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Decision
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Ottawa, 25 August 1989
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Decision CRTC 89-599
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Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - 883389900 - 883390700
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Following a Public Hearing in the National Capital Region on 27 June 1989, the Commission denies the application by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for a network licence to provide a national French-language news and information specialty service.
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The Commission also denies the CBC's application to amend condition of licence number 5 (Decision CRTC 87-904) regarding the monthly wholesale rate per subscriber for the English-language news and information service Newsworld. At the hearing, the CBC had indicated that this application was conditional upon the approval of the French-language news and information service.
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The Commission examined the CBC's application for the French-language news service in accordance with the licensing approach set out in Public Notice CRTC 1987-260 dated 30 November 1987. This process, which is applicable to specialty programming services, takes into account "the distinct characteristics, programming needs and marketing realities of the francophone and anglophone markets." The licensing approach also reflects the Commission's objective that "Canadians in both francophone and anglophone markets be given the chance to view more and better programs tailored to appeal to their different tastes and interests, and to ensure that those licensed to provide these programs are given an optimum opportunity to succeed and to contribute to fulfilling the objectives of the Broadcasting Act". The proposed service does not meet these criteria.
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The news and information service would have broadcast 114 hours of programming each week between 6:00 a.m. and midnight from Monday to Friday and between noon and midnight on Saturday and Sunday.
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The application indicated that a minimum of 25 hours 30 minutes per week (approximately 22% of the schedule) would be original programs. Of this amount, 16 hours would be devoted to the news magazine programs "A la bonne heure", scheduled for Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., "Fuseaux", a weekday hour-long program scheduled for 7:00 p.m., and "Communautés culturelles" Saturdays at 9:00 p.m., with the remaining 9 hours 30 minutes consisting of 5-minute news updates scheduled on the hour.
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Approximately 18% of the programming (20 hours per week) would consist of repeats of the major public affairs and news documentary programs currently broadcast on the CBC's French-language television network.
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The final component of the schedule, comprising approximately 60% of the total, would be devoted to unedited rebroadcasts of local supper-time news and information programs originating from 17 different cities across the country. Specifically, repeats of the previous day's newscasts prepared for audiences of the CBC's Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, Matane, Rimouski and Sept-Iles regional stations and of private stations in Jonquière, Rouyn-Noranda, Rivière-du-Loup, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières affiliated with the CBC's French-language television network, would be scheduled for seven hours a day, five days a week. A further 20 hours a week (8:00 p.m. to midnight Monday through Friday) would be devoted to repeats of the early evening newscasts seen locally on CBC stations in Moncton, Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto and Regina.
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The CBC explained that the local advertisements orignally broadcast within these news programs would be removed in order to permit the insertion of the hourly five-minute headline news updates.
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The CBC maintained that this service would be of considerable benefit to French-speaking viewers, to French-language journalism and to organizations that specialize in news gathering and dissemination and which could, in future, be associated with the service.
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In spite of the fact that so much of the proposed schedule would have consisted of repeats of programs not currently available beyond the local coverage areas, and the fact that much of the news content would be out-dated, the CBC was enthusiastic in its presentation of the programming elements of its application and offered a prediction that the service [TRANSLATION] "has the potential to surprise everyone" in the coming years. The Commission, however, was not able to conclude that the service as proposed would give Canadians access to additional and better quality programming, or that it would contribute to fulfilling the objectives of the Broadcasting Act.
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Further, the Commission does not share the CBC's contention, stated at the hearing, that the service as proposed could be [TRANSLATION] "the French-language counterpart of the English-language service" authorized by the Commission in 1987. Nor does the Commission accept the CBC's claim that it would be "a French-language equivalent of Newsworld". The Commission notes by way of comparison that approximately half of the Newsworld service's 168-hour weekly schedule consists of original programs.
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In the Commission's opinion, the large amount of air time on the proposed French-language service to be devoted to unedited rebroadcasts of regional news programs and of network public affairs programs would generate little interest among viewers. Even taking into consideration a certain amount of updating, the Commission is not able to conclude that such a formula would succeed in satisfying the expectations of the intended audience, particularly those viewers expecting to receive a service comparable in quality to the CBC's French-language television network or to the Newsworld service.
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In this respect, the interventions submitted by the Syndicat des journalistes de Radio-Canada and the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec (FPJQ) emphasized that rebroadcasts of the previous evening's newscasts are unacceptable. In the words of the FPJQ, [TRANSLATION] "the CBC cannot be allowed to mislead its audience in this way, even for short periods of time."
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For its part, the Canadian Television Producers & Directors Association (CTPDA) noted that [TRANSLATION] "to see reruns of 11 CBC supper hour newscasts could seem repetitive and become monotonous, especially as certain news stories are inevitably used by all stations". The CTPDA added that broadcasting a news story the day after the event could [TRANSLATION] "harm our credibility in certain cases".
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At the hearing, the CBC admitted that [TRANSLATION] "the French-language service [would] not have the necessary means to give this regular programming a totally original character", as opposed to the English-language specialty news service which can afford to re-edit all of the regional segments it uses.
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According to the projected production costs for the original programs, it is unlikely that the proposed service would have contributed to enhancing the overall quality of French-language television news. Further, the Commission notes that the applicant's forecasts indicated that it would allocate an average of 31% of its revenues to Canadian programming expenses over the first three years, while the existing English-language specialty news service would allocate 58%, over the same period.
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In an effort to demonstrate that the proposal was feasible, the CBC submitted the results of a joint study it had conducted in the spring of 1988 with SORECOM. The study consisted of a number of questions included in the survey the CBC conducts each year to ascertain its competitive position with regard to other stations.
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At the hearing, the CBC stated that [TRANSLATION] "although it had not conducted a market study as such, part of the data it had compiled did provide an indication that there was a general interest in news and, specifically, an interest in a network devoted to news and information programming".
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To demonstrate the existence of viewer demand for the proposed service, the CBC referred, among other things, to the answers to a very general question in the survey which asked about the interest in an all news service. The question, however, did not include details pertinent to the application before the Commission. Moreover, it gave the impression that the French-language service would be similar to the English-language news service. Under these conditions, those interviewed could not have had an accurate idea of the type of programming the CBC is proposing.
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Based on information submitted at the hearing and on the joint study undertaken by SORECOM and the CBC, the Commission does not consider that the CBC has adequately demonstrated the potential success of the proposed service. The Corporation offered no evidence of public willingness to pay for the service nor did it provide formal commitments from cable companies to distribute the service. In addition to the three interventions mentioned earlier, the Commission received some 25 interventions, all of which have been considered in its assessment of the application. Although some of the interveners agreed with the concept of a French-language specialty news service, the majority expressed either their opposition or their strong reservations with respect to this particular application. This opinion was shared, in varying degrees, by such diverse interests as Quebec broadcasters (the TVA television network, CFCF Inc. and the Société de Radio-Télévision du Québec), the Consumers' Association of Canada and the Quebec Ministry of Communications.
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The intervention submitted by the Association québécoise des câblodistributeurs, which represents some 60 cable television undertakings serving more than 1.4 million subscribers, noted that [TRANSLATION] "while not hostile to the introduction of a French-language news channel, [it considers] that the CBC has not demonstrated either the relevance or the viability of such a channel on the basic service".
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Accordingly, for the reasons given above, particularly those associated with the programming and the viability of the service, the Commission has concluded that it would not be in the public interest to issue a licence to the CBC for the service as proposed.
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Fernand Bélisle
Secretary General
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