Just before I start, I want to let you know that I've been told that the appendices to this presentation will be available from translation by next week.
My name is Cathy Edwards. I'm the spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations. CACTUS represents the views of Canadians and independent community television channels and producing groups who believe that participation in the broadcasting system by ordinary Canadians is fundamental to Canadian democracy.
Since we last addressed you regarding digital and new media, we wish to tell you the outcome of the community television policy review undertaken by the CRTC, and about an initiative that CACTUS has spearheaded with regard to the upcoming transition to digital over-the-air television. These topics address points 2, 4, and 5 of this important study.
Canada's Broadcasting Act stipulates that the system comprises three elements: public, private, and community.
While Canada once boasted a robust community television sector, with more than 300 hyper-local cable stations, which were a model for the world, approximately 80% have been shut. The public has been largely excluded from the few remaining big-city and regional so-called community channels by cable companies.
The problems began in 1997, when the channels were partly deregulated. As was widely publicized last fall during the "Local TV Matters” and “Stop the Cable Tax" campaign, cable companies have turned community channels into professional, subscriber-subsidized competition for over-the-air broadcasters.
First, we want you to know that community channels, one type of small broadcaster, have suffered the more consolidated BDUs have become. It's a keen loss to the system, because this volunteer-assisted form of production generates six to eight times as much local programming dollar for dollar as the public and private sectors.
Second, it is inappropriate that BDUs administer channels that are meant to provide a democratic voice for Canadians to participate in their own broadcasting system. All 28 of the other countries around the world that recognize community media as the third tier define it by non-profit community ownership. Canada respects this criterion for the community radio sector; but nowhere in the world, except here, do large, market-dominant BDUs control community TV. It's a misapplication of the Broadcasting Act, in which the public, private, and community elements are distinguished by ownership.
It is an especial threat to the diversity of voices and democracy the more concentrated media ownership becomes. One of the two sectors that should provide a democratic safety valve against hyper-concentration in the private sector cannot fulfill this role because it is owned by that same sector. How is that possible?
Parliament recognized in the 1991 Broadcasting Act that the community sector had demonstrated both its value and viability under cable stewardship, and it should have been transferred at that time to community control. We are asking that you, as parliamentarians, redress this appropriation at your first opportunity.
Third, since the 1990s, cable market share has dropped from around 80% to about 60% in the face of satellite competition. Whereas it was once possible for a cable channel to function as a televisual town hall for communities, this is no longer the case. In our proposal at the community TV policy review and before this committee in the summer, we described a new model of community media that is multi-platform. We proposed that over-the-air licences be held by non-profit community groups, which would trigger their carriage on cable, and they would also be distributed to new media platforms as they emerged, reaching all Canadians.
So community broadcasters cannot play the important role they are uniquely positioned to play in ensuring democratic access to the system, in generating significant quantities of local content on multiple platforms, and in developing the digital media literacy skills Canadians need to compete. Digital media literacy has been identified by several of Canada's trading partners as key to their digital strategies.
Canadian community TV channels historically demystified the leading-edge media production tools of the day for Canadians of all ages and social strata. This model must be updated to include digital and new media.
We should clarify that the CRTC did introduce an over-the-air community TV licence class in 2002 independent from cable, but the licences are limited to low power, have no guaranteed access to spectrum, and have no viable source of funding. While private and public broadcasters can access both public funding—that is, direct tax support for the CBC, for example, and tax credits for private industry—and industry funding, such as the local programming improvement fund, value-for-signal payments, the Canada Media Fund, and so on, non-profit community broadcasters have been excluded from every one of those funds, despite recommendations by this committee that they should be included: for example, in the Lincoln report. As a result, only seven such channels have ever been licensed in the whole country.
Therefore, we proposed to the CRTC at the spring policy review the creation of a community access media fund to enable more community broadcasters to launch using a multi-platform new-media model, and using funds that BDUs already collect from subscribers for local expression. But this proposal has so far been ignored.
So our first request to you today is to work with us and Canadian Heritage to set up a community access media fund and help us resource it. We have calculated that to bring a multi-platform community-access production hub within reach of 90% of Canadians--that would be 250 in all--it would cost about $113 million, a bit less than BDUs currently collect from subscribers for·this purpose, for local expression.
We are discouraged that although the CRTC did made a few cosmetic modifications to the community TV policy that it announced on August 28, it has taken no action to address BDU closures of community channels, BDU control of community channels, nor the lack of funding for community channels outside of BDU control.
Given that the community sector can engender the greatest diversity of voices for the least money, we believe that the CRTC is failing to leverage its most obvious tool.
Finally, the new community TV policy is being phased in over four years, which means that it will be at least another four after that before we can expect another CRTC review. It's simply too long in the dynamic media environment that is the focus of your study. Canadians have waited 13 years already. This is why we need your help.
The second topic we wanted to let you know about is that CACTUS, with the support of approximately 20 other industry, civil, and academic organizations, wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister in September--it was copied to each of you--asking for a coordinated national government education campaign in advance of the transition to digital over-the-air TV, planned for August 31 next year.
Because of unprecedented levels of media ownership consolidation, we do not believe it is appropriate to let industry lead, since industry has a clear commercial incentive to move Canadians onto monetized cable and satellite platforms, with no public debate about more cost-effective alternatives that would enable more local content.
We are concerned that the current vacuum of information will harm diversity of voices and small broadcasters for two reasons. First, while the "digital dividend" in other countries is going to result in more over-the-air TV channels and space for small broadcasters, here in Canada the transition is poised to do the reverse. Each existing Canadian broadcaster has been allotted by Industry Canada a full 6 megahertz digital channel—that's the same amount of spectrum that they each used to have for analog TV—in order to broadcast in high definition, even though one HD channel doesn't require this full 6 megahertz.
In effect, broadcasters are being allowed to sit on unused spectrum, instead of sharing spectrum with new entrants. In addition, you're probably aware of channels 52 through 69, once available for TV, being slated for a spectrum auction for other uses.
Secondly, since broadcasters have to upgrade transmitters to digital in only 32 of Canada's larger population centres, analog transmitters may be decommissioned outside those centres en masse, leaving many rural Canadians without the option of free over-the-air TV.
What's not widely known that I'd like to tell you about is that more than 100 remote communities that have never had a CBC, Global, CTV, or other retransmission station, or “repeater”, as they're called, already offer their residents an over-the-air rebroadcasting service for as little as $40 per household per year. Some even include a community channel for that price, about one-tenth the cost of a satellite bill. Their model could be extended to communities that may lose free over-the-air TV if a comprehensive information package can be disseminated to them in time. Otherwise, we are concerned that rural communities—some of which rely heavily on free OTA TV—will be unable to afford a satellite alternative. Also, more than 1,000 local transmitters that could enable communities to create their own content—not only TV, but also wireless, Internet, phone, and video services—are going to be decommissioned.
Therefore, our second ask today is for your support in advocating a comprehensive government education campaign in advance of the transition, so that these concerns can be publicly debated and alternatives can be put in place before communities lose service, and before scarce spectrum is auctioned off to the highest bidder and lost to the public and community sectors.
The community sector, like the public sector, needs at least one channel in each community.
Thanks for inviting us, and we welcome your questions.
