Sun's idea of "news" a joke, but will the CRTC care?

I see that Quebecor/aka Sun newspaper chain isn't toning down its slanted "reporting" about CBC just because it's trying to get a license to compete with it in 24/7 news.

Check out this "news" story from Althia Raj , the Sun reporter who seems to be assigned the job of taking the Quebecor party line in these must-do anti-CBC pieces.

She writes: "CBC received almost 900 complaints from 2007 to 2010".

What Raj means is that 900 Access to Information requests were filed about the CBC in those three years. A big difference. Access to Information requests are routinely filed by reporters or citizens in order to get information from public corporations. They are not "grievances" which Raj also calls them.

Two paragraphs later, we learn that most of the requests were filed "on behalf of QMI Agency". That's Quebec Media Inc., Quebecor's own newsservice (Raj's employer), which Raj never points out.

In other words, this story is really about the fact that Quebecor filed hundreds of Access to Information requests about its competitor, the CBC. And it did so by abusing a process that's about making public corporations more transparent. The Access to Information process is NOT designed to be used by companies to get information to use as a competitive weapon.

You can count on more of this type of "news" on the 24/7 Sun TV News channel too. Wonder if the CRTC considers this type of "news" worthy of a must-carry cable designation?

Is Fox News North counting on a sweet deal from the CRTC?

It's good to see real questions being asked about Quebecor's new "straight talk" all-news channel. Forget whether we need another right-wing voice or not. Forget whether it's appropriate that the former communications director to Stephen Harper is the guy in charge.

People are rightly asking whether Pierre-Karl Peladeau is banking on a special deal from the CRTC that would allow him to convert his unsuccessful over-the-air channel in Toronto to a lucrative three-year "category one" specialty channel license.

That's the license that would force cable operators to carry the channel. And that "must carry" designation is big bucks. Automatic carriage fees can range between 15 cents and 65 cents per month per subscriber. That's steady income, steady enough that selling ads isn't so important.

There's no precedent for such a request at the CRTC, and the Commission says that to be ruled a "must carry" a service has to demonstrate "exceptional importance" to Canadians.

Surprise. Surprise. It looks like Quebecor is counting on being ruled "exceptional", judging by the excellent interview CBC's Kathleen Petty did with Kory Tenycke, Quebecor Media's VP for development. Love the way she doesn't back down . And how it exposes Tenycke's lack of a back-up plan and his disdain for Canadians and their ability to understand CRTC regulatory lingo.

I can tell you this: Canadians may not know the difference between a cat 1 and a cat 2 license digital TV license, but they know when there's one set of rules for us, and another set for people who used to work for the prime minister and whose boss happens to be a close friend of a former prime minister. And they know when something stinks.

Quite apart from the discussion about whether this network is "Fox News North" or not, what we should really be watching for is whether the CRTC degrades itself and defies its own directive to give yet another sweet deal to powerful friends.

If you care about this, check out the media reform group, OpenMedia.ca. It's all about making sure independent media and solid information survive in this age of punditry and spin.

Community TV should be supported - now more than ever

I love the headline of the piece in support of community TV in rabble.ca -- titled "Community TV blamed for cable cash crunch". The story is a great read -- the story of Big Cable maximizing profits at the expense of their own stations, and of course, dodging any kind of criticism along the way.

Today's the deadline for submission of comments for an important set of CRTC hearings on community TV.

The hearings aren't getting alot of attention, but people in the industry know what's at stake. Once a place of dynamic innovation and divergent points of view, community TV stations are not what they should be. They could and should be a place for real local news. They could and should be a more effective training ground, especially if the stations were linked in some way, with any of the provincial public broadcasters or the CBC.

A group named CACTUS, which stands for the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations, is trying to improve regulations, funding and bandwidth for these stations. We at the Canadian Media Guild are supporting their efforts. The hearings begin April 26 in Gatineau.

The fight to save local news is on

People are fighting back to save their local news.

