With election on the horizon, ACTRA pushes politicians to change CRTC

Members of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) and the United Steelworkers descended on Parliament Hill on November 24 to push their cause to politicians prior to the next election, expected early next year. The two organizations challenged politicians to make developing a strong cultural and national identity for Canada a priority. The groups presented politicians with their laundry list of what needs fixing, including the CRTC. Below is an excerpt from the document they presented to MPs called A Platform Pitch: Things You Can Fix in the Next Election. CRTC: A regulator that needs fixingThrough its 1999 television policy, and recent decisions on satellite radio, the CRTC has become an enabler of U.S. product dumping. Canadians are losing their jobs, their voices and their identity. We ask…that your party take action to give Canadians a voice on their own airwaves by directing the CRTC to: require private conventional TV broadcasters to spend a least 7% of their advertising revenue on Canadian drama; require private broadcasters to air at least two hours of original Canadian drama every week; and direct the CRTC to adopt a new policy that will uphold Canadian content requirements for all new technologies such as mobile TV and Internet broadcasting which now would escape regulation under the CRTC’s new media policy. In 1999, there were 12 one-hour English-language Canadian TV drama series being aired. In November 2005, there were only three first-run Canadian one-hour dramas broadcast on Canada’s three major networks: ReGenesis (Global), Da Vinci's City Hall (CBC), and This is Wonderland (CBC). This decline is the direct result of the CRTC’s disastrous 1999 television policy. The CRTC expanded the definition of Canadian "priority programming" to include much cheaper programming, such as entertainment magazine and reality shows. At the same time, the CRTC increased the definition of prime time to include the hours 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week (previously it was 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday), and tossed out the requirement that broadcasters had to spend a percentage of their revenues on Canadian content. Now, broadcasters are free to meet their Canadian content obligations with repeats and licensing cheap reality-style programming. Here’s what Canada’s private TV broadcasters have been up to since 1999: they spend four times more on U.S. and foreign drama than they did on Canadian shows -- $354 million versus $68 million in 2004...pay the lowest average licensing fees on domestic drama. Canadian English-language broadcasters cover 18% of production costs for an indigenous drama; in the U.S., broadcasters cover 81% or more; they cut spending on Canadian drama and variety programming by 20% between 1998 and 2002; and they’re making record profits. Canadian content is also being sacrificed for new technology. Recently, the CRTC’s satellite radio decision set a dangerous precedent allowing Canadian digital radio to be dominated by U.S. programming. Mobile TV is up next – the government needs to step in and direct the CRTC to correct this trend and change its policy so that Canadians have an opportunity to hear their own voices on new and emerging technologies.

With election on the horizon, ACTRA pushes politicians to change CRTC

Broadcast | November 29, 2005

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