CACTUS thorn in side of Rogers’ plan for community stations

The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) is opposing a plan by Rogers Communications Inc. to change the conditions of service for linear community programming. The association filed an intervention with the CRTC on June 12. The Toronto communications giant is seeking to put its western Canadian community TV stations into zones to facilitate production and share programming. These stations became Rogers properties following the takeover of Shaw Communications. The proposed zones are Vancouver Island, southern interior British Columbia, central Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba. CACTUS, which opposed the Shaw buyout, points out that when Rogers took over Fundy Cable in the early 2000s, it shuttered several local stations, going from 36 stations to only five production centres today. The group says any change to western Canadian channels would emulate that situation. It further notes that the House of Commons Committee on Canadian Heritage had endorsed a CACTUS proposal to put money for local stations into a not-for-profit fund for independent channels. “The voices of parliamentarians and CACTUS were ignored, and the purchase went ahead with no consideration by the commission regarding what would happen to Shaw's remaining community channels,” the association writes. The group says Shaw was non-compliant with regulations before the takeover. It was not hitting the 60 per cent local exhibition requirement nor was it achieving 50 per cent local production. “Rogers—instead of seeking to address these deficits, is seeking with this application to bring these non-compliant systems into compliance by changing the rules for itself: Zoning will allow Rogers to lower these standards by regionalizing the content (as it has done in all its other systems) and meet the policy and regulations by using the same minimal amount of ‘local’ and ‘access’ content across larger and larger regions,” CACTUS stated. The association is again calling for the creation of a Community Access Media Fund, just as it did during the debate over the Shaw sale. With the passage of the Online Streaming Act, it is seeking streamers also contribute to such a fund. The commission has not granted the request. Independent community media are needed as the larger players retreat from the community sphere and only broadcast content from large cities, CACTUS says. Robust local media is the antidote to this development, it concludes. – Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

CACTUS thorn in side of Rogers’ plan for community stations

News | June 14, 2024

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CACTUS thorn in side of Rogers’ plan for community stations

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