TORONTO – Unsurprisingly, two of Canada’s media unions said today they oppose the deal announced yesterday to sell Alliance Atlantis to a partnership of U.S. investment banker Goldman Sachs and Canadian broadcaster CanWest Global Communications.
The Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union, Canada’s largest media union plans to mount a "vigorous" fight to stop the CanWest/Goldman Sachs purchase of Alliance Atlantis.
"This is the thin edge of the wedge to the ceding of Canadian cultural institutions to American investment. We are demanding that the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission and Heritage Minister Bev Oda order public hearings into this proposed deal," said Peter Murdoch, media vice-president of the 150,000 member CEP Canada.
"CEP will be present at every step of the regulatory and political process. We will put whatever resources are required to vigorously oppose this sale," added Union president Dave Coles. "At stake is nothing less than the cultural sovereignty of Canada."
CEP is worried about three things:
* The question of whether this deal cedes effective control of a significant section of Canadian broadcasting to American interests contrary to existing regulations. (CanWest CEO Leonard Asper said yesterday it won’t.)
* The increased concentration of media ownership in Canada.
* The fact that the only way CanWest and Canadian interests can benefit from this deal is if the new company makes healthy profits. "CanWest’s track record is not in developing solid programming in order to attract revenue but rather in cost cutting and buying cheap," says the CEP release.
"Fundamentally, this entire deal smacks of a Wal-Mart approach to culture which will threaten the creativity developed by Alliance Atlantis over the years," said Murdoch.
Left unsaid, as always, is what to do then with a large media company when the owner chooses to sell. AA’s owners can’t be forced to keep it, nor sell to someone they’d rather not.
"AAC has been a major success story in both broadcasting and the creation of programming, owning a share of the CSI franchise it developed along with CBS. It has some of the most successful specialty stations as well, including the popular HGTV, The Food Channel and Showcase, all major venues for Canadian producers and performers," adds a release from the Canadian Media Guild.
"Besides the obvious increase in concentration, and the possible impacts on advertisers, employees and the producers of content, there is an additional element of foreign ownership to this deal that would appear, at least on the surface, to violate current regulations," adds the Guild’s release. CMG represents some of AA’s technical staff.
CMG decried the impact mega-media companies have on employees and viewers and how media companies rarely report on their own moves. "Media companies themselves report far too little on the realities of media consolidation. They have been granted regulatory and financial support in Canada in exchange for providing Canadians with news and information on the issues that affect them. But when it comes to sustained coverage of media issues in Canada, our media outlets are virtually silent," says the release.
In defense of CanWest Global however, its flagship paper, The National Post, it carried the news spread across its front page today, even above U.S. president George Bush’s announcement of more troops for Iraq. It also picked apart the deal in the Financial Post section.
The Guild also took its swipes at the current government, too. "The minority Conservative government has gone out of its way to say nothing of substance on its plans for the media industry in Canada. Those of us still trying to follow these issues have been left trying to read tea leaves."
Er, this was an issue with the prior Liberal government, too.
"The Conservative government dismissed a report from a Senate committee that called for significant regulatory and policy changes to protect the diversity of news in the country in an era of media mergers and convergence. Instead, the government has embraced deregulation in the telecommunications industry, and some MPs have suggested during parliamentary debates that rules requiring broadcasters to produce and air Canadian content should also be eased," says the release.
