Rejected CRTC applicant wants bigger role for French-language community radio; hearing begins Jan. 20

Having lost its bid to operate a FM community radio station in Ottawa - and then succeeding in persuading Canadian Heritage to force the CRTC to reconsider its decision - an eastern Ontario group is now pushing the regulator to extend the reach of community radio and provincial public broadcasters for Francophone listeners living outside of Quebec. Radio de la communauté francophone d'Ottawa (RCFO) hopes to bring the issue to the forefront as part of the CRTC's upcoming Jan. 20 hearing on access to broadcasting services in minority English and French speaking communities. "For example if you talk of community radio , it is in many places in Canada but still not in the region here, which has the biggest French community outside of Quebec," RCFO president Lucien Bradet told Canadian Communications Reports. "I have read a number of the presentations and unfortunately, I saw what I was expecting. Most, if not all of the Anglophone presentations are saying everything is nice, don't do anything special. And you read all the Francophone ones and nothing is all nice, there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of problems." The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, for example, is among those supporting the status quo, insisting that steps taken by the CRTC since 2001 to increase the official language radio presence in minority communities has been successful. They include approving 12 new community radio stations in minority language communities since 2001, creating the Community Radio Fund of Canada and encouraging the CBC to ensure fair representation of all francophone groups on all regional and network programs and to extend Chaine culturelle into French linguistic minority communities. Besides, the CAB stresses, it's not economically viable for private broadcasters to service small francophone populations spread disparately across a vast geographic region. "Given the questionable viability of providing service to such markets, it remains in the CAB's view that it is unrealistic in most cases to expect any change to the extension of over-the-air French-language radio or television services in markets outside of Québec. Even where there would be a critical mass of francophones, such as in Toronto, which has a French speaking population of more than 100,000, the absence of available radio frequencies in this market makes it impossible, should there be a clear demand established for it, to offer an additional French Language radio service," the CAB notes in its intervention. Bradet says the alternative is to have these gaps filled by community radio stations and public broadcasters. For example, he says other provinces should follow the lead of Quebec and Ontario in establishing public French-language television stations for their francophone residents. But while Bradet says accessibility is a crucial matter, he also calls on the commission to ensure that licensing for community radio stations serving minority English and French language communities should not be overlooked in favour of big media conglomerates. "Accessibility is perhaps the most complex question and the reverse of that is that the commercial operators are saying ‘don't give the airwaves, licences to those non-profit organisations because it takes our space,'" he says, adding that the CRTC must be reminded that delivery of broadcast services via community radio is a national obligation that should not be sacrificed in favour of commercial radio. The issue of minority language broadcast services appear to be a priority of the federal Conservative government. In March, it announced $540,000 in funding for nine francophone community radio stations across Canada, including money to establish new stations. This month's hearing in Gatineau PQ is in response a June Order in Council from Canadian Heritage asking the CRTC to report by March 20 on the accessibility and quality of broadcasting services to minority French and English-language communities. The Heritage department waded into the commission's jurisdiction again in November after the CRTC turned down RCFO's application to operate a FM community radio station serving an estimated 200,000 Francophones in eastern Ontario. Seven other applications were also unsuccessful, including an application for a campus French-language station.

Rejected CRTC applicant wants bigger role for French-language community radio; hearing begins Jan. 20

Broadcast | January 5, 2009

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