CRTC asked to protect local TV news, programming

As senior CRTC officials are scheduled to appear before the Commons Heritage Committee Wednesday to discuss the dire state of local TV news stations across Canada, industry watchers sayit's time for the broadcast regulator to take a stand to defend community news coverage.

Konrad von Finckenstein, chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, will be part of the group appearing in Ottawa.

Private television networks Canwest Global and CTV have asked the CRTC to relax their licence conditions, including allowing them to reduce the amount of local programming. Both broadcasters have said they are losing money operating in local markets and have cancelled shows, reduced programming and closed or sold stations in cities from Victoria to Montreal.

The broadcasters blame the fractured media landscape and the current recession for the cuts, but industry watchers and staffers want the CRTC to protect local news coverage.

"The CRTC has to finally say 'No, we're not going to accept it. Figure it out, but you're not going to be able to play this game anymore,'" Donna Skelly, a longtime anchor for Hamilton station CHCH, told CBC News.

'The model that's broken is the conglomerate model of ownership financed by debt that's led to cutbacks and cutbacks. But that doesn't mean local broadcasting is broken or local TV is broken either.' Journalism professor Christopher Waddell

"[The networks have] spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on American programming and they simply want to do more?"

Skelly, who is part of a community group trying to buy the Hamilton station, says she believes local news operations can make a modest profit.Carlton University journalism professor Christopher Waddell agrees.

"The model that's broken is the conglomerate model of ownership financed by debt that's led to cutbacks and cutbacks," said the Ottawa-based Waddell, CBC-TV's former parliamentary bureau chief and a former reporter and editor for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

"But that doesn't mean local broadcasting is broken or localTV is broken, either."

He also thinks that carriage fees paid to the broadcasters by the cable companies who now carrytheir signals for free could be a solution, as long as the networks guarantee support for local programming.

"We've seen a lot of changes for the benefits of the conglomerates and the oligopoly that owns the media in this country. We haven't seen many conditions put on for the benefit of consumers."