Advocates call for end to digital media exemptions for CBC

The advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has called on the CRTC to force CBC/Radio-Canada to open up what the group says is the CBC's request to put $300 million into a "black box" of unregulated digital expenditures, and to keep the current CBC management on a "shorter leash" by imposing a three-year license term. "By imposing cross-platform expenditure obligations, the CRTC can create a flexible, but no less rigorous regulatory framework that supports CBC’s modernization while binding it to uphold its public purpose," executive director Daniel Bernhard told the commission Monday during hearings into CBC's license renewal. Cross-platform obligations, Bernhard said, would prevent the CBC from its proposal to "hide" $300 million of spending behind the CRTC's digital media exemption order, as that division of CBC spending grows each year. "This CBC management group merits a shorter leash. We recommend a three-year renewal term." Friends of Canadian Broadcasting further called on the CRTC to apply an expenditure requirement of 15 per cent of aggregated revenues to the news and information divisions of the broadcaster, as well as restricting the amount CBC can spend of its required local television news expenditures to 25 per cent on digital platforms. "Why would we limit them in that way, if that's where the audience is going?" CRTC chair Ian Scott asked. "Station-produced programming, which seems to me to be a good proxy for local news, has dropped from $92 million in 2012 in English, to $37 million in English in 2020," Bernhard said, while acknowledging the possibility that the shortfall was made up on the digital side."But typically we don't regulate on a just-trust-us basis," he said. "We are trying to find a way to limit the amount of money that can disappear into this black box." Writer, critic, and Friends of Canadian Broadcasting chair Aritha Van Herk told the commission that local CBC news broadcasts in Alberta where she lives are "abominable." "Local news is a half an hour, which gives it presumably seven minutes for Calgary, seven minutes for Edmonton, seven minutes for the rest of Alberta, and most of the stories are actually out of Toronto," she said. "That does not reflect our image at all. In many ways it simply glosses over it and it may be one of the reasons why we have so much regional discontent," she said, adding that she herself was not part of the discontent. Bernhard also pushed back against a claim made by CBC president Catherine Tait on Friday that the broadcaster has had little pushback from the public about its Tandem branded content initiative. "Perhaps she forgot the more than 16,000 supporters who signed a petition to that effect. I sent it to her personally," Bernhard said. — With reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Advocates call for end to digital media exemptions for CBC

News | January 18, 2021

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Advocates call for end to digital media exemptions for CBC

News | January 18, 2021

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