MONTRÉAL – With a promise to spend nearly $170 million over seven years on Canadian programming, TV5 Québec Canada has applied to the CRTC to amend the licence of TV5 to allow it to broadcast two services under the same licence. The two services are: the current TV5, which will continue to present a majority of production originating from the international francophonie; and a new channel, UNIS, whose mission will be to reflect the diversity of the entire Canadian francophonie, and which will devote at least 75% of its programming to Canadian programs that are conceived, created and produced by Canadian Francophones.
Together, TV5 and UNIS will comprise Nouveau TV5, which is seeking mandatory distribution on cable and satellite providers’ basic service. Nouveau TV5 will be retransmitted in two separate time zones in eastern and western Canada, and will provide unique and high quality original French-language programming aimed at building bridges between all of Canada’s Francophones and creating solidarity with Francophones elsewhere in the world.
The CRTC has extended the deadline for supporting the initiative to February 27. Already more than 4000 people have expressed their support by logging on to www.NouveauTV5.ca says TV5.
“Together, the two channels will provide six times more Canadian content than the current TV5, and this content will be sourced from all of Canada’s Francophone communities,” said Suzanne Gouin, CEO of TV5 Québec Canada.
Gouin noted that the new programming, provided at a wholesale rate of less than one cent per day, will unite Francophones and francophiles and enable Francophone communities to communicate with each other, with other Canadians, and with the world.
In addition, Nouveau TV5 commits to devoting nearly $170 million over seven years to spending on Canadian programming, and at least 75% of that spending on original Canadian programming, all of which will be independently produced, for a total of more than $125 million. Most of these expenditures on original Canadian programming will be devoted to programs produced outside of Montréal and the province of Quebec. In order to better reflect its motto Partout: pour nous (Everywhere: for us), and at the request of Francophones, Nouveau TV5 pledges to open regional offices in the Atlantic Provinces, the Prairies and British Columbia, in its first year of operation.
