Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. Basically what's at stake is that the channel that might suffer the most is CBC Newsworld. Right now, I think CBC Newsworld has 10 million cable subscribers. In 2009, if it's not mandatory that CBC Newsworld be carried, that number will drop by half or more, which will obvio

Canadian Heritage committee  I also just wanted to point out that it should be recognized that since 1993 there's been an explosion in the television landscape. There are so many more digital channels now than there were back then. Regardless of money--and this relates to ratings again a little bit--if the

Canadian Heritage committee  Part of what we're proposing--mandatory carriage and subscriber fees for Newsworld and The Documentary Channel, if the purchase of the channel by the CBC goes through--would go a long way to helping solve that problem.

Canadian Heritage committee  The last recommendation we'd like to make is that Canadians have mandatory BDU carriage of CBC and CBC Newsworld and of the sales approved of The Documentary Channel, as well as a reasonable subscriber fee for each channel. The educational networks should also be granted the same

Canadian Heritage committee  The third point we want to make is that the CBC should not be driven by ratings. Due to consistent and endemic underfunding, the CBC is now forced to rely on advertising revenue to operate, and by extension the current management team has been forced to chase ratings in an effort

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm the vice-chair of DOC Quebec, and actually the chair of the lobby committee for the national board of DOC as well. The types of documentaries we're talking about here today are point-of-view documentaries. That is the majority of the types of films our members make. These fi