CRTC clears CBC to shut down transmitters, communities to lose CBC

The CRTC approved CBC/Radio-Canada’s plan to shut down all of its analog transmitters that support 23 English and French-language television stations across Canada. In broadcasting decision 2012-384, released Tuesday, the CRTC said it approved the CBC’s request to amend the licences of 23 TV stations to remove their analog retransmitters. The decision is expected to affect hundreds of communities, for which CBC has not switched the transmitters to digital over-the-air broadcasting. They will no longer receive signals from local towers, and can only receive feeds from cable and other subscription TV services. The CRTC said that while it can issue broadcasting licences, it cannot impose an obligation to broadcast. “In other words, while the commission has the discretion to refuse to revoke broadcasting licences, even on application from a licensee, it cannot direct the CBC or any other broadcaster to continue to operate its stations and transmitters,” the commission said. The CRTC said in the release that the amendments would come into force Aug. 1, with CBC planning to cease operations of all its analog transmitters by the end of this month. Last August, only 15 days before Canada’s digital transition deadline of Aug. 31, 2011—when TV stations were required to switch their signals to digital—the CRTC said it would give CBC an exemption for more than 20 markets, allowing them to continue broadcasting signals in analog. All of those markets, and hundreds of other analog retransmitters across the country, will now shut down their analog signals. “In that situation, there is no over-the-air signal to get, digital or analog,” Ian Morrison, a spokesman for watchdog group the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said in a phone interview. “You have to go to the BDUs to get it, and that costs money. So that’s the issue.” Angus McKinnon, a CBC spokesman, said in a phone interview that there are alternatives to receive CBC content, such as cable, satellite, or free, online streaming. “For everyone who is out of range of our digital transmitters, if you're an over-the-air user, the option is now cable or satellite,” he said. He said CBC does not live stream any local TV feeds but “all of our programs are available online. You can watch them all on-demand with the CBC video player,” McKinnon said. He said all of CBC's 27 stations have digital transmitters and it is only communities outside of those markets that will be affected. “All of those analogs are going to be shut off,” he said. On April 4, after the government announced budget cuts to the public broadcaster totaling $27.8 million in 2012-2013, $69.6 million the following year and $115 million by 2014-1015, Hubert T. Lacroix, president and CEO of CBC, said the broadcaster would accelerate the shutdown of its analog television transmitters. In total, CBC is shutting down 607 analog transmitters to provide annual savings of nearly $10 million. The CRTC decision said there are alternatives such as Shaw Communications Inc.’s Local Television Satellite Solution (LTSS) service, which provides free local and regional services as well as satellite equipment for households that no longer have access to over-the-air signals. Gregory Taylor, a broadcasting expert and post-doctoral fellow at Ryerson University, said in a phone interview that the Shaw program has been “poorly advertised” and many viewers do not know it exists. “To place the national system at the whim of this poorly advertised Shaw program, I just find is a very weak substitute for a true national broadcaster,” he said. Catherine Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Association of Community Users and Stations (CACTUS), said in an interview that CACTUS was disappointed the CRTC did not push CBC to make more of an effort for community outreach and public service announcements prior to the decision. “We’re really disappointed that the CRTC didn’t feel that they could at least require , in the same way that they required broadcasters to air PSAs with certain content last year prior to the digital transition,” Edwards said. She said the announcements would be “to make sure people aren’t in the dark.” In a release last Friday, CACTUS noted that 2,200 Canadians wrote to the CRTC to oppose the shutdown of CBC’s transmitters. CACTUS said the CRTC should not process CBC’s request without a public hearing. “We’re not surprised that they approved it,” Edwards said. “Our best case scenario was that we had hoped they would delay it and then there would be more time for communities to make other arrangements and have more discussion in general.” The CRTC said it would discuss service to official-language minority communities at the CBC’s licence renewal hearing scheduled for Nov. 19. McKinnon said in an additional emailed statement that CBC is looking forward to discussing official-language minority communities at the hearing, adding that it's “an important conversation” to have. “Meantime, it’s important to remind OLMCs of the solution that currently exists for those affected by the shutdown of our analogue transmitters, namely, the Local Television Satellite Solution offered by Shaw Direct and cited by the Commission in its decision,” he said. Edwards said the CRTC decision is “sort of slap in the face” for minority anglophone or francophone Canadians who can no longer access CBC programming in their first language using a TV antenna. Edwards said the decision was marked by a lack of supporting evidence. In April, Lacroix said in a release that 1.7 per cent of the population receives CBC television through over-the-air analog service. Edwards said that the number is at odds with January research submitted to the hearing by Barry Kiefl, president of Canadian Media Research Inc. (CMRI), which said that 9.5 of anglophones in Canada don’t subscribe to a cable, satellite or Internet-protocol TV service. Kiefl said at the time he believed almost all of that 9.5 per cent received over-the-air TV. Taylor said in a follow-up email that the CRTC’s decision will limit the future of over-the-air mobile television services in Canada. “With the CBC getting rid of these towers, it’s going to put them in a hole to provide this service to Canadians in the near future,” he said. Taylor said CBC is in an “extremely difficult” situation in terms of its transmitters. He said that under former chairman Konrad von Fickenstein, the CRTC had asked the government to allow funding to the broadcaster to complete the digital transition. Taylor said limits were put on the CBC because the money was not forthcoming. dgrenier@thewirereport.ca --- CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said CBC plans to decommission 620 analog transmitters. CBC has revised that number to 607.

CRTC clears CBC to shut down transmitters, communities to lose CBC

News | July 17, 2012

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CRTC clears CBC to shut down transmitters, communities to lose CBC

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