Union fears diminished role for TV5 in Montreal if operations move to Paris

The federal and Quebec governments negotiating a future for TV5 Quebec that a labour union worries will result in job cuts at the Montreal office of the international channel and decreased visibility of French-Canadian programming around the world. "From what we know and the information we have it’s pretty well decided that Paris will control the U.S. and South American market and they will leave the Canadian market in the hands of TV5 Montreal," says Pierre Roger, of the Fédération nationale des communications, a union representing the majority of Quebec’s print, radio and TV workers. Montreal oversees the Canadian, South American and U.S. markets, while the Paris office controls the European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African markets. In 2000, the Quebec government contributed $4.85 million and the federal government $7.6 million to TV5’s operations. Funds are also generated here through cable fees. Canadian Heritage spokesperson Nancy Bergeron says no decision on TV5 has been finalized. She notes that the government’s objective in these negotiations is to ensure that neither the profile of the Montreal office nor Canadian programming on the channel is diminished. Pierrette Petit, the Quebec government’s counsel for TV5, points out that several different scenarios are being examined to minimize any negative impact on the Montreal operations. The cultural ministers of the countries involved in the initiative (France, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium) were to meet March 28 to make a final decision, but that meeting has been canceled and no new date has been set. Bergeron says the parties are still hoping to resolve the matter by the end of the month. The ministers agreed last October that the network’s operations had to be made more efficient to deal with increased competition and the migration to digital. The Montreal office has been criticized for low viewership in the U.S. market, where there are only about 7,300 cable subscribers. The Latin American market, where some 8 million viewers subscribe, is lucrative for TV5. "There is a lot of focus on the part of our distribution in the U.S., which is mostly on EchoStar, where the original projections have certainly not delivered the numbers (of subscribers) and the revenues that were expected," says Charles Vallerand, TV5 director of communications and marketing. "But other platforms of distribution aside from EchoStar have been developed." He notes that TV5 doubled the number of educational institutions it is in to 250 within a year, and that it gets partial distribution on the multicultural, multilingual International Channel, which reaches 10 million homes across the U.S. Roger criticizes Paris’ ‘colonial’ view of the Montreal office, and points out that Neilsen Media Research stats from November 1999 show that TV5 reaches 41 per cent of Quebec’s TV market and 42 per cent of Canadian TV viewers, while only 18.5 per cent can access the network in France. He adds that if Paris takes over the Latin American and U.S. markets, about 30 of 60 full-time employees at TV5 Montreal, and freelancers who translate programming into Spanish and Portuguese would be out of jobs. As well, he notes the amount of French-Canadian programming on TV5 in those markets could plunge from about 30 per cent to 15 per cent, which could hurt the production industry. He points out Canada became involved in TV5 to showcase Canadian programming around the world, but that has not happened in Europe. The few hours per day of Canadian shows are shown in Europe late at night or early in the morning. Programming on the Canadian edition of TV5 is 15 per cent Canadian and 85 per cent European as spelled out in its CRTC licence. Possibly complicating matters is that the licence comes up for renewal in August 2002 after the regulator granted a short-term extension under existing conditions from Sept. 1, 2001.

Union fears diminished role for TV5 in Montreal if operations move to Paris

News | 03/14/2001 5:00 am EST

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