CCA to CRTC: Put Communities Back in Community Television and: The Canada Prizes for the Arts and Creativity Resurface

CCA Bul­letin 12/10

May 4, 2010

Just the Facts – CRTC hear­ing on Com­mu­nity Television

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) appeared in front of the CRTC today to present its views on the pol­icy frame­work for com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion. The cur­rent hearing’s pur­pose is to deter­mine clearly how the objec­tives embed­ded in the con­cept of com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion in the Broad­cast­ing Act can be best achieved within the con­ver­gent envi­ron­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and broadcasting.

The CCA has reit­er­ated the sup­port expressed in a Feb­ru­ary 1, 2010 sub­mis­sion in favour of the broad pro­posal put for­ward by the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­mu­nity Tele­vi­sion Users and Sta­tions (CACTUS), and urged the CRTC to put com­mu­ni­ties back into com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion.  CACTUS is propos­ing a return to truly com­mu­nity owned and con­trolled sta­tions and for the cre­ation of an inde­pen­dent Com­mu­nity Access Media Fund financed by the cur­rent 2% levy on cable oper­a­tors’ gross rev­enue. With the money cur­rently avail­able, CACTUS pro­poses to cre­ate some 250 multi-media com­mu­nity cen­tres across Canada. This pro­posal has already received the sup­port of a large num­ber of cul­tural and civil soci­ety organizations.

Tell me more

The CRTC is faced with two com­pet­ing mod­els to gov­ern how com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion will oper­ate. The CACTUS model pro­poses that com­mu­nity TV be con­trolled by com­mu­ni­ties, in the same way that pri­vate com­pa­nies con­trol pri­vate broad­cast­ing: this model is closely aligned with what the CCA deems to be the intent of the Act.

The other model pro­poses that pri­vate cable oper­a­tors fur­ther extend their con­trol and author­ity over com­mu­nity TV. This cable-operated model is the ill-defined result of changes in tech­nolo­gies, con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship and the ensu­ing com­mer­cial based approach that has been allowed to develop in a con­text of inad­e­quate account­abil­ity. Over the years, cable oper­a­tors have dras­ti­cally changed the con­cept of com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion and reduced the num­ber of sta­tions. Some provinces are left with only one com­mu­nity chan­nel and in gen­eral, there is con­sid­er­ably less orig­i­nal com­mu­nity pro­gram­ming pro­duced in Canada com­pared to 10 years ago.

The relent­less efforts of CACTUS to get rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion on how cable oper­a­tors use the $130 mil­lion which they col­lect annu­ally have demon­strated the total lack of account­abil­ity of the cur­rent sys­tem. Despite very last minute efforts by the CRTC to ask for some coher­ent report­ing by cable oper­a­tors, the pub­lic will still be lack­ing the tools required to prop­erly eval­u­ate how well the cur­rent com­mu­nity TV pol­icy has been work­ing and how well it deliv­ers on the social objec­tives set by Par­lia­ment.  The new infor­ma­tion to be made avail­able for com­ments at the end of this week falls short of what is required. For exam­ple, one would need to know:

1. how many orig­i­nal hours of Cana­dian con­tent are broad­cast in com­par­i­son to repeats;

2. how many cable staff are being paid by cable sub­scribers to sup­port com­mu­nity TV, per com­mu­nity, and whether these staff work on other cable business;

3.how many vol­un­teers receive train­ing, and in what areas. Are those vol­un­teers sim­ply act­ing as free staff for cable oper­a­tors?  Or are most learn­ing how to cre­ate and pro­duce their own programs?

4.how much money is being used to pay for cable com­pa­nies’ “own” programs?

The CCA con­cludes that the future of com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion can­not be dealt with fairly and com­pletely within the con­fines of the cur­rent hear­ing. The CCA has there­fore asked the CRTC to enable a debate based on fac­tual analy­sis of the cur­rent sys­tem and of the alter­na­tive pre­sented by CACTUS.

The CCA invites the CRTC to do the following:

On May 3, the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, the Hon. James Moore, re-announced the estab­lish­ment of the Canada Prizes for the Arts and Cre­ativ­ity. The Min­is­ter stated that the Prize will be admin­is­tered by the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts – a move which the CCA sup­ports and had called for in order to avoid spend­ing unnec­es­sary resources on estab­lish­ing new infra­struc­ture to pro­duce the Prizes.

The sec­ond seem­ingly good piece of news is that  the focus of the Prizes now seems to have turned 180o and instead of “fer­ret­ing out the best and bright­est young tal­ent from around the world” as announced last year, “these Prizes will rec­og­nize out­stand­ing Cana­dian artis­tic achieve­ments and will help brand Canada as a cen­tre of excel­lence.”

The Canada Prizes were orig­i­nally announced in the 2009 Fed­eral Bud­get as part of the Eco­nomic Stim­u­lus Pack­age. The $ 25 mil­lion endow­ment had come as a total sur­prise to most and imme­di­ately cre­ated a back­lash within the cul­tural com­mu­nity, lead­ing the Min­is­ter to quickly dis­tance him­self from the project. Con­ceived as an inter­na­tional Toronto-based com­pe­ti­tion, the Canada Prizes were announced a few months after major cuts were made to pro­grams fund­ing the pro­mo­tion and audi­ence devel­op­ment of Cana­dian artists abroad. At the time, many believed that the $25 mil­lion allo­cated towards the Prize should have been money rein­vested into the mar­ket­ing of Cana­dian tal­ent on an inter­na­tional stage, rather than award­ing inter­na­tional artists within Canada.  The lat­ter issue remains unre­solved to this day.

Tell me more

The Min­is­ter has set up an Advi­sory panel of experts that will gen­er­ate a series of rec­om­men­da­tions and options regard­ing the para­me­ters of the Canada Prizes. The mem­bers of the Advi­sory Panel are Joseph L. Rot­man, Simon Brault, Tony Gagliano, Liza Maheu, and Jen­nifer Clarke. This group must present a final report to the gov­ern­ment dur­ing the summer.

Mr. Rot­man is the Chair of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. Mr. Brault is the CEO of the National The­atre School and the Vice-Chair of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. Mr. Gagliano is cur­rently Exec­u­tive Chair­man and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of St. Joseph Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the Pres­i­dent of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Ms. Maheu is Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of La Mai­son des artistes visuels du Man­i­toba and sits on the Board of Trustees for the National Gallery of Canada. Finally, Ms. Clarke is the Pres­i­dent of JPC Strate­gies Ltd. and has been a Project Man­ager with the National Mar­itime Cen­tre for the Pacific and the Arc­tic since 2006.

What can I do?

The Advi­sory Panel will ben­e­fit from dis­cus­sions with key fig­ures in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor as it con­sid­ers the best model for the Canada Prizes. It will also take into account writ­ten sub­mis­sions from Cana­di­ans inter­ested in shar­ing their views about this ini­tia­tive through an online con­sul­ta­tion process. To take part in this online con­sul­ta­tion, Cana­di­ans are invited to visit www.canadianheritage.gc.ca.