Canadian Heritage Committee on May 4th, 2009

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

What changes would you suggest? Obviously, there will be some changes. Audience ratings are an important factor. Under the circumstances, do you stand a chance?

[Michèle Fortin]

Some people tell me that I do not stand a chance. The government must reach an agreement with the Canada Media Fund. The last agreement contained some reservations regarding, for instance, francophones outside Quebec and the need to consider the specific nature of educational networks. Given the purpose of the fund, it would be proper for the federal government to demand particular consideration of educational television. It would be useful to protect children's television, because our system is based on it.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

We see that this is not the priority—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you. Your time is up.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, everyone, for an excellent presentation.

Madam Rajan, I am looking at your various numbers, and I would make one suggestion. I think your list of time volunteered by private broadcasters and employees might be on the low side. In any jurisdiction I've been in, the role of the local broadcasters in terms of fundraising for the United Way, the cancer drives for kids who are sick and need treatment in Ottawa or Toronto...I think it is one of the main reasons people identify with our local broadcasters.

That being said, one of the concerns we're having in terms of numbers, because we're getting conflicting numbers all the time from the various players, is on the crisis in the local area and how deep it is, because we don't have access to anybody's books. I'm looking at local programming produced that cost $385 million in 2008. Our numbers, from what I've been able to see, put that at about $3 million less than was coming in from local revenue. I'm looking at your line for advertising revenues, and in 2008 the numbers actually seem to go up as opposed to 2003. They are basically on line with 1999. You can call it stagnant, but it doesn't seem to drop off substantially the way we've been told. We've been told there's been this sudden precipitous drop, but I haven't seen it. Where is that precipitous drop coming from?

[Tara Rajan]

First of all, the local advertising market is fairly flat. The precipitous drop, if you will, is on the national side, and it is the source of revenues that makes it possible for our members to spend more on digital television, Canadian programming, local programming and so forth. In fact, for 2008--and we don't know what the results will be for the year currently under way, but they'll probably look even grimmer than they do now--the spending on local programming was roughly equal to the advertising revenues in the local markets. That was after quite a number of years where broadcasters were spending more on local programming than they were earning in local markets.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

So where's the crisis at the local level? We've been told that it's the locals that have to be taken out and shot, to put it bluntly. It seems that what we're seeing here is that our losses are at the national level, and the kinds of purchasing being made at the national and the local levels is holding its own.

[Tara Rajan]

The crisis is on a number of levels, including the erosion of ad share in the local market. We're hearing today that there are other players that would also like to access local ad revenues. There's a crisis in terms of national ad share. There's the crisis in terms of the looming costs of the digital transition in Canadian programming becoming more expensive. The combination of those factors is really what makes the crisis for local television and private broadcasters.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Racine, Mr. Gauthier, thank you for your presentation here today. I believe that community television has a very important role to play. I represent the James Bay region, where several very isolated communities are found. The communities need access to Cree language broadcasting.

I have two questions. Are there any regulations whereby your organization, the cable or the satellite carriers, must implement local broadcasting?

Moreover, do you have the resources that you need to make the transition to the digital system?

[Sylvain Racine]

In answer to your first question, the stations that belong to the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec only broadcast by cable. Our signal is distributed only by cable carriers. It is not distributed by any other means, by satellite or otherwise.

In fact, broadcasting is mandatory. As soon as a community television station gets a licence, such as a low-power licence or some recognition in its environment, the cable carrier has to broadcast it. With regard to resources for transcriptions or translations into other languages, community television has not yet reached that stage. We have neither the financial nor the human resources to succeed in doing this kind of translation work, even for hearing-impaired persons. We wish we could do it, but it is still too expensive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Del Mastro will have the last question this round, please.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you very much, and thank you, everyone, for your presentations.

I'm going to focus on the TVCogeco group, because I think they have brought a very important perspective to the table.

We've been hearing a lot about communities, the contribution television makes to small communities, and the fact that that could be lost. Conventional broadcasters have come and said that the model is broken, that they can't make it, and that if they don't get fee-for-carriage there's going to be a huge loss in communities.

Your slogan is “truly local television”. You ran through a number of things that you're covering that, frankly, nobody else is carrying.

I guess my first question is whether the TVCogeco programming you're operating is available in your basic package. Do people have to pay extra to get TVCogeco, or is that available as part of your basic package?

[Tim Caddigan]

It's part of the basic package.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay, so there's no special fee attached to it. That's fine.

I'm pretty familiar with your service, obviously, but one of the things I was really surprised by was the number of your viewers, which you indicated in your survey. I'm just curious. Do you receive feedback on the coverage of things like municipal councils, parades, or the Petes Junior A hockey, for example--things that nobody else is carrying? Are you receiving feedback on that to give you some indication as to whether people are watching it and appreciating it?

[Tim Caddigan]

Well, we are, and that's one of the things we value. The feedback we receive helps us shape the channel, so we know from the feedback we get whether or not we're making good decisions. We solicit that feedback in every program. We look for feedback through either e-mail, phone messages, or letters, and I even get some at the grocery store.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

You talked a little bit about how you get a number of volunteers and so forth and the fact that you're doing a little bit of volunteer on-the-job training. Are you doing any work with students, co-op students, for example, at high schools, to give them experience to allow them to get into the field?

[Tim Caddigan]

We have a really good co-op program, actually. One of the things that has developed is that we take regular, traditional co-op placements, but we've worked with a local high school that has developed a co-op education program that's paired with an English credit. These two components come together in television. They're learning to write for television, but they're also learning to produce television. Then they take the writing aspect and they apply that to the print industry.

It's a really good model, and in fact that school, Crestwood High School in Peterborough, has made some partnerships with Niagara College so that some of those students have an advanced placement in that college environment.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Simms asked a question. I thought it was actually a pretty good question. He had a lot of them, which is why I think we didn't quite get to it. His question was, “Are you filling a void, or are you becoming that third pillar?”

You're not really competing with over-the-air broadcasters, but you're most definitely kind of filling that local void, aren't you?

[Tim Caddigan]

We are, and we're very moldable, I guess. In each community we look for things that aren't being done. Those are the things we need to do. Certainly we have a very good partnership with our local broadcaster, CHEX TV, which was here in the previous hour with Corus. Certainly, we bump into each other at certain events, but we're there for different purposes. They're there for news and we're there to perhaps cover the whole event.

Certainly, we share video back and forth. One of the better parts of that partnership would be that if we were raising money for a local charity, for the hospital when it was built, for instance, in some cases we would shoot the video and they would edit the video, or vice versa, but we'd both air the same thing.

So it's a very good partnership, and I think it's mutually beneficial.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay, that's great.

I have one last question. TV news coverage in North Bay was mentioned. That came up previously. That's something, obviously, that's a new offering for you. It's in an area where that is not being offered anymore. With respect to the local program improvement fund, do you have anything? The committee is going to make recommendations. Where these services aren't being offered, is it my understanding that you'd like access to that but not in competition with over-the-air broadcasters? Is that accurate?

[Tim Caddigan]

I'll refer that question to Maureen.

[Maureen Tilson Dyment]

Where it is not available, we would. We had mentioned that creating hard news is an expensive endeavour, above and beyond the budgets that we currently have. And yes, we would like to be able to access the funding, but I stress again that it's in a non-competitive environment. If the local broadcaster is providing hard news, then we remain in our traditional role, augmenting that and working with community members who come to us and actually ask us to do productions, etc., in the depth that we can, which perhaps the broadcasters can't do with their scheduling.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

That brings our second hour to a close.

Again, I apologize for the short time I've had for you to respond. You're all very important to this committee; I want you to realize that. Your presentations were great. You're answers were great. And if some of the answers for Mr. Simms come through me, I'm sure we'll appreciate that.

We'll recess for about five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I apologize for having food here with me. I'm sure there will be some left when the meeting is over.

Again, I welcome our witnesses for the third hour here this afternoon. I must say that we have you jammed in pretty tight. I apologize for that, but you are all very, very important to this committee.

I'm going to allow you 10 minutes each for your presentations. We'll see how much time we have for questions afterwards. But I would say to any of our committee members that if there are questions for any of the groups we have here, they can be made afterwards to me, and I can make sure that our presenters get them.

We're jammed in so tight because so many people wanted to make presentations, and we only had so many weeks to do this. So again, my apologies.

Yes?