Don’t reconsider CRTC licence decision: Bell, Corus, Rogers

The country’s biggest media companies are publicly firing back against calls from the creative and screen-based industries and politicians who want Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly to reconsider the CRTC’s decision to adjust the standards for required spending on Canadian content by TV providers. Embedded in the controversial May 15 decision to renew licences for English-language groups BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Corus Entertainment Inc. was a shift to set requirements for Canadian programming expenditures (CPEs) at 30 per cent and programs of national interest (PNIs) at five per cent for all groups, conventional stations and discretionary services. It was met with outrage from groups such as the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), the Writers Guild of Canada, and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), and members of the federal NDP and Bloc Quebecois who submitted formal petitions to have the decision reversed by the government, saying that it could “devastate” Canadian production. Joly has said she is studying the effects of the decision. On Wednesday, in a full-page ad in the Hill Times newspaper, Bell Media president Randy Lennox, Corus executive vice-president and chief operating officer Barb Williams, and Rogers media president Rick Brace responded, saying that with the decision, the CRTC “appropriately chose to adjust how the Canadian broadcast sector is regulated, to move away from the protectionist measures that made sense in a pre-digital era, towards a modernized approach focused on marketing, promotion and export.” The Hill Times and The Wire Report are both owned by Hill Times Publishing. The letter chastised the petitioners (19 of whom took out their own full-page ad in the same publication on July 24), saying that “over the past few months, our partners in the creative community have launched an aggressive lobby campaign designed to convince the Federal Government that certain decisions made by the CRTC are bad for the Canadian cultural sector. Nothing could be further from the truth.” According to the trio, the decisions will increase the amount “large media groups are required to make in English-language Canadian programming by more than $155 million over the next five years,” adding that collectively, they’ll spend $5.6 billion in that timeframe. The private broadcasters — which the ad said “have been the single most important engines fueling the Canadian broadcasting system” — also have a proven track record of exceeding our spending requirements on Canadian programming and, specifically, drama and documentary programming not because we have to, but because it makes good business sense to do so in a global media environment.” Quebecor Inc. CEO Karl Pierre Péladeau has also spoken against the CRTC decision. Sending the decision back to the CRTC for reconsideration is a bad call because it “will only create more uncertainty for our businesses at a time when we need to be laser focused on our audiences,” the letter said. It added: “This is not the time to take the Canadian content industry backwards; rather this is precisely when it should be taking a giant leap forward.” — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Don’t reconsider CRTC licence decision: Bell, Corus, Rogers

News | August 2, 2017

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Don’t reconsider CRTC licence decision: Bell, Corus, Rogers

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