By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – Quebecor is asking the CRTC to provide immediate relaxation of regulatory rules that require it to provide a specific amount of local programming or else it must make “difficult choices” related to TVA’s programming.
A CRTC licence renewal decision from 2017 and extended last year until August 2024 requires the TVA station CFCM-DT Quebec broadcast 18 hours of local programming per week, while requiring fewer hours in the region for other stations including CBC/Radio-Canada. Quebecor said these comparatively “unfair” requirements are strangling it, despite saying it is producing more hours than is mandated of it.
“Faced with this worrying financial situation, TVA Group must also make difficult choices regarding the programming of its network and of certain of its stations in order to ensure their sustainability while preserving the diversity and high quality of the programming that it broadcasts for the benefit of the French-speaking Canadian public, particularly in the National Capital region,” the company said in a Part 1 application dated Friday.
“TVA Group thus intends to review the local programming and news offering for its station CFCM-DT Quebec,” it said, adding this same obligation has been imposed and renewed upon it since 2009.
Quebecor is requesting that the CRTC to immediately reduce this obligation by two hours to at least 16 hours of local programming per week.
It is also asking the commission to nix the requirement that it produce two newscasts during the weekend and at least 5.5 hours of newscasts produced in Quebec and amend it to require nine hours of programming reflecting Quebec that can be broadcast on TVA, plus at least 5 hours and 30 minutes of news bulletins produced in the province.
Finally, it is requesting the CRTC amend the requirement that it produce at least 3.5 hours of other programs reflecting Quebec on TVA to say that it produce at least 3.5 hours of locally reflective news during each broadcast week.
Quebecor said this type of flexibility is needed in the competitive environment it operates in. The company said its subsidiary has seen a “significant drop in its revenues” and a “marked decline in its audience,” while facing “fierce competition” from deregulated online services as well as the public broadcaster, which it notes receives government funding.
“We submit that the repeated renewal of this obligation by the CRTC without regard to [COL) imposed on competitors, has created a situation of significant regulatory inequity, unjustifiable in the current competitive and economic context, which puts traditional television services at a disadvantage,” Quebecor said.
In an op-ed earlier this month, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau urged Cabinet to bring attention to the fate of private broadcasters when it crafts its policy directive to the CRTC on the implementation of bill C-11, which will force online broadcasters to contribute to the Canadian content ecosystem.
Photo of Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau.
