Rogers seeks significant changes to its OMNI licences

By Perry Hoffman

OTTAWA - Rogers Media wants to reduce its Canadian content and cut in half its programming commitments for ethnic groups and distinct languages for its group of OMNI stations. The company will appear before the CRTC next week to defend these and other proposed changes to its conditions of licence (COLs).The programming changes appear to be quite significant. Rather than meeting the requirement to broadcast programs to 20 different ethnic groups and in 20 distinct languages, Rogers is requesting these be cut in half to 10 in both cases. As well, the company wants to decrease its Canadian programming commitments...