Ottawa (January 21, 2009) The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) hand-delivered more than four hundred submissions to the CRTC today in support of community control of community media.

“Despite enormous obstacles we’ve been trying to get the word out to everyone concerned about the future of their community TV channels,” said spokesperson Cathy Edwards. “We’re grateful that 430 people have already filed submissions that support community administration of and access to these channels. But we’re very concerned that these comments, some of them sent to the CRTC more than two weeks ago, aren’t showing up on the CRTC’s website record of the proceeding.”

CACTUS noted that the CRTC has no specific rules about submissions filed for policy hearings, and generally posts such letters promptly. “Some people have signed the same letter of support for a return to genuine community television,” Edwards said. “But others have taken the time to share their own experiences with community television and the importance of access for ordinary people to the broadcasting system. There are even submissions in support of a return to community-access that were originally posted on the site that have disappeared.” Meanwhile, several hundred letters that support the status quo (cable companies running community channels) have been made available for examination by the CRTC.

“It’s a mystery,” said Edwards, “but we hope we can help the CRTC by delivering the submissions ourselves – all four and a quarter pounds’ worth.” The CRTC is preparing to conduct its first review of its community TV policy in eight years. The deadline for comments is midnight, February 1st.

A link and tips for responding to the CRTC’s call for public comments are available from CACTUS at:

http://www.cactusmedia.ca

To send the CRTC your views with just one click, go to:

http://openmedia.ca/action

On November 16, 2022, cartt.ca published a story entitled Community TV groups call for C-18 amendments to include non-profit, small broadcasters. Note that cartt.ca is a subscription service.

On August 26, 2019, cartt.ca published a story entitled CACTUS Taking Local Journalist Funding Applications from Community TV Groups, regarding the launch of Canadian Heritage's Local Journalism Initiative. Note that cartt.ca is a subscription service.

On January 19 2018, J Source published a story entitled The CRTC's "Big Telcom" Blind Spot, about how the CRTC privileges the needs of large telecommunications companies at the expense of smaller players and overall diversity within the broadcasting system. The article cites CACTUS' Executive Director, Cathy Edwards.

On February 11, 2015, ccart.ca published a story entitled CRTC Decision on Vidéotron’s MAtv Falls Short, Says Community TV Association, concerning the application by ICTV to operate the community channel in Montreal as a not-for-profit venture.

On February 6, 2015, Le Devoir published a story entitled Double réprimande pour Vidéotron:
Le CRTC trouve que la chaîne MAtv n’est pas assez communautaire et refuse le mode de financement du projet anglo MYtv
, concerning the complaint by ICTV against Videotron's Montreal community channel.

Ottawa (24 November 2009) In its submission to the CRTC hearing on November 25, The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) will propose a novel and cost-effective way to maintain, support and increase local programming content.
“As one of the three elements protected by the Broadcasting Act, community broadcasting must be community-controlled,” says Cathy Edwards, spokesperson for CACTUS. “While Canada’s community radio stations offer intensely local content, our community television sector’s dependence on the cable industry has resulted in studio closures, reduced community access, and attempts to commercialize community channels to compete for advertising with local TV stations.”

To give Canadian communities a true community alternative, CACTUS will be asking the CRTC to liberate the money earmarked for community access to an independent production fund directed at volunteer community TV boards. They would offer free over-the-air community TV, free training to community participants and free access on all platforms including new media. “We see community TV much like a public library. It should be the communications hub and active voice of Canadians in their cities and towns,” said Edwards.

CACTUS believes that the coming analog-digital transition offers community TV the chance to develop a new business model, and to help remote private and public signals such as CTV and the CBC, remain available over the air to all communities, regardless of their size.
CACTUS is encouraging Canadians to express their views and support the community sector, by commenting on the CRTC’s consultation notice on community TV (Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2009-661). Canadians can write to the CRTC (CRTC, Ottawa, ON K1A 0N2) or file online at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-661.htm. The CRTC’s dead-line for comments on this policy is February 1, 2010.

Contact: Catherine Edwards, (819) 772-2862

Ottawa (4 December 2009) In its presentation to the CRTC hearing on December 7, the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) will present new alternatives for providing community content and maintaining over-the-air service from Canada’s major TV broadcasters, without imposing new costs on consumers.

“The Broadcasting Act says that Canadians’ local television needs are fundamentally important objectives of Canada’s broadcasting policy,” says Cathy Edwards, spokesperson for CACTUS. Independent community TV channels, such as NACTV in Neepawa, Manitoba, produced 2,200 hours of original intensely local TV programming for a budget of about $80,000 this year. That’s $36 per original hour, using two employees and forty volunteers in a community of just over 3,000. Meanwhile, according to information filed with the CRTC, Shaw cablecast 5832 hours of locally produced programming per week (including repeats) throughout its 54 systems for $64,000,000, or upwards of $211 per hour, depending on the number of repeats. “It’s shocking that Shaw and other big BDUs are promoting the community access TV they are required to provide as a competitor for private broadcasting, when they are actually doing fewer original hours than community-run services such as NACTV.”

