What ought to be done about local broadcast news?
The proposal now on the table is for another fund for local television news. The first was the small market local programming fund approved by the commission in 2003. Since 2013, the five largest broadcasters have received 16.8% of its funding. The CRTC approved the LPIF in 2009. The five largest TV broadcasters received 80% of that funding.
Last month, the commission was asked to establish a new local news fund. It would shift millions of dollars from cable and satellite subscribers who now support community channels to private television stations. The fund's impact on local TV news is unclear. BCE, for example, said it would not broadcast more local news even with this fund.
It's clear that the problem of local broadcast news has no easy answer. The elephant in the room is the major gaps in data about local broadcast programming, which make it impossible to know if Parliament's objectives for local broadcasting are being met or whether the consolidation of ownership has strengthened or weakened local broadcast news. The CRTC's routine destruction of its older records means that these gaps are growing. The forum's concern is that basing policies on assumptions instead of facts creates new risks. Policies may be seen as favouring some at the expense of others. They risk failure if they focus on the wrong problems.
We have three suggestions to put forward for you this morning.
First, Parliament needs facts, not guesswork. The CRTC should consult with the public in the next year to revise its data collection and reporting systems. As the head of CTV once told the CRTC, “You can't manage what you don't measure.”
Second, if Parliament wants Canadians to have access to broadcast news, there must be enforceable and enforced levels of original local news. The commission dropped such conditions in the early 1990s. It said competition would work just as well as regulation in ensuring Canadians' access to local broadcast content. Of course, in private TV, the number of competitors has fallen from 30 to 17.
Nearly all non-news local TV programs are gone, along with about 30% of TV station jobs. Central casting, whereby a remote production centre produces the local newscast and ships it back into the market, is ubiquitous. Some TV stations broadcast radio programming and claim it is news, and radio stations broadcast TV audio. While a survey found that 81% of Canadians said local television news is important, TV broadcasters say they can't afford to do it because they can't monetize it.
On February 1, the forum therefore asked the CRTC to restore conditions of licence for original local broadcast news for local television. That was the regulatory approach that was very effective from the 1970s to 1990. The panel's chair dismissed this concept as pure nostalgia. This was a bit odd, since on January 12 the CRTC denied requests from ethnic organizations for a public hearing into last May's cancellation by Rogers of all ethnic language TV newscasts for communities in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto, precisely because the CRTC had not set conditions for local newscasts in those licences.
If Parliament wants local broadcast news, the CRTC should be required to set conditions of licence for expenditures on, and hours of, original local radio and television news produced in, and predominantly about, the communities that those stations are licensed to serve. They can do that during the renewal of radio and TV licences over the next one to two years.
Third, Parliament ought to know if its objectives for its communications system are being met. The current statutes in the CRTC Act were written decades ago. They don't explain whether or how the CRTC should deal with the Internet or its ramifications or require the CRTC to serve the public interest.
Implementing the first recommendation, the one for better data, will position this committee for the next several years if it undertakes an examination of whether Canada's communications legislation should be updated for the twenty-first century.
Mr Chair, local radio and television stations obviously help you and you colleagues stay in touch with your communities and your constituents. They help you find out what's going on back home.
Some say we shouldn't worry about the changes happening in the media and that the Internet provides all kinds of different sources of information, but for the most part these sources are aggregators that are taking material produced by professional print and broadcast journalists.
The goal for your committee and for the commission should be to ensure that in this era of constant upheaval, we do not lose a vital component of Canadians' lives—the local news, which, as Walter Robinson of The Boston Globe Spotlight unit so eloquently put it, gives people the ability “to make thoughtful decisions in a democratic society.”
We welcome your questions when the other presenters are finished.