CACTUS Presents to Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

During the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage emergency meetings this summer on local programming, CACTUS members Cathy Edwards and Michael Lithgow made the following presentation (also available in video at http://www2.parl.gc.ca/CommitteeBusiness/CommitteeHome.aspx?Cmte=CHPC&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=2 (click on May 13th):

"The Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) is building a bilingual national membership of independent community television channels, cable co-op community television channels, some private cable companies that still practice community-access television, and the public who uses and watches them. We are an association that believes in citizen access to the airwaves... that is, that individual members of the public should be able to participate in the broadcast system.

The Broadcast Act specifies that Canada’s broadcasting system should enable a diversity of voices to be heard, and that there should be as broad-based access to it. The economic crisis has also focussed attention on the scarcity of local programming. The latter problem is not new, however. Both CBC and private broadcasters have been cutting back on production and shutting channels in smaller population centres for years. Over the same period, BDUs have progressively regionalized and professionalized community television production, resulting also in station closures and fewer hours of local programming.

This is a great pity, as it is the community sector that has the greatest capacity to address all three needs:

 For diversity
 For access by as many Canadians as possible
 For local programming and expression.

It is impossible to have more diversity and more broad-based access than to enable every Canadian, every organization in civil society, and every community to be a producer. This has been the genius of the Canadian community-access model, a brainchild of the National Film Board. It was enabled in the early 1970s by the introduction of portable video recorders and the presence of cable television in communities across the country. This model has been copied world-wide, and today is a robust part of the broadcasting systems of more than 30 nations, including the majority of Western democracies. Most have recognized community broadcasting as a third tier, which funtions according to a different paradigm than public and private broadcasting. Most recently, the European Union has recognized the tier formally, and recommended members to adopt financial and legislative supporting structures for the community tier as a way to promote inclusion and vital multicultural dialogue.

Meanwhile, here in the cradle of the community-access movement, the sector that has the most potential to respond to our crisis in local programming has been gutted by successive rounds of CRTC legislation and misuse of community channel funds by the country’s biggest cable operators:

 The damage began in 1997, when community television was officially deregulated. Funding to the sector was cut from 5% to 2% in larger markets to make way for the Canadian Television Fund, and cable operators were given the choice whether to have a community channel at all. Most opted to keep the 2% rather than give it up to the CTF, but began to look at the channels as potential revenue sources.

 Responding to pressure by cable companies, the CRTC relaxed rules against advertising on the channels. Many of the programs are thinly disguised vehicles for product promotion, often for national and international companies, not even local ones.

 The public in many centres such as Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg have been kicked off the channels, in favour of professionally produced formats that mimic commercial production. For example, in Calgary, where I worked as the Volunteer Co-ordinator from 1993 to 97, 400 volunteers and a half dozen staff produced over 35 hours of new production per week, in every conceivable genre, from mobile sports, to seniors and kids programs, to live arts and entertainment, to local issues and phone-in debates. After the channel was professionalized, production was reduced to one hour or less of news per day.

 Studios in smaller communities have been closed. Where Vancouver once had 12 regional offices giving access to 1200 volunteers, there is now one, in Shaw’s corporate tower downtown. Where New Brunswick once had 30 studios spread around the province, today Rogers offers only 6. Not only are cable operators closing studios on their own initiative without repercussion from the CRTC, but the CRTC is promoting the closures by allowing mergers of service areas.

 In 2002, in response to public outcry, the CRTC revised its 1997 policy, and introduced the requirement that cable community channels air 30-50% of “access production” (a far cry from the channels being 100% at the disposition of their communities, but better than nothing), and should offer training and equipment to the public. Most of the big cable BDUs simply ignore these rules because there has been no monitoring nor disciplinary action by the CRTC.

 The 2002 policy also introduced the idea that community groups should be able to apply for over-the-air licenses for community television, but there was no funding formula offered, and fewer than 10 community groups in English Canada have stepped up to the plate, mostly surviving on bingos and advertising. Approximately 40 independent community television corporations in Quebec have managed to survive on grants from the Quebec Ministry of Culture and sponsorship, but most are producing below capacity because of funding shortages.

