Newspaper ad targets Heritage Minister
MONTREAL – Avis de recherche, the Quebec TV channel devoted to public safety, is off the air. Its studios are empty, and its staff that reached 20 people at its peak were all laid off after the three major providers in the province, Vidéotron, Cogeco and Bell, dropped it at the end of April.
That hasn't stopped owner Vincent Géracitano from continuing his crusade to find some deus ex machina to bring it back. With appeals to the CRTC and federal court exhausted, he's gone to publicly appealing to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly directly, and his tactics are getting bitter.
An ad this week in the Hill Times newspaper (a paper very widely circulated on Parliament Hill) shows Joly's face with "nice selfie" followed by pictures of 20 missing women and asking why she's not "stepping in to keep the public safety channel ADR-TV on the air." (pictured)
ADR, which broadcast notices of missing and wanted people, as well as public safety messages from local emergency services, launched in 2004 and from 2007 to 2015 was a mandatory service, getting six cents a month from every television subscriber in Quebec. In 2013, the CRTC refused to renew ADR's mandatory status, in part because new online technology is "more effective and efficient" than a linear TV channel, and it could find no "concrete success indicators" that ADR actually results in increased public safety.
Géracitano disputes both these points, and has the backing of police departments and municipal and provincial government officials, none of whom want to put up the money necessary to keep the channel alive.
Former CRTC commissioners Michel Morin and Michel Arpin have also called for the decision to be reversed
But Géracitano's attempts have so far been in vain. His request to the CRTC to review the decision was denied. A request for an injunction at the federal court was denied. Complaints to the CRTC about its carriage agreements with Bell and Videotron were dismissed. Appeals to the federal cabinet and to Joly personally have proved fruitless.
Joly's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on ADR's advertisement, but when asked about the channel in the House of Commons, Joly said she respects the "sole authority" of the CRTC to make determinations for mandatory distribution. "From what I understand, ADR still has its licence and can therefore develop the full potential of its licence," she said on April 22.
The commission gave ADR two years from its 2013 decision to find a new business model. But Géracitano said that was impossible. Police departments have no money to contribute to this service, advertisers don't want to be associated with pictures of criminals on a channel few people watch, and no alternative source of funding has presented itself.
After the mandatory distribution order expired on Aug. 31, 2015, providers moved quickly to drop the channel and its six-cents-a-month fee. Géracitano said none of the three major providers offered to keep the channel as a discretionary service, which might have allowed those who cared about it to keep funding it. In a statement to Cartt.ca, Vidéotron said it did, in fact, offer to carry ADR in a discretionary tier, but "the discussions toward this did not allow us to come to an agreement."
So Géracitano, who mortgaged his home and his parents' home to start ADR, is running out of options. Asked if there are other measures he may take, he said only: "We’ll see.” In the meantime, his attacks on Joly are getting more intense.
"Maybe the minister should occasionally pull herself away from those self-photo-ops and deal with the sad realities out there," he wrote in an email to Cartt.ca. "There are over 50,000 kids reported missing in Canada each year."