CACTUS believes that the coming analog-digital transition offers community TV the chance to develop a new business model, and to help remote private and public signals such as CTV and the CBC remain available over the air to all communities, regardless of size. Once communities like Neepawa have transmitter sites, they will also have the capacity to retransmit remote private and public signals such as CTV and the CBC. Independent community TV organizations are already offering this service in Valemont and Ash Creek, BC.

CACTUS Invites Public Comment on Community TV

Ottawa (January 11, 2009) The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) has published a free guide to a forthcoming federal review of community TV channels in Canada. Available through the CACTUS website, the guide reviews and discusses the questions that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has posed prior to its community TV hearing this April.

“Programming that is produced by, for and about local communities is one of three elements of our broadcasting system that Parliament addresses in the Broadcast Act,” said CACTUS spokesperson Cathy Edwards. “Although Canadians have heard a great deal about the chance that local commercial TV stations could go dark if cable companies do not start paying for them, they have heard far less about the one element of the broadcasting system that is supposed to give Canadians a direct and active voice in their broadcasting system--community TV.”

Edwards pointed out that although the CRTC requires cable companies to spend a minimum of 2% of their gross revenues to fund a platform that local communities can use for local expression, over the past decade many cable companies have cut off communities’ access to this platform by closing studios and replacing community volunteers with paid staff.

“Most Canadians don’t know they have the right to access these channels to get their messages out and to gain broadcasting experience,” Edwards said, “and unfortunately most don’t know about the CRTC’s April 26 policy hearing about this issue. We designed our guide to encourage participation in this important process.” The deadline for Canadians to respond to the CRTC’s questions about community TV is February 1, 2010.

CACTUS Questions CRTC’s Decision to Deny Canadians Information about Community TV

Ottawa (January 13, 2009) The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) fears that the CRTC’s failure to provide adequate information about community TV threatens meaningful participation by Canadians in the CRTC’s review of this element of our broadcasting system. “The community sector is the only part of the broadcasting system that is directly accessible to the Canadians, and this is its first review by the CRTC in eight years,” said spokesperson Cathy Edwards. “The lack of publicity by the CRTC about this important hearing along with the absence of meaningful and objective data, together deny Canadians the opportunity to understand how $116 million dollars that cable subscribers paid for community TV in 2008 alone, were actually spent.”

While the CRTC’s current rules require radio and TV stations to broadcast neutral information when their licences are being renewed, there are no rules about hearings like the April 2010 community TV policy review. “Since its call for comments on community TV was first published on its website in late October, we’ve been asking the CRTC to require cable companies to publicize this hearing with an objective notice on community channels themselves. After our fourth request, the CRTC finally passed it on to Canada’s largest cable companies—but so far only one has responded. And its proposed wording describes community channels as ‘Rogers TV’ without mentioning the channels’ true mandate—to provide communities with access to the broadcasting system, not to be part of a cable company’s brand or business.”

CACTUS press releases can be accessed by date and topic using the navigation bar to the left.

CACTUS believes that community media is vital for the health of modern democracies. Individuals need local forums where they can learn about all media, not just television, and have dialogue with others about the culture, issues and events that shape their communities. It is in the process of learning together and participating in this exchange that communities gather the perspective and tools they need to effect positive change.

Once upon a time, the CRTC recognized and defended this vision. Canada was the first in the world to enact official policy to promote community television.

Today, however, CACTUS estimates that 90% of Canadians no longer have access to a genuine community television channel. Cable companies, that were entrusted with the administration and running of most community TV channels, have tended to both regionalize and professionalize their productions over the last dozen years. The public has been gradually excluded in most parts of the country, especially from producing roles.

Cable is also available only to roughly 60% of Canadians today, so it is no longer possible for all or even most members of a community to share their stories on this platform.

For these reasons, CACTUS believes that the time has come for community channels to be run by communities themselves. Community control defines the community sector in all other countries that recognize community media as a sector distinct from the public and private sectors. Community control is also the hallmark of the community radio sector right here in Canada.

Since the introduction of cable television in the early 1970s, the CRTC has expected cable companies to contribute to the creation of Canadian content, to balance the influx of American programming that they enable to Canadian homes. This effective tax was justified by policymakers because cable uses public rights of way, were given monopoly licenses in their service areas, and since cable redistribution does not require the cable operator to shoulder any of the risks of production, (unlike a broadcaster).

In the early years of this policy, the entire contribution to Canadian culture was in spending on a community channel, and was recommended at 10% of gross revenues. By the 1990s, this amount had been reduced to 5%.

In 1997, with the introduction of satellite competition for cable and with the creation of the Canadian Television Fund (the CTF) for professional production, the community channel was partly deregulated. Cable companies were given the option of giving their whole 5% contribution to Canadian culture to the CTF and not having a community channel, or retaining 2% for the operation of a community channel, and giving 3% to the CTF. In markets under 20,000 subscribers, cable operators were allowed to retain the whole 5% for community programming, if they opted to have a channel. For the full text of this policy, see http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1997/PB97-25.HTM, section IV.