 The 2002 policy also introduced the idea that if a cable operator was not providing community programming in the spirit of CRTC policy, that another organization within the community could apply for the 2-5% cable levy. Several such applications have been made, where cable operators are flagrantly violating access requirements, but they have always been turned down. As a double whammy, the low-power license holders who are offering access programming, cannot apply for the levy.

 Despite the CRTC commitment to hold a hearing into the community television sector this fall, recent CRTC rulings continue to damage this sector. In December, the CRTC ruled in a closed hearing in less than ten minutes that Shaw could buy the Campbell River TV Association, one of the last remaining cable co-operatives in English Canada, which had been providing community programming on Vancouver Island for over 50 years.

 Distinctions between cable license classes may be removed, resulting in less funding for community television in small communities (a reduction from 5% to 2% of cable gross revenues). This change was proposed in 2009-176, whose dead-line for interventions was this Monday.

 When concerned parties contact the CRTC to understand the impact of new regulations, CRTC staff themselves often seem unaware how changes affect the sector. There should be an Ombudsman’s Office for the Community Tier monitoring the coherency of decisions and policies.

So, CACTUS would like to alert the Standing Committee that we fear that the CRTC lacks the willpower and political backing to make the structural changes necessary. The loss to Canada is that the one sector that could best respond to the current crisis in local programming has been successively undermined. But how is the sector different?

 Because the community-access model employs volunteers, a typical community channel can produce 5-10 times as much programming as a professional channel. Any public or BDU-funding given to the sector acts as seed money, which is multiplied in the hands of the community to produce programming for the community. The current drift toward regionalization and commercialization of community channels by cable companies has meant that the same economic factors limiting local production in the public and private tiers have come into play in the community tier. This process needs to be reversed to get production back into communities, to leverage the economic and creative genius of the community-access model.

 Because program ideas come from the community itself, the community can produce programs tailored to its own needs. Better communication between local government, residents, businesses, and community organizations leads to better infrastructure development and better promotion of local events and culture.

 Participation in television production, which is still the medium by which most Canadians derive information and entertainment, develops a more engaged and critically aware populace, more able to deal with complex challenges as we move forward.

What would CACTUS like the Standing Committee to do?

To revitalize the community television sector so that it can play its part in fulfilling the diversity and access requirements of the Broadcast Act, the $80,000,000 being spent yearly by cable companies on so-called “community programming”, as identified by the Lincoln Report, Our Cultural Sovereignty, needs to be liberated to independently run community channels that are accessible to all, representative of their communities, and present in those communities. While cable companies may once have been the obvious trustee for community-access production, the era of the small cable company who was a close partner with the community is gone.

At a time when cable operators buy commercial TV stations for a dollar and may soon buy commercial TV networks, it is also disquieting that those same BDUs are gatekeepers for the issues that can be discussed on our community channels, the one—at least potentially—truly free grassroots window in the broadcasting system. This tier, when functioning as it was designed, is an essential safety valve for our democracies.

What will CACTUS pledge to do if this happens?

A NEW VISION:

During the ten years that community television has languished in Canada, it has made great advances around the world. With the adoption of small high-definition camcorders and computer editing suites, access centres in other countries are producing programs that are indistinguishable from professional content, except in ways that we view as an advantage: they are local, they are fresh, they take risks and showcase real people taking stands about local issues.

Not only has the video production technology changed, the distribution platforms have of course also changed. The most advanced community access centres in the world are platform-independent. They offer residents free training and equipment for not only video and radio production, but also web design and computer skills. They are housed in live theatres, libraries, and community centres, so that residents can “one-stop” shop to get their messages out. The resulting productions have must-carry status on all platforms, including over-the-air, cable, satellite, and Internet.

If community access centres of this kind can be adequately funded from the existing BDU levy or from new sources, CACTUS has the expertise to lead the tier to provide this level of service and to fill the gaps in local programming. Where Canada once led the world in the use of new technologies at the local level, we would do so again.

Thank you for your time."