Communities say CBC asking too much in $4,800 analog transmitter rental fee

CBC/Radio Canada will rent out its decommissioned analog transmitters for the lower-end fee of $4,800 per year, which community groups said they cannot afford. CBC plans to shut down 607 analog transmitters July 31, saving the public broadcaster $10 million annually as it faces a $115-million budget cut. The analog shut down will affect 604 communities across Canada that now receive the public broadcaster over-the-air in analog. The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) has campaigned for the CBC to allow communities to take control of the decommissioned analog TV transmitters for their own broadcasts, but it said asking $4,800 per year is too much. “The CBC is keeping the tower because they’re using it for radio as well, and they’re telling communities that, ‘Sure, you can have the transmitter, but we’re going to charge you $4,800 a year in rent,’” Cathy Edwards, a spokeswoman for CACTUS, said in an interview. “They just seem to want to nickel and dime communities and that’s too bad.” The Wire Report obtained a June 15 email to Penticton, B.C. community member Ron Shongrunden, in which the CBC responded to a request to purchase a local transmitter. Steve Guiton, CBC’s vice-president and chief regulatory officer, wrote in the email that the transmitter purchaser would be required to enter into a site sharing agreement with the broadcaster “for the housing of the assets on the CBC facility.” Guiton added: “The minimum licence fee for co-siting on a CBC site is $4,800/year indexed CPI.” According to posts on CACTUS’ website, the British Columbia communities of Hagensborg and Valemount received similar offers from CBC. Edwards said $4,800 annually for a community TV station would be significant because their budgets tend to range between $10,000 and $12,000 per year, mostly to keep a transmitter running and pay for electricity. “To suddenly have to pay that , that’s a lot,” Edwards said. “It’s not a very generous action considering that if they don’t rent it, it’s not like someone else wants that space … These are just tiny communities that are otherwise just going to lose service.” The community of Hay River, N.W.T., has also asked CBC to donate its equipment to operate an analog transmitter carrying CBC and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), CACTUS said. Gary Hoffman, president of the Hay River Community Service Television Society, which provides an over-the-air television service to Hay River residents at no cost, said in a phone interview that his discussions with CBC about taking control of the analog transmitter in the area have been “favourable.” “We’re sort of under the impression after talking to CBC people in the territory that they’re considering just giving it to us to continue to provide residents with their service at no cost, either way,” he said. “We won’t charge them to provide people with their signal and they won’t charge us anything.” Unlike other community TV stations, Hoffman said, the Community Service Television Society in Hay River collects its funding through the municipal tax system. He said an annual $4,800 fee would have to come from taxpayers and be approved by the town council. “My first thought, with the economy the way it is today, if they were to try to pass that kind of charge onto us, we’d say, 'Forget it,” he said. Ian Morrison, a spokesman for watchdog group the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said in a phone interview that CBC is trying to make money from its decommissioned equipment. “The perverse result is that they won’t get it,” Morrison said. “The community stations won’t get the equipment and the CBC won’t get the money. It’s the worst of all worlds.” John Morton, treasurer of the Hagensborg TV Society, said in a voicemail message to The Wire Report that the society shares a tower site with CBC where the equipment is 30 to 40 feet apart. He said CBC will continue to broadcast radio signals from the tower on the site, which makes Hagensborg subject to the rental fee. “It seems a little strange, because if they weren’t using it, they would probably just give it to us rather than go through the expense of moving it out and decommissioning the site,” Morton said. Morton added in a follow-up phone interview that the $4,800 rental fee is not feasible for the non-profit Hagensborg TV Society. “With a smaller population and a small coverage area, that would amount to another $50 or $100 per year per household,” Morton said. “It’s not feasible. It’s not going to happen.” He said the group now broadcasts five channels to the area and would still offer to buy CBC’s decommissioned equipment. “We’re going to figure out a way, but it’s going to be a lot more complicated than it would be if they had just let us use their tower,” he said. Hoffman said that in many northern communities, CBC operates APTN’s analog TV antennas, and when CBC shuts down analog operations, over-the-air APTN signals will go down with it. “This is a really well kept secret. Come Aug. 1, communities may find themselves not only missing CBC English anymore, but they may not have APTN,” he said. Hoffman said Hay River has a population of about 3,500 and that CBC’s coverage extends to the West Point First Nation area, which includes the Hay River Reserve, the Hay River Corridor, and the communities of Enterprise and Hay River, N.W.T. “So when you take a look at the population of all of them put together, you’re probably more in the neighbourhood of 8,000 people,” Hoffman said. Martin Marcotte, director of CBC transmission, said in an interview that CBC has a maintenance contract with APTN on 32 shared sites, which means 32 communities could be affected by the analog shutdown on July 31. Marcotte said the annual rental fees for space can range from $4,800 to $90,000, depending on where the tower is located and how much aperture the transmitter occupies on the tower. “If you have a tower in a large Canadian city where you have very high demand for space, the demand will also drive the price that you rent it at,” Marcotte said. He said $4,800 is “at the very low end” of the pricing scale. Marcotte said “CBC is doing this because of substantial financial pressures, and if we weren’t saving substantial amounts, we wouldn’t do it.” Marcotte said CACTUS pitched the idea that community groups could take over the broadcaster’s decommissioned equipment at no cost. “That is something that CACTUS came up with,” he said. “It’s not a position that CBC tabled or came up with.” Marcotte said that in Hay River, CBC pays a landlord “very substantial” money to lease a rooftop to house its TV and radio broadcasting infrastructure. “I can’t imagine that the landlord will rent that TV space out to another party at no cost,” he said. dgrenier@thewirereport.ca

Communities say CBC asking too much in $4,800 analog transmitter rental fee

Broadcast | July 26, 2012

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Communities say CBC asking too much in $4,800 analog transmitter rental fee

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