CBC and St. Croix Courier Pick Up Story of Community TV Channels in New Brunswick Threatened by Rogers

Rogers has announced that it will be terminating 3 community programming services in the southwest corner of New Brunswick before the end of the year. Nine communities have been operating the community channel on Rogers (and formerly Fundy Cable) for upwards of 17 years, although never with financial support from either cable company. Rogers is expected ultimately to replace the individual services of these nine communities with a single feed from one of its larger regional centres, probably Fredericton or Saint John.

Patrick Watt of St. Andrews Community TV will be assisting these communities to either:

a) incorporate as "community television corporations", which will entitle them to at least 4 hours per week on the Rogers-operated channel.

b) apply to the CRTC to carry on a "community programming service", which will mean that Rogers must carry them on a digital channel.

c) apply to the CRTC for a low-power over-the-air license, which would mean that residents in these communities could see the channel for free. These channels would also have must-carry status on Rogers' basic tier.

These three options were enabled by CRTC policy 2002-61 and are currently available to any community group in Canada. Few groups have taken advantage of the 2002 policy because of a lack of viable funding options (with the exception of groups in Quebec, who have access to Quebec Ministry of Culture funding).

The CBC ran a televised story about the situation in southwest New Brunswick last week. You can see it on YouTube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYIMx1ItbxM

The NB newspaper the St. Croix Courier also reported on the situation. The text of the story follows:

Future of community channels in limbo

By BARB RAYNER
barbrayn@nbnet.nb.ca

ST. GEORGE – The future of the community channels which serve the St. George and St. Stephen areas is in jeopardy.
In eastern Charlotte this would mean the end of the annual Christmas telethon live broadcast the Pennfield Lions Club and raises money for needy families.
The problem is that Rogers Communications is putting fibre optic cable into Charlotte County in order to deliver HDTV and the company says it would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue local television broadcasts.
Currently there are community stations operating out of St. George and St. Stephen while the volunteers who work on the St. Andrews Community Channel saw the writing on the wall some time ago so they now have their own broadcast licence.
Patrick Watt, who is a volunteer with the St. Andrew Community Channel CHCT, said they are one of some 15 independent community channels with a licence in Canada and probably the only one within the Rogers cable system that the company would have to deal with.
“This should not affect us too much because we have a licence. In St. George and St. Stephen their channels don’t have licences so it is quite easy for Rogers to say they are done.
“Under CRTC regulations, any community can start its own community television station on cable or you can have an over-the-air broadcast which requires cable to carry the station. You get the best of both worlds when you get a UHF channel as we have.”
He said Fundy Cable at one time gave their support to these stations but Rogers simply is not.
“At one time staff from Fundy Cable used to come to the stations from Saint John and Fredericton and would help train local volunteers. It is just a different corporate world today.
“I have dumped a lot of effort and heart into this. I started in community television with Fundy Cable when I was 16 years old – that’s 23 years ago.”
Watt said it will be a shame if St. George and St. Stephen lose their community channels. CHCT would like to involve all Charlotte communities so that local TV shows and event coverage could continue to be watched all over the county.
“We want to keep community TV alive because we think it’s really important. It would ignite all kinds of opportunities. I can foresee it to be a very wonderful thing.”
If the communities could pool their resources, said Watt, and produce programs county-wide it is likely more people would watch CHCT and get involved.
With today’s technology, people in St. Stephen or St. George could go to their community access centre, or even their home computer, and upload their videos to the station’s server then, once it was approved, it could be shown on CHCT-TV.
“It is a very attainable vision we have. We proposed to the CRTC that CHCT be carried across the county when the new digital cable
comes to town.
“That is done in Nova Scotia at a community station in Cape Breton. They do a really good job getting support from their local channel there and are being carried by three or four different cable systems. “We approached Rogers for county-wide coverage and hope to work with them to make it happen for CHCT-TV. Their new digital cable system originates in St. Andrews so it is almost just the flick of a switch to make it happen.”
If that was done, he said, the Christmas telethon, for instance, could be broadcast all across the county not just in eastern Charlotte. The telethon then could potentially raise much more money for many more families.
“Fifteen years ago, there were 300 cable TV stations in Canada. Today there are now 200 and of these, only about 100 are truly public access channels. Sadly, these 100 stations serve towns of less than 10,000 people therefore only ten per cent of Canadians have access to public access TV.”
If CHCT served the whole of Charlotte County, said Watt, it would
also appeal to more local advertisers. This, in turn, would allow CHCT to upgrade their transmitter then they could extend programming to the islands of Deer Island, Campobello and Grand Manan as well.
“The possibilities are endless and to me it is very exciting. We would like public support for this idea. It is a known fact that many people kept their cable to play bingo. If you take that off, a lot of people are likely to switch to satellite.”