GATINEAU – Rogers has been left quite a regulatory pile of laundry to sort through with its license renewals announced Thursday. And, the company was told "no" a lot.
The CRTC has renewed the licences of most Rogers-owned television services until 2016, but though it’s a short-term renewal (at Rogers’ request, so it lines up with the licence terms of the other major English-language broadcasters), the decision makes a lot of changes to how Rogers will operate, particularly in light of its $5.2-billion deal for rights to National Hockey League games.
The biggest change in the decision is that Rogers’s services will be part of a designated group, allowing City and some specialty channels to share Canadian programming expenditure requirements, similar to the way Bell Media and Shaw Media operate. Included in the group are most City stations, The Biography Channel, G4TechTV, Outdoor Life Network and Sportsnet 360. Excluded are FX and FXX Canada, Sportsnet World, the regional Sportsnet channels, OMNI stations and City Saskatchewan.
Following concerns that including Sportsnet 360 in the group might cause Rogers to redirect spending to sports programming to the detriment of entertainment channels, the CRTC accepted a proposal from Rogers to file annual confidential reports outlining how it attributes revenues and expenses for NHL programming, and specifically audit that allocation to ensure it is done according to an established methodology. Any problems can be addressed in two years when the licences are up for renewal.
The Canadian programming expenditure level for the group was set at 30% of revenues, which will see specialty services remain at their current levels and increasing City’s CPE from 23 to 25%. Rogers also agreed to a requirement to spend 5% of gross revenues on programs of national interest (scripted dramas and comedies, long-form documentaries and award shows), consistent with other groups.
The other issue related to Rogers’s NHL plans concerns Hockey Night in Canada on CBC on Saturday nights. Under the deal, the CBC will air HNIC, but Rogers will assume most expenses, collect all revenues and exert editorial control. The Commission found that this constituted a de facto network and so requires a network licence so it knows who is responsible for the programming. It directed Rogers to file an application for a network licence by August 15.
The Commission also decided, in light of the NHL rights acquisition, to impose its vertical integration code of conduct on Rogers as a condition of licence, as it did to BCE and Corus after their acquisition of assets from Astral Media.
As part of their licence renewals, the CRTC also imposed new local programming requirements on both City and OMNI. After noting that Rogers planned “significant spending reductions” on news programming next year, the commission said it would require the 14 hours a week of local programming on City stations in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, and the 7 hours a week on City Winnipeg, be original (i.e. not previously aired on that station or any other licensed service). For stations outside of Toronto, local programming consists of the three-hour morning show Breakfast Television and currently meets the requirement. City Montreal, acquired from Channel Zero in 2013, retains its requirement of 15.5 hours a week of original local programming.
Furthermore, Rogers promised not to count any professional sports programs as part of its local programming requirement.
A separate condition of licence imposed in 2011 requiring new incremental expenditures on local programming was eliminated.
For OMNI stations, Rogers made several licence amendment requests. Most were denied:
– Lower the number of ethnic groups served from 20 to 15.
– Increase the maximum time given to any individual foreign language from 16% of the broadcast week to 30%.
– Allow a 10% overlap between third-language ethnic programming on City and OMNI in the same market.
– Remove the 100% closed captioning requirement for French-language programming.
– Eliminate a requirement to closed caption all local English-language advertising.
– Maintain a minimum requirement to broadcast four hours of described video a month instead of the standard requirement of four hours a week (though Rogers has two years to comply).
The Commission compromised on Canadian programming, allowing OMNI to follow the private conventional minimums of 55% of the broadcast day and 50% of evenings, rather than the ethnic station standard of 60% and 50% respectively. Rogers had asked for 40% for both.
The CRTC also agreed to harmonize OMNI’s ethnic programming requirements during prime time, which ranged from 100% for OMNI B.C. to no specific requirement for OMNI Alberta. All stations must now ensure 75% of the hours from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. are ethnic programming.
Following a complaint last year about cuts that left OMNI’s Alberta stations with no local programming, the Commission got a commitment from Rogers to produce five hours a week of local programming from the two stations combined. It imposed a requirement of 3.5 hours a week from Calgary and 1.5 hours a week from Edmonton. The commission also ordered Rogers to re-establish community advisory councils in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta, and report yearly on their activities.
Finally, the CRTC analyzed how well G4TechTV and OLN are complying with their nature of service definitions. In 2011, it found G4 strayed from its purpose by airing reality shows unconnected to technology, gaming or the Internet, and required it to file monthly programming schedules. Satisfied that it has since come into compliance, that requirement has been lifted.
OLN, meanwhile, which is required to broadcast programs related to “outdoor recreation, conservation, wilderness and adventure,” strayed from that by airing programs like Storage Wars set in urban environments. It ordered Rogers to file a report by Jan. 31 explaining how the channel will come back into compliance.
