LAVAL – CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais stressed the idea of “citizenship obligations” as he concluded a hearing Thursday into licence renewals for major French-language private television broadcasters.
Questioning Corus Entertainment, Bell Media, Groupe V Média and Quebecor Media as they presented replies to interveners, he asked each of them about how they could better serve indigenous and minority-language producers and viewers, and their commitments to closed captioning. The latter led to an awkward moment as Blais admonished V’s representatives.
“I was preoccupied Tuesday when I asked questions about subtitles to TVA and I heard laughs from your group in the audience,” Blais said.
A humbled V president Maxime Rémillard apologized.
Generally, the broadcasters said they welcome pitches for projects from any group from any region, and expressed a willingness to build better bridges with francophones outside Montreal, outside Quebec and with indigenous people across the country. They also said they were ready to work with a group representing Quebecers with hearing impairments to improve standards for closed captioning.
Blais suggested that they should do so without waiting for CRTC intervention. “It would be unfortunate if we sent you a letter in a month to ask where you are and you come back to us and say you’ve done nothing,” Blais said.
“Message well received,” responded Gerry Frappier, head of Bell Media’s French services (pictured).
The Commission is considering giving a regulatory incentive for having French-language productions outside Montreal, by allowing those productions to count extra toward fulfilling Canadian programming expenditure obligations. Quebecor agreed with the proposal, even as it maintained that it exceeds its CPE obligations already and additional measures are not necessary.
V was highly critical of interveners’ recommendations for levels of CPE based on previous years’ spending. “The worrisome erosion of our conventional television stations’ revenues means we can no longer rely on the results of the past to establish conditions of licence to apply for future years,” Rémillard said. He added that the Association québécoise de la production médiatique’s recommendations of CPE and programs of national interest levels higher than those of Bell Media make no sense, since Bell’s French-language services are discretionary channels with both subscription and advertising income (and are highly profitable), while V’s free conventional network represents 70 per cent of its income, and the group expects to continue to lose money over the next five years.
The Commission also threw out the idea that “direct” expenses related to connecting with minority communities, if it results in a concrete project, could count toward CPE quotas.
Bell did not seem impressed by that. “Dollars, we’d like to have them on screen as much as possible,” said Dany Meloul, vice-president of French-language TV programming.
Commissioner Yves Dupras questioned Quebecor on accusations made by TVA’s unions the previous day, particularly those related to Quebec City, that half their local newscasts were not local and that on weekends there are only one or two journalists working. TVA Nouvelles vice-president Serge Fortin said there are indeed fewer journalists on the weekend, and the Quebec City local newscast does present news from outside the city in an effort to be “complete”, but denied that half the newscast is not local. Quebecor said it would be difficult to divvy up newscasts to count how many minutes of local reflection the station produces on a weekly basis.
“Our coverage of the local (Quebec City) market is excellent, our local reflection is important. Quebec is an important francophone market,” Fortin said.
Applicants have until Dec. 2 to file responses to questions asked during the hearing. Interveners will be able to reply to new information by Dec. 9, and final replies are due Dec. 16.
The hearing into English-language television licence renewals began Monday in Gatineau.
Photo by Steve Faguy