First, the employees and community of Hamilton got together in a move to buy CHCH in the Canwest firesale and return it to local ownership. It's a wonderful effort I'll write much more about later.

Now at least one city council is stepping up to sound the alarm. Not surprisingly, it's Windsor, which knows what it's like to lose a station (CBC in 1991 -- it returned in 1994). Now it's losing CTV's A Channel at the end of August. And because of the government-CBC budget dispute, there’s concern about the future of the CBC in Windsor too.

Last night, Windsor City Council adopted a resolution that calls on Council and the Mayor to petition the CRTC and the government to do a comprehensive review of the crisis in conventional TV and do what it takes to focus on policies that will guarantee Canadian media content in markets such as Windsor.

Here’s what it says:

Whereas the citizens of Windsor and Essex County want and deserve a strong local and Canadian television presence; and
Whereas Windsor-Essex is located with 1000 yards of a major American media shadow; and
Whereas Windsor-Essex is a unique region with regards to the impact of local issues and how they have profound provincial and national impact in areas such as the U.S. Canadian border, International Trade and the Auto Industry, to name a few; and
Whereas the CRTC has announced that later this year a review of the crisis in conventional television will take place;
Therefore, be it resolved that Council and the Mayor, for the City of Windsor, Ontario, petition the CRTC and the Government of Canada to undertake the following:

Without further delay, immediately commence a comprehensive review of the crisis in conventional television; and
That this review look at all policy framework with the intent of creating new, and/or enhancing existing policies in order to guarantee Canadian media content in unique markets such as Windsor-Essex, by way of special designations, recognizing the close proximity of major U.S. media; and
During this review, interim measures be immediately instituted in order to protect markets such as Windsor-Essex, and any other media markets, currently at risk of not having their broadcast license renewed by the current license holders.

Percy Hatfield, a former CBC Windsor reporter, is now a Windsor councillor and just happens to be at a meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities this week. Let’s hope he spreads his Windsor zeal to every community in this country.

Breaking news: the sky is falling

Timing is everything, and don’t the networks know it. Can it be a coincidence that Canwest and CTV have chosen the same few days to complain about losing so much money that massive job cuts are absolutely the only way out? In today’s roundup of announcements, CTV says it’s cutting 118 jobs in its A Channel newsrooms in Ottawa, London and Barrie, in addition to closing stations in Windsor and Wingham, Ontario (announced last week).

This happens to be the very day the CRTC planned to go public with the networks’ various license applications – the submissions in which they tell Canadians what they intend to do in exchange for access to our public airwaves. This is when all the pre-CRTC hearing lobbying begins. What better way to make your case that you need new relaxed rules than to eliminate service to the public and lay people off?

Only last Friday, CTV’s chief executive officer Ivan Fecan said the company would at least try to make a go of it with the A Channels. “We’re merely trying to keep the As open until regulatory restructuring for the entire sector can take place. While we welcome the new, year-long CRTC process and while we can’t guarantee the survival of the As until that time, together we will do our best.”

What changed in three days? Perhaps a peak at other broadcasters’ filings? Why do more than your competitors? A cursory read of the hundreds of pages that we all have to read in less than a month is eyeopening.

For example, we learned today that even though Canwest is abandoning at least five local markets, it wants more breaks. It wants to do fewer hours of local television on the stations it decides are profitable enough to keep. And it wants permission from the CRTC to be able to continue to do simultaneous substitution of lucrative U.S. shows (of course!) and get “priority carriage” on cable and satellite…but it doesn’t want to have to bother actually being a broadcaster. It’s asking for these privileges even if it doesn’t send out its signal free over-the-air – just directly to cable and satellite.

Not only is this an attack on local television, it’s an attack on free television. Oh, and did we remind you how horrible it is for conventional broadcasters right now? We trust the CRTC will demand to see those numbers, station by station, and release them to the public.

The failed local TV experiment and why it shouldn't be used to change the rules

By guest blogger karenatcmg

Le Devoir reported this week that Quebec private TV network TQS is cancelling the last of the three magazine-style (read: cheap and cheerful) shows launched after the new owners canned local news last summer. The report says ratings were hardly registering for morning show Deux Laits, Un Sucre. Turns out the weekend evening news that TQS buys from an outside company is pulling a respectable 223,000 or so. So guess what? The network’s owners are looking to get back into early evening news on weekdays.

Let’s just hope it’s not too late to make sure the failed experiment, green-lighted by the CRTC last year, doesn’t come back to haunt us during the round of TV licence renewals coming in April. That’s what Commissioner Michel Morin feared when he dissented on the decision to give TQS what it wanted. [Scroll down to find Morin’s dissenting opinion.]

We have good reason to be fearful. After all, CTVglobemedia and Canwest are upping the ante ahead of those renewals by threatening to let their small market stations die.

CTV announced yesterday it wants to dump CKX-TV in Brandon, which has the only local TV news broadcast in the area. If CTV doesn’t find a buyer, the company will simply let the station go dark. CBC, which has an affiliation agreement with CKX until August 31, has already turned down the opportunity to buy it. Whether the station survives or not, it looks like local viewers will have to pay for cable or satellite to watch their public broadcaster starting in September.

Some analyst told The Canadian Press that small market TV stations “are costly to run and maintain and were having difficulty providing a decent return on investment even in good times."

Define decent. Apparently nobody but the networks themselves and (perhaps) the CRTC actually knows how individual TV stations are really doing. Have a read of the latest Canwest Global Communications earnings reports and you get the idea the newspaper and TV operations are doing ok. It’s the debt and the foreign exchange losses that are killing them. And yet four Canwest small market stations are also facing extinction in Hamilton, Red Deer, Kelowna and Victoria.

For the local viewers of any station that’s threatened, you’ve got to wonder if a small return on investment – or simply the ability to cover costs and pay decent wages – works just fine if it means putting some quality local news on the air.

And don’t worry … Lise will return.

Slowly, quietly, behind closed doors

In the last few days, my worst suspicions were confirmed about how the Canadian TV industry is dealing with the move to digital: slowly, quietly and behind closed doors. It’s almost as if there is stuff they don’t what us to know.

The CRTC set a date of August 31, 2011 to shut off analogue TV transmitters that provide free, over-the-air TV signals. As the deadline looms, it is less and less clear whether Canadians will still have free TV in a couple of years.

As I’ve mentioned before, broadcasters seem to be doing everything they can to miss the boat on free, over-the-air digital TV in Canada – unlike their counterparts in the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world. The U.S. is poised to go fully digital in June and TV viewers with the right equipment can already pick up dozens of channels for free in U.S. cities as broadcasters use the additional capacity of the digital transmitters to create multiple free channels using a single frequency. [It’s called multiplexing and you can find out a bit more about it here; and check here to find out how multiplexing is being used in the UK to provide lots of free, over-the-air TV.]

Because we’re one of the only organizations paying attention to this issue in this country, we thought it might be a good idea to meet with CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein to talk about how the transition will affect regular viewers and access to Canadian programming. We wanted to suggest a broad transition working group that could both represent the interests of viewers (and not just the industry), and also figure out how best communicate the coming changes to them. After all, even industry watchers seem to think the only problem in Canada is the lack of a program to provide coupons for digital converter boxes for people with analogue TV sets. [If there’s no digital transmission, there’s no need for a converter box to pick up the non-existent signals.]

No dice on the meeting.

We’ve found out that there is a working group on the digital TV transition, apparently working under the auspices of the CRTC, and that it will issue a report in the next few weeks. Who’s in the group? Only the broadcasters, the ones that Konrad worried last June “might not be ready” for the transition.

Yesterday, we got a nice letter from Konrad, blowing off our request for a meeting. He thanked us in advance for our participation in the public hearing scheduled to begin April 27 that will deal with the broadcasters’ report on digital TV, among other (equally important) issues, such as how much local programming the broadcasters will have to provide. So we’re limited to ten minutes of face time with CRTC commissioners to raise a unique perspective of public interest. Meanwhile, broadcasters have been holding private meetings with the commission for months.

