Local1 proposal was more weather than news, Pelmorex says

The CRTC made the right move this month when it denied Corus Entertainment Inc.’s application for a new specialty channel that leaned more towards weather than news and information, Pelmorex Communications Inc. says. “It was a weather service, and I think the commission upheld their own policy,” Paul Temple, senior vice-president of regulatory and strategic affairs at Pelmorex, said in an interview. The Weather Network, and its French counterpart Météomedia, is owned by Pelmorex, and last year Corus applied for a Category 2 specialty licence to create a new “hyper-local” news and information network serving 64 markets in Western Canada. But in broadcasting decision 2011-68, issued Feb. 4, the CRTC said Corus did not demonstrate that its Local1 service would be distinct from The Weather Network. CRTC policy says that the commission will not issue standard, Category 2 specialty channel licences if they compete directly with any existing Category 1 services, which are those with mandatory carriage. The Weather Network has mandatory carriage with broadcasting distributors in part because it operates a national emergency alerting system. “Corus did not provide any programming commitments limiting the amount of weather-related content that could be broadcast by the proposed service,” the CRTC said in its decision, noting that The Weather Network and Local1 would have both aired national, regional and local weather forecasts. “he program categories from which they would draw programming as well as their target audiences are identical. The Commission is therefore not satisfied that the proposed service would not be directly competitive with TWN and considers that LOCAL1 does not pass the competitiveness test …” the CRTC said. Specialty channels operating in genres that the CRTC has deemed competitive, such as news and sports, can face competition from new Category 2 specialty services. That was the case last year when the CRTC approved an application for an all-news channel, Sun TV News, from Quebecor Media Inc. “Everyone likes to encroach as much as they can on the weather. If you look at CP 24, they’ve got weather on all the time, but it’s a small portion of what they’re doing,” Temple said. “In the Local1 application, it was the majority of what they were doing … It’s a significant difference, and it’s a matter of emphasis.” Sally Tindal, director of communications at Corus, passed on an email statement that said the company is disappointed that the CRTC has denied a service that would have provided “local news, information and weather related programming to communities throughout Western Canada.” She did not say whether Corus will reapply with an amended application that could satisfy the commission. “Currently, we are examining the decision and we will be exploring our options,” Tindal wrote. In its application, Corus called the service a 24-7 “utility channel” that would provide hyper-local news and information on a “recurring wheel basis.” The channel would take a “hyper-local” approach to broadcasting news and information about community events, activities and weather, through a mