Rogers proposes ‘not-for-profit’ national OMNI channel

Rogers Communications Inc. is changing tack with its beleaguered OMNI ethnic stations, announcing Tuesday it’s applied for a licence for a national ethnic channel, which it asked the CRTC to include in skinny-basic packages, promising to restore previously cut ethnic programming if the proposal is approved. The channel’s business model would change from previously relying on ad revenue from U.S. programming to relying on the subscriber fees that come with mandatory carriage, or 9(1)(h) status, Colette Watson, vice-president of broadcast and TV operations at Rogers, said in a phone interview. “We are proposing to eliminate English programming for the most part. There will be some English programming, but it will be of an ethnic nature, if you will. The national cultural affairs will be done in English,” she said. A document submitted by Rogers to the CRTC with its application noted that OMNI stations removed U.S. programming in December 2015. The subscriber fees, in addition to ad revenue, would “allow for a more sustainable, longer-term source of revenue,” Watson said. The company is asking for a subscriber fee of $0.12 in English-language markets and $0.1 in French-language markets. Last year, Rogers eliminated local newscasts in Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin and Italian on OMNI stations and cut more than 100 jobs. In an appearance at a parliamentary committee in which Rogers representatives were questioned about the cuts, then-Rogers Media president Keith Pelley said OMNI’s advertising revenue dropped from $80 million to a projected $22 million in 2015. While OMNI’s source of income for ethnic programming used to be ad revenue from American programming, like reruns of sitcoms, Pelley said at the time that such content had stopped generating enough profit to keep funding ethnic content. Watson said the company’s calculations for a national OMNI channel were done a “not-for-profit basis,” and that the company is not expecting to make a profit on it. In response to a question about how unusual it is for a company to launch a division from which it can’t make money, Watson said “the commission would never give Rogers something just to make profits. We have to deliver a public service. People have been treating OMNI like a public service, and so in order for us to deliver on what those public policy assumptions are, this is how much it would cost to do so.” It’s something of a change of perspective from last year, when Pelley responded to a question about why Rogers couldn’t use revenues from its other TV stations to subsidize OMNI by stating: “OMNI is not a not-for-profit organization. OMNI is a separate entity that is part of a private company.” The timing of the announcement comes the same week that the CRTC plans to announce its decision on a hearing on local and community TV it held this winter, in which Rogers said it doesn’t think the creation of a fund for local news is the best way to address the problems facing local television. The new channel, OMNI Regional, would have four feeds. The Pacific, Prairies and East channels would mirror OMNI’s existing stations, while the Quebec feed would come from a partnership with International Channel/Canal International (ICI). ICI would continue to operate its over-the-air station in Montreal, while OMNI would keep its local stations in Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver, Rogers said in a press release. “As part of its proposal, OMNI Television is committing to bringing back four daily newscasts in Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese and Punjabi, making it the only national ethnic programming service in Canada to provide daily newscasts, seven days a week, in multiple languages,” the press release said. Rogers also promised to boost the percentage of ethnic programming on the channel from 60 to 80 per cent and devote 40 per cent of its annual revenues to Canadian programming. It also said it would maintain daily current affairs shows in Mandarin, Cantonese and Punjabi, create a national cultural affairs series produced in Alberta, and “re-establish in-house production in all of the markets served by OMNI’s OTA stations.” The four regional feeds of the national network would be tailored to those regions “by including English and French-language ethnic programming as well as third-language programming produced by local independent producers that reside in those regions,” the release added. In the document submitted to the CRTC, Rogers outlined projections for the next five years that include both subscriber fees and ad revenue. It said that the OMNI Regional brand "needs time to develop a national audience and, after five years, we are hopeful that OMNI Regional will be able to rely on national advertising and its negotiated wholesale fees to fund the undertaking." Independent consultant Kelly Lynne Ashton said in a phone interview that given the CRTC’s decision in a hearing on mandatory carriage two years ago, in which it denied 13 mandatory carriage applications, it seems unlikely that the CRTC will grant Rogers’ request. “Not only did the CRTC say ‘no,’ they pretty much sent the signal that they’re not going to, because as we move into an on-demand world, 9(1)(h) makes no sense,” Ashton said. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca

Rogers proposes ‘not-for-profit’ national OMNI channel

Broadcast | June 14, 2016

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Rogers proposes ‘not-for-profit’ national OMNI channel

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