On February 5 of this year, an emergency meeting was called to inform the employees of CHCH-TV in Hamilton that, along with its sister stations in the E! Network, we were up for sale. Our parent company, Canwest Global, told us that a buyer would have to be found within eight to ten weeks. If not, they told us, the worst-case scenario would be possible. After 54 years, the first independent television station in Canada, CHCH-TV, could go black.
My name is Donna Skelly, and I represent a group of employees who are trying to save CHCH-TV. Shortly after this shocking and devastating announcement, we came together to develop a plan that would prevent CHCH-TV from going black. The priority of our employee group is fundamentally different from the current players in the broadcast crisis. We don't want to answer to shareholders demanding high returns on their investments. We are not looking to expand into other industries or to acquire other properties. We simply believe that the residents of Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara have a fundamental right to at least one television station that serves their needs. We want to prove to Canada's regulatory commission, to you, our members of Parliament, and to other community leaders that this station, CHCH-TV, is more than a means of making money for shareholders. This station, the only station to serve a market of over a million people, has become an essential service that must be protected and preserved.
We know that the business model for conventional television is broken, but has anyone or any group given you an alternative model for local news? What has happened is that networks are now asking for relaxation of licence requirements, and for subsidies, to allow them to continue to operate under the same broken model.
What we are proposing is new. It is radical. It's a different approach to local news, but it's a model that we believe will not only protect local television in Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara; we think it could serve similar stations and communities across the country. But for today's purposes we are focusing on CHCH-TV.
We are proposing community ownership for this essential over-the-air licence. CHCH-TV would be controlled by the community. It would be governed by a board of directors made up of leaders and the people who understand the communities they live in. The broadcast mandate would focus on news and information that is important to the people in these communities. The programming schedule would not include the type of prime-time programming so readily available on other channels.
To sustain our model we have identified unique revenue opportunities. Traditional advertising will be crucial to this plan, but unlike the networks, we would aggressively solicit advertising dollars from lucrative untapped sources of advertising from within our own local business community. Currently, many local businesses simply cannot afford to advertise during prime-time hours. It is simply too expensive. In our opinion, broadcasters are too reliant on national advertising and have not provided enough opportunities to local business. Personally, I've been approached by local business owners who would welcome the opportunity to buy affordable television time to promote their own products.
The local program improvement fund will also be critical to sustaining and enhancing a local news and information service. Although it remains unclear right now as to what groups would be eligible for these funds, we believe there is no group more worthy than an independent CHCH Television in the cities and communities it is mandated to serve. In fact, we would ask the CRTC and this committee to include eligibility criteria that would give priority to communities that have one conventional television broadcaster providing local service.
The third element of this revenue initiative attempts to find a method of regulating funding from the community for local television services. Residents have anecdotally told us that they wish to continue having service from a local station and they want CHCH to continue with a strong local mandate. To do this, we believe a fee for carriage needs to be regulated to support local television in the communities served within the licence boundaries of CHCH. Under our proposal, all distributors in the defined coverage area carrying CHCH would be required to add a specified fee for carriage of the CHCH signal. CHCH would remain a must-carry option by these distributors.
To date, discussions concerning this crisis faced by Canada's broadcast industry have focused primarily on how to assist struggling networks. What hasn't been discussed is the impact on the true stakeholder in all of this, and that is the Canadian taxpayer. In 2000, when Canwest Global obtained the licence for CHCH-TV, the company promised to produce 37.5 hours of local programming. In a few weeks, Canwest will be back before the CRTC asking to reduce the amount to five hours of local news programming a week. That's a reduction of over 80%.
Although a final schedule has not been announced, this reduction could mean that viewers in Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara could lose their three-hour morning show, their daily noon show, their daily current affairs programming, all their weekend newscasts, their local sports, and their local lifestyle programming. What would remain is Snoop Dogg's Father Hood, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and Dr. 90210. Ask any resident of Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara what they would have cut, and I can assure you it would not be local news programming.
Not only are Canadian viewers losing local news, they are losing access to quality news. Serious news coverage has all but disappeared in local newscasts because of the reduction in staff and resources. Many local newsrooms do not cover the stories that require dedicated resources and experienced journalists. Local criminal trials, city hall meetings, and investigative stories require long hours and a lot of money. Today, these stories are a rare component in local newscasts.
We believe strongly that any recipient of public funding for television news production should be required to set aside a significant portion of that funding for serious news. Infotainment cannot be a fallback or a weak alternative to news. Broadcasters may argue that these funds should not be micromanaged. We argue that the health of this industry depends on it.
On March 11, 2009, this committee agreed to study the future of television in this country. Throughout the process, you have been told this industry is in the midst of a crisis. I disagree. I say we have an opportunity to make radical changes to the business model; to insist upon tougher regulatory conditions when licences are renewed; to demand that serious news be a priority; to identify and classify licences in markets like Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara as essential services; and to protect these licences for the true stakeholders, the Canadian people, who have a fundamental right to their local news.
Thank you.