Vancouver over-the-air ethnic TV station should be locally owned, CRTC told

A group of five Vancouver businessmen including four who are ethnic are hoping to convince the CRTC that a new ethnic over-the-air television station for Vancouver should be locally owned. Multivan Broadcast Corp, which counts Doug Holtby, a former president/CEO of now defunct broadcaster WIC Western International Communications, as a shareholder, is vying for the Vancouver ethnic TV licence against frontrunner CFMT-TV, a division of Rogers Broadcasting. The group, which is proposing to offer programming to 22 ethnic groups in 22 different languages, is using local ownership as a key strategy in its bid for the licence. An edited excerpt of Multivan’s licence application to the CRTC, gazetted last week, follows. As a local ethnic broadcaster based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Multivan Broadcast Corporation (MVBC) enthusiastically places before the commission a vision for an exciting and innovative new ethnic over-the-air TV service to serve the multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial population that is Vancouver today and will be more so tomorrow… MVBC understands that Vancouver’s ethnic population deserves to be understood, respected and treated with civility and courtesy. We need to be accepted and truly recognized as an integral part of Canada. MVBC recognizes the potential as an over-the-air TV service, to bridge out ethnic population in Vancouver and the mainstream. Vancouver is home to all of us, and MVBC seeks to celebrate that fact in every broadcast hour, of every broadcast day. Our dedication to the Vancouver ethnic community comes naturally in this MVBC undertaking. Four of our five MVBC shareholders are ethnic themselves. All are prominent residents of this great city, with careers built in Vancouver that stretch across the country and around the world… MVBC knows the vital role an independent, local ethnic TV station can play in the Greater Vancouver community. This is our home. The people of Vancouver are our neighbours and friends… Over the past four years, the Canadian broadcast TV industry has gone through a major restructuring. One overall result has been the consolidation and centralization of broadcast operations to eastern Canada. Nowhere has this changed Canadian TV landscape been more apparent than in the market of Greater Vancouver… As the dust settles from this massive shakeup in broadcast property holdings, one result has been that Vancouver is now without any local ownership in over-the-air TV broadcasting. With the demise of the Vancouver-based WIC, all local broadcasting is now controlled externally of this major Canadian TV market. The new TV landscape of Vancouver has lost all local ownership connection to a community whose unique and changing population now needs local TV more than ever. Balance for the System The call for applications to establish an ethnic over-the-air television service for Vancouver now offers the commission an opportunity to bring balance to this sector of the Canadian broadcast system. As MVBC in Vancouver, we want to join the ethnic broadcast system as a productive partner to balance with the existing operations of CFMT-TV (Rogers) in Toronto and CJNT-TV (Global) in Montreal. By maintaining a balance in the Canadian ethnic TV markets, each best represents their local communities as envisioned in the Broadcasting Act. We offer our commitment to cooperate with Rogers and CanWest Global in the acquisition and/or co-production of ethnic TV programming to improve service to for viewers of ethnic services. We will also be proactive in building working relationships with independent producers, broadcasters and program distributors to develop new programming opportunities that use Canadian talent from all markets in a fair and representative way.

Vancouver over-the-air ethnic TV station should be locally owned, CRTC told

Broadcast | August 15, 2001

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Vancouver over-the-air ethnic TV station should be locally owned, CRTC told

Broadcast | August 15, 2001

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