GATINEAU – Access Communications Co-operative told the CRTC Wednesday while it’s not opposed to the establishment of a local news fund, it shouldn’t mean cuts to community channel funding.
Speaking at the commission’s local and community TV hearing on Wednesday, Carmela Haines, VP of finance and administration for the cableco co-op which serves Regina and many other small communities in Saskatchewan, noted funding reductions to its community channels “would have a serious impact” to the communities it serves. Besides, Access shouldn’t be providing funds to the vertically integrated (VI) broadcasters.
“A not-for-profit, community-owned co-operative should not be giving a subsidy to VI companies like Bell and Shaw,” she argued in her opening remarks. “That was the flaw in the LPIF (the local programming improvement fund). We think it was unfair to require Access Communications, a not-for-profit, community-owned co-operative, to fund Canada’s largest for-profit communications companies.”
Under questioning from BC and Yukon commissioner Stephen Simpson, Jim Deane, president and CEO of Access (pictured), quantified the financial impact of the LPIF on the company as significant.
“Our contributions, while very small in the large scheme of things, had a significant impact on us. The LPIF represented a third of our average earnings over the last five years and a quarter of our spend on community programming,” he stated.
The co-op also said that it’s ready to fill in the gap if TV local news runs into harder times. “I imagine if there is a dearth of local news in a community and there's a need from the community itself we would naturally respond to that as we have with other interests expressed by the community itself,” said Deane.
Access noted in its opening remarks that if additional funding is needed to support community programming, one possible option is to open the door for advertising on these channels. “We are hopeful that it potentially could ensure that small market community channels have some additional funding to perhaps produce more local programming,” said Haines.
The last day of the hearing also saw the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) offer its view that local TV, including community channels, should be airing amateur sports to a much greater degree. Flanked by three time Olympian and short track speed skating medalist Isabelle Charest and Matthew Bond-Lapointe, former University of Ottawa football player, COC president and CEO Chris Overholt, argued that sports is a critical part of local news and that any changes to the regulatory environment shouldn’t impede broadcasters from covering local amateur sports.
Community channels, he added, are complementary to over-the-air stations, but said they too have a role in covering amateur sports (and a great many do). “In markets with no over-the-air stations, for the purposes of accessing funding, the COC feels the community channels should have a definition of news and information programming that emphatically includes sports,” said Overholt.
One of the final interveners to present at the hearing was FirstTel Communications, a 100% aboriginal-owned company that operates a community channel, FirstTelTV5 which is available to Eastlink subscribers in the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory located on the eastern end of Manitoulin Island. It produces 40% of its programming in the Ojibway/Odawa language – and said if it had access to additional funding that could increase to 60%.
However, because the cable system has fewer than 2,000 subscribers, Eastlink isn’t required to contribute to the community channel.
“We are grateful for the infrastructure that was built there 26 years ago, but they have contributed nothing but the occasional cable service call to our community since,” said Anne Marie Sandford, communication business manager at FirstTel.
The company threw its support behind the CACTUS’ proposal that all BDUs contribute 2% of their revenue to a community access fund.
An intervenor earlier in the day also cautioned the Commission on assuming that just because everyone with a smart phone and access to YouTube can make whatever videos they like and post them, that doesn’t mean everyone’s voice can actually be heard.
“A current myth being used to downgrade the importance of community television… is the idea that the Internet replaces traditional distribution channels – that with cheap cameras and YouTube, everybody’s voice can now be heard,” said Emilia Zboralska, of the non-profit group Independent Web Series Creators of Canada.
“In fact, open digital distribution platforms such as YouTube suffer from the digital noise phenomenon where a vast amount of content that is readily available is unknown to most viewers. Commercial entities are able to purchase exposure on high traffic sites, making it increasingly difficult for audiences to locate independent content.”
Final written submissions for this proceeding are due February 16th. The CRTC likely will have a decision on it sometime in May.
