Approval of CBC Bold rebrand is ‘making a mockery of the licensing process’: Patrone

The CRTC approved Tuesday the CBC’s application to rebrand and amend the nature of service for its Category 1 specialty service known as Bold. But the commission’s approval, by majority vote, received some stern words from commissioner Marc Patrone, who said the decision is “essentially making a mockery of the licensing process.” Last April, the CRTC denied the CBC’s application to change the channel’s licence. The issue arose in 2007 when the CBC sought to rebrand its Country Canada channel as Bold, modifying its schedule from programming aimed at rural Canadians to high-end drama and the performing arts. Despite receiving CRTC advice that licence amendments would be necessary for the CBC to change the channel’s programming, the broadcaster maintained that Bold was in line with Country Canada’s broadcasting licence and rebranded it in 2008. Last year, after the commission told the CBC to submit an alternative programming proposal for the service, CBC proposed a new nature of service for the channel, saying that it would provide a “specialty television service for rural Canadian families, with a focus on adults 25-54. The service will provide information, interaction and entertainment from a rural perspective.” In its decision Tuesday, the CRTC noted the CBC’s claim that “it faces challenges concerning the availability of off-the-shelf programming from a rural perspective and that the service has limited financial resources to produce original content that serves this purpose.” The commission said it would be acceptable for the CBC to reposition Bold to address these challenges while remaining a service for rural Canadians. While accepting the CBC’s application, the commission imposed licence conditions saying that service must focus on adults aged 25 to 54 and “reflect the living realities of rural Canadians.” “Rural Canadians” was changed to reflect Statistics Canada’s definition of “individuals from rural non-metro adjacent areas, rural metro adjacent areas and rural northern areas.” Commissioners Peter Menzies and Marc Patrone both offered dissenting opinions to the commission’s approval of the change. Menzies wrote that the decision is part of a pattern of “expedient decision-making that puts the short-term interests of individual broadcasters ahead of the long-term health of the system at large and the best interests of consumers.” Patrone wrote the decision breaks the promise to provide a service focused on the rural perspective. “With this decision, we allow the public broadcaster to turn its specialty service into what I consider ‘CBC 2,’ an extension of its over-the-air service,” he wrote. “We are, in effect, rewarding the public broadcaster for reneging on its obligations and essentially making a mockery of the licensing process.” The CRTC decision on Bold came with another decision Tuesday that approved a new country specialty channel licence called The Country Channel. Similar to Bold, the licence is for a national, English-language Category 2 specialty service geared toward rural Canadians, and will be owned by a company called William Sawchyn OBCI. The condition of licence for the service defines rural Canadians “as individuals who live outside of large urban centers, in communities, and who predominantly make their living from the land and sea and/or through businesses that are directly associated with those that do.” As a Category 2 channel, the licence owner must negotiate carriage of the channel with broadcasting distributors to launch it. The commission said it received several interventions in support of the application as well as one opposed, which it did not consider substantial. news@thewirereport.ca

Approval of CBC Bold rebrand is ‘making a mockery of the licensing process’: Patrone

Broadcast | May 5, 2011

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