Toronto station launches on web after CRTC narrowly rejects community TV bid

Though denied a licence to launch a community TV station, Jan Pachul isn’t about to give up his plan to broadcast over-the-air. He says that he will launch a pirate UHF channel to complement the web content he’s already announced. Pachul is also taking his fight to the federal Cabinet, the Competition Bureau and the court of public opinion after a narrow majority of CRTC commissioners turned down his application for a low-power TV service in east Toronto. In addition to the appeals, which he says will be filed soon, Pachul has decided in the interim to launch his new Star Ray TV service on the web. Not announced publicly, however, is his plan to go ahead with a UHF channel. "We haven’t been talking much about UHF because, essentially it would be pirate. What we figured we’d do is just talk about Internet which would cloak our intentions of doing Internet and UHF," Pachul told CCR. "How much power does the CRTC have to enforce anything? That’s a big question." In the wake of the controversial decision to deny him permission to broadcast, Pachul released a hotly worded press release to his web site (www.srtc.on.ca) in which he attacks the commissioners head on, using language some CRTC lawyers may find questionable. "I had hoped the commissioners would support all the local news, sports, and cultural programming we were proposing, especially in light of recent cutbacks in this area," Pachul writes. "But I guess some of their terms are coming to an end and they’ll need to get a job in the industry soon." Three of the five commissioners reviewing Pachul’s application turned down his request to transmit local news and culture on UHF channel 15, citing his request for mandatory cable carriage beyond his intended serving area as the main stumbling block with the proposal. "Under the regulations, the proposed station would receive carriage in an area that extends far beyond the sector of Toronto that the applicant proposed to serve," the commission states in Decision 2000-340, released August 22. "The three commissioners weren’t alone in their opposition. Chum Television, Rogers Cablesystems Inc, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, the Canadian Cable Television Association and CTV Inc urged the regulator to reject Star Ray TV’s application. But the rejection was far from unanimous. Barbara Cram and David McKendry filed dissenting opinions, saying Star Ray TV would help bring more local programming to Canadian airwaves, at a time when community cable channels are consolidating into regional services (CCR, July 6/00), and the amount of local news programming is shrinking. Their preference would have been to exempt BDUs from having to carry Pachul’s station on basic cable. Star Ray TV was the first attempt in Canada to operate a small station outside of a college campus or isolated community. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission has a year-old policy to foster small, unaffiliated TV stations and has licensed several LPTV stations in major cities, despite intense lobbying by broadcasters’ associations. The CRTC has flirted with LPTV by licensing some in remote areas and college campuses. The proposed Toronto station, however, was hexed by its owner’s desire to have the station carried on cable. Pachul proposed a LPTV station on UHF channel 15 to serve 129,000 households. The station would have made money by producing and selling ads to Beaches and Riverdale businesses. Pachul expected annual revenues and operating costs of $478,000 and $451,000, respectively, in the first year of operation, rising to $1,223,000 and $1,086,000 in the seventh. These projections assumed cable carriage on an unscrambled basis essentially throughout Metropolitan Toronto. Pachul told CCR that he’s already spent "a couple of hundred thousand (dollars) at least" on the project. Forty-three interveners expressed support for the application. They included parties interested in producing programming, prospective volunteers, representatives of community and social organizations, two city council members, as well as people interested in viewing the applicant’s proposed programming. At a public hearing last December, Pachul told commissioners he would waive his right to carriage on the basic band and accept placement on any unencoded high cable channel, such as channel 67. Instead of mandated carriage by all cable systems whose service areas include territory within a 15 kilometre radius of his transmitter, he would accept carriage by all systems whose service areas include territory within a 12-kilometre radius of his transmitter. The CRTC says it agrees that low-power stations such as the one proposed by Pachul "have the potential to fill an important programming niche by providing a community-oriented programming service that relates more directly to local neighbourhoods within large metropolitan areas. "The Commission is concerned, however, about the implications of giving the station proposed by Mr. Pachul priority cable carriage on cable systems," the regulator writes in its decision. "Under the regulations," it adds, "the proposed station would receive carriage in an area that extends far beyond the sector of Toronto that the applicant proposed to serve. Interveners indicated that, not only would the station reach close to a million households in Toronto, it would also, due to the interconnection of cable systems, be received in areas as far removed from The Beaches area as Mississauga and Brampton, a distance, in the latter case, of more than 35 kilometres." Still, the CRTC says, "low-power community stations operating alongside existing over-the-air television stations in urban areas or in smaller communities have the potential to make a contribution to the goals set out in the Broadcasting Act, especially with respect to the provision of local community-based programming. It further considers that the deployment of digital distribution technology by cable distributors in the near future may well make it possible for such services to be distributed by cable systems in a more targeted manner."

Toronto station launches on web after CRTC narrowly rejects community TV bid

News | 08/31/2000 4:00 am EDT

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