 2011 and 39% by 2017, according to the channel m release. The largest ethnic groups in Calgary are German, Ukrainian, Chinese, Dutch, Polish, South Asian and Italian. According to Statistics Canada, Edmonton represents the fifth largest ethnic community in Canada, with over 88% of Edmonton’s population identifying themselves with at least one ethnic group. The largest ethnic groups in Edmonton are German, Ukrainian, Chinese, Polish, Dutch, South Asian, Norwegian and Italian.
