OTTAWA – Two representatives from Rogers Communications appeared (virtually) before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage today to reassure committee members local news will not be worse off after Rogers merges with Shaw.
As Cartt.ca previously reported, there were concerns expressed during the CRTC’s recent hearing on the proposed merger about Rogers’s plan to redirect funding Shaw has previously allocated to Corus’s Global stations to its own City TV stations.
Colette Watson (above), president of Rogers Sports and Media, told the committee the deal will enhance City TV’s local news services.
“Our City TV news stations are located in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, and those markets do news today, they will continue to do news post-transaction, and those newscasts will be enhanced,” Watson said. “We will add an Indigenous component, we will add 23 more reporters and we will add two reporters to the parliamentary bureau from Western Canada in order to bring a western Canadian perspective to national reporting.”
Conservative committee member Kevin Waugh, however, listed some of the markets served by Global News including Lethbridge, Kelowna and Regina. Rogers is claiming to put a lot of money into news, he said, “but you’re not in those markets, you’ve cherry picked the Vancouvers, the Calgarys, the big cities, and you’re not putting a dime into the middle markets that will really feel the effect of this merger of Shaw to Rogers.”
“Rogers’s City TV stations are not in those markets,” Watson replied. “Global News has obligations, regulatory obligations, to provide locally reflective and locally relevant news in each of the markets you just listed and that will not change as part of this transaction.”
Liberal committee member Lisa Hepfner pointed out Global is expected to look for funding from the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF), which it will newly be eligible for, to make up for the $13 million it will lose if the merger is approved, which will in turn affect smaller stations. She asked the Rogers representatives to reflect on this.
“We have no way of knowing today, because there were no parameters put around that, that Global took that $13 million and made incremental news, we have no proof of that,” Watson said in response. “What we’re saying is we’ll take the $13 million and prove to you how we’ll spend it.”
Pamela Dinsmore, vice-president, regulatory cable at Rogers, added that Rogers does acknowledge Corus will become eligible for the ILNF after the deal goes through, but argued the problem that creates is bigger than the Rogers/Shaw merger. Instead, she said it is for the CRTC to look into separately and to decide if the structure of the ILNF should be changed to account for Corus becoming eligible to receive funding from it.
Later during the meeting, Watson and Dinsmore were given an opportunity to talk about how more broadcast news production can be incentivized.
They talked about an amendment to Bill C-11, which would allow Canadian programming expenditures to be allocated to local news.
Watson said they are proposing an amendment that “would allow those monies to be redirected from within the pool of money that we are obliged to commit to the Canadian broadcasting system.”
Dinsmore further explained they would like to see “a category that would allow us to spend our Canadian programming expenses on local news and programming that doesn’t exist today.”
Representatives from the CRTC and Bell were also scheduled to appear at today’s meeting, however the meeting started late and the committee only heard from Rogers.