I expect the broadcasters’ report to confirm our worst fears about the digital transition in Canada: they will want to bypass it and leave us with no alternative to buy increasingly pricey cable and satellite subscriptions to watch television.

But no matter what the report says, the CRTC will not make decisions on the broadcasters’ plans for the digital transition until after a full licence renewal hearing in the spring of 2010, barely one year before the planned shut-off of analogue transmitters. Not exactly the kind of timing that instills confidence in the regulator’s commitment to free, over-the-air TV.

When the time comes (around the middle of March), we will be sure to let you know where to send your comments to the CRTC on this vital issue.

Railroaded?

The CRTC said today it would issue one-year licence renewals to permit hearings in 2010 on how television broadcasters serve Canadians.

The announcement poses an immediate threat to local programming in Canada and should raise fears across the country about the future of free, over-the-air television after the conversion to digital delivery in 2011.

Broadcasters have had an unprecedented number of closed-door meetings with the CRTC. This fast-tracking of the process is going to circumvent real discussion about the future of local programming and over-the-air television. Broadcasters have been using a weak economy to seek permanent changes to their licence obligations.

The Guild wants the CRTC to guarantee that it will seek the widest possible input before making major permanent changes to the way broadcasters serve the public.

What are we, chopped liver?

Seems reports are surfacing that the CRTC has been very busy over the past months meeting with private broadcasters …just when those same private broadcasters want to back out of doing things like local news, blaming economic woes.

As we know, it looks like all the meetings paid off. On Friday, the CRTC announced that it will “review the scope” of the upcoming license hearings, the ones in which the broadcasters are accountable to the public through the CRTC every seven years or so.

Can’t help but note that during the same time the private broadcasters were lobbying extensively to get out of pesky things like local news and ensuring Canadians get free (over-the-air) TV after the digital conversion in 2011, our December letter seeking a meeting with the CRTC chair never even got a reply.

Maybe he’ll read it here. Here’s most of what I wrote to CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein last December 22:

I am writing to request a meeting with you concerning the transition to digital TV in Canada. As you may be aware, the Canadian Media Guild has taken a keen interest in the transition, particularly from the point of view of maintaining free, over-the-air TV in communities across Canada after 2011.

We have commissioned research on cost-effective options for implementing digital over-the-air TV in smaller markets, through the sharing of transmitters and the use of digital multiplexing, which allows for the transmission of more than one channel on a single transmitter and frequency. This option is much less expensive than many of the cost projections associated with the digital conversion. We shared this research with a group of CRTC staff last August. We plan to put this research on the public record ahead of the private broadcasting licence renewal hearings in April.

We are concerned about the way the transition is going - or not going - in Canada. We wonder if a broad industry and stakeholder group should be formed as soon as possible to steer the transition in Canada and to make sure that Canadians know what is happening. Our experience is that many, many people - even those who work in the industry - are very poorly informed about the transition and what it means to them as TV viewers. Some of this will be cleared up in the coming months thanks to increased communication from the U.S. in advance of their February shut off date. However, that will not provide any answers about what will happen in Canada in 2011.

That question is the subject of considerable mystery, even to people who follow the issue very closely. It appears to us that the local broadcasters are skirting the question.

As you may know, the Guild represents about 5,000 media workers – many at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It was in our work representing the interests of transmission technicians that we stumbled upon the multiplexing research and we realized very quickly how it could turn the digital transition into something truly exciting for smaller communities.

As it stands now, because the CMG has information on the transition on our website, we receive about one inquiry a week from Canadians in small communities wondering how the conversion will affect them and whether they need a digital converter box. While we try to answer as best we can, we are probably not the best ones to be providing information to Canadians.

We understand that you have taken a direct interest in this issue and we submit that a meeting soon in the new year might provide an opportunity to exchange ideas and allow us to do our work more productively.

Still waiting for a reply from Mr. von Finckenstein…