Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for giving us this opportunity.
The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations is building a bilingual national membership of independent community television channels, cable co-op community television channels, some private cable companies that still practice community access television, and the public who uses and watches them. As an association, we believe that individual members of the public should be able to participate in the broadcast system.
The Broadcasting Act specifies that the system should enable a diversity of voices to be heard and that there should be broad-based access to it. The economic crisis has also focused attention on the scarcity of local programming. But the latter problem is not new. Both CBC and private broadcasters have been cutting back on production and shutting channels in smaller population centres for years.
Over the same period, BDUs have progressively regionalized and professionalized community television production, also resulting in station closures and fewer hours of local programming. This is a great pity, as it is the community sector that has the greatest capacity to address all three needs, that is, the needs for diversity, for access by as many Canadians as possible, and for local programming and expression.
It is impossible to have more diversity and more broad-based access than to enable every Canadian, every organization in civil society, and every community to be a producer. This has been the genius of the Canadian community access model, a brainchild of the National Film Board. It was enabled in the 1970s by the introduction of portable video recorders and the presence of cable television in communities across the country. This model has been copied worldwide and today is a robust part of the broadcasting systems of more than 30 nations, including the majority of western democracies.
Most have recognized community broadcasting as a third tier, which functions according to a paradigm that is different from that of public and private broadcasting. In September of 2008, the European Union recommended that members support the tier both financially and legislatively as a key policy tool to reduce racial tension and promote multicultural dialogue.
Meanwhile, here in the cradle of the community access movement, the sector has been gutted by successive rounds of CRTC legislation and misuse of community channel funds by the country’s biggest cable operators. The damage began in 1997, when community TV was deregulated.
Funding to the sector was cut from 5% to 2% of cable gross revenues in large markets to make way for the Canadian Television Fund, and cable operators were given the choice on whether to have a community channel at all. Most opted to keep the 2% rather than give it to the CTF, but began to look at the channels as potential revenue sources.
In response, the CRTC relaxed rules against advertising on the channels, which has further fragmented the advertising market for private broadcasters. Many so-called community programs today are thinly disguised vehicles for product promotion, and often for national and international companies, not even local ones.
The public in centres such as Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg have been kicked off the channels in favour of professionally produced formats that mimic commercial production.
For example, in Calgary, where I worked as the volunteer coordinator from 1993 to 1997, 400 volunteers and half a dozen staff produced more than 35 hours of new production per week, in every conceivable genre, from mobile sports to seniors and kids programs, and from live arts and entertainment to local issues and phone-in debates. No other sector can produce this volume of programs. But after the channel was professionalized, production was reduced to one hour or less of news per day--in a city that already had three other sources of professionally produced news.
Studios in smaller communities have been closed. Where Vancouver once had twelve neighbourhood offices, there is now one, in Shaw’s corporate tower downtown. Where New Brunswick once had thirty studios, today Rogers offers only six. Not only are cable operators closing studios on their own initiative without repercussion from the CRTC, but the CRTC is facilitating the closures by enabling mergers of service areas in the name of streamlining.
In 2002, in response to public outcry, the CRTC reintroduced the requirement that cable community channels air at least 30% to 50% of “access production”--a far cry from the channels being 100% at the disposition of the community, but better than nothing--and that they should offer training and equipment to the public. Most of the big cable BDUs simply ignore these rules, because there has been no monitoring nor disciplinary action by the CRTC.
Policy 2002-61 also enabled community groups to apply for over-the-air licences, but there was no funding formula offered, and fewer than 10 community groups in English Canada have stepped up to the plate. Most survive on bingos and advertising.
The 2002 policy also stipulates that if a cable operator is not providing community programming in the spirit of CRTC policy, another organization within the community can apply for the levy, but all such applications have been turned down. As a double whammy, the lower-power licence-holders who are actually offering access are not allowed to apply for the levy.
Despite the CRTC announcement that it will hold a hearing into the community sector this fall, recent rulings continue to damage it. In December, the CRTC ruled in a closed hearing in less than 10 minutes that Shaw could buy the Campbell River TV Association, which had been providing community programming on Vancouver Island for over 50 years.
Also, distinctions between cable licence classes may soon be removed, resulting in a reduction in funding from 5% to 2% of gross revenues for small communities, those with fewer than 20,000 subscribers. This change was proposed in policy 2009-176, whose deadline for interventions was just this Monday.
When concerned parties contact the CRTC, the CRTC staff themselves often seem unaware of how changes affect the sector, so CACTUS fears that the CRTC lacks the expertise, willpower, and political backing to make the structural changes necessary. The loss to Canada is that the one sector that could best respond to the crisis in local programming has been successively undermined.
So how is the community sector different? First, because the sector employs volunteers, community channels can produce five to ten times as much programming as professional channels for the same budget, as in my example from Calgary. Any public or BDU funding acts as seed money, which is multiplied in the hands of the community to produce for the community.
The regionalization and commercialization of community TV we've seen has meant that the same economics limiting local production in the public and private tiers have come into play in the community tier as well. This needs to be reversed to get production back into the communities and to leverage the economic and creative genius of the access model.
Second, because program ideas come from the community, the programs are better targeted to community needs.
Third, citizen participation in TV production, which is still the medium by which most Canadians derive information and entertainment, develops a more engaged and critically aware populace. It's a fertile training ground for the public and private sectors.
What would we like the standing committee to do?
First, to revitalize this sector so that it can help fulfill the diversity and access expectations of the Broadcasting Act, we ask that the $120 million being spent yearly by cable companies on so-called “community programming” be liberated for independently run community channels that are accessible to all, representative of their communities, and present in those communities.
The creation of an independent fund was recommended in the Lincoln report, “Our Cultural Sovereignty”, six years ago. While cable companies may once have been the obvious trustee of community access production, the era of the small cable company that was a close partner with the community is gone.
Furthermore, at a time when cable operators buy commercial TV stations for a dollar--and may soon buy commercial TV networks--it's disquieting that they are also gatekeepers for the issues that can be discussed on our community channels, the one—at least potentially—truly free grassroots window in the broadcasting system. This tier, when functioning as designed, is a safety valve for our democracy.
Second, as was recommended by the Lincoln report, non-cable BDUs should also contribute to local reflection.
Third, as was recommended by the Lincoln report, technological options should be explored so that DTH can carry local channels, perhaps several per region.
Fourth, space should be made on all BDU basic services for a national public access channel as a platform for programs of national interest by the independent and voluntary sectors and to facilitate exchange between communities.
Fifth, an ombudsman's office within the CRTC should be created to monitor the coherence of the CRTC's decisions and their impact on the community sector.
What will we pledge to do in response? We have a new vision. In the 10 years during which community TV has languished here in Canada, it has made great advances elsewhere. With the adoption of digital camcorders and computer editing suites, access centres in other countries are producing programs that are indistinguishable from professional content except in ways that we view as advantages: they are fresh, they take risks, and they showcase real people taking stands on local issues.
Not only has the video production technology changed, the distribution platforms have changed as well. The most advanced community access centres in the world are platform-independent. They offer free training and equipment not only for video and radio production, but also for web design and computer skills. They are often housed in live theatres, libraries, and community centres so that residents can one-stop shop to get their messages out. The resulting productions have must-carry status on all platforms, including over-the-air, cable, satellite, and Internet.
If community access centres of this kind can be adequately funded from the existing cable levy or from new sources, CACTUS has the expertise to rebuild this tier to provide this level of service and fill the gaps in local programming. Where Canada once led the world in the use of new technologies at the local level, we would do so again.
Thanks a lot for your time.