By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – On April 21, 2021, Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC) filed an application with the CRTC proposing to stabilize the funding of the Broadcasting Participation Fund (BPF) but as of today, May 26th, the CRTC has not yet posted the Part I application to its website, therefore a process has not yet been initiated.
“Time is of the essence in this matter, as the Broadcasting Participation Fund (BPF) faces potential revenue shortfalls and exhaustion, in part due to the paucity of tangible benefits orders resulting from media mergers,” argued PIAC and FRPC in a procedural request.
The BPF was created in 2011 to help pay for public interest groups’ participation in broadcasting proceedings – and it has been dependent on tangible benefits that have been paid by broadcasting companies as part of acquisition proposals. Tangible benefits are paid based on 10% of a regulated media entity’s purchased value. $520 million had been collected over the last decade from three major transactions (BCE acquisition of CTV, in 2011, of Astral, in 2013 and Sirius XM acquisition of Sirius FM, in 2018) and the BPF received a small portion of that money.
Bill C-10, a legislation to modernize the Broadcasting Act, “proposes to give the CRTC the authority to make regulations about the expenditures made by broadcasters to support participation in CRTC proceedings by individuals, groups or organizations representing the public interest.” Of course, that bill has not yet been passed.
So, in the meantime, certain major proceedings have occurred, are occurring or are expected to occur, in 2021 and 2022: CBC’s renewal hearing, which took place in early 2021, the revision of the commercial radio policy, the proceeding on accessibility, the new Indigenous broadcasting policy and television’s large ownership groups renewal, in 2022.
Various suggestions were included in the PIAC and FRPC application, such as changing regulation to allow benefits to be drawn from transactions in radio and BDUs (Shaw-Rogers comes to mind) as well as having a small portion of the annual contributions from the BDUs channelled to the BPF.
“We alert the Commission that if the Application is not posted within one week of this letter, FRPC-PIAC shall consider an application to the Federal Court of Canada for an order in the nature of mandamus to require the Commission to post our duly filed Part 1 Application,” concludes the procedural request.
The CRTC acknowledge having received the application but declined to comment at this time.
