TORONTO – The CRTC must maintain its Canadian content spending requirements for Canadian pay and specialty TV services, the Coalition of Canadian Audio-Visual Unions (CCAU) stated Wednesday in a media release.
The call comes in advance of the CRTC’s public hearing on a review of the regulatory framework for broadcast distributors and specialty and pay TV. The three-week-long hearing begins April 8.
The coalition maintains that strong rules must remain in place to achieve the cultural objectives of the Broadcasting Act.
The CCAU is also urging the CRTC to maintain the current regulatory framework that supports the Canadian pay and specialty sector to enable them to meet their spending requirements and to remove the ability of specialty and pay television licensees to use Canadian Television Fund licence fee top-up monies to reach their Canadian programming expenditure targets.
The coalition also wants the regulator to force the cable industry to increase their contributions to Canadian programming to 6% of their revenues from the current 5%.
“The regulatory regime has served discretionary services as well as cable and satellite companies very well. These industries enjoy profit margins in excess of 20%. If the CRTC cedes to the requests of [distributors], the clear loser in the system will be Canadian programming,” said Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) national executive director and CEO Brian Anthony in the media release. “Market forces are not enough to ensure that scripted, Canadian drama gets on our television screens.”
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, DGC, the Writers Guild of Canada and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Local 700 CEP (NABET) are the members of the CCAU that will participate in the CRTC’s public hearings in April. The coalition is scheduled to appear on April 18.
Other members of the CCAU are the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, the American Federation of Musicians – Canada, Union des artistes, Association des réalisateurs et réalisatrices du Québec, Association Québécoise des techniciens de l’image et du son, and Société des auteurs de radio, télévision et cinéma.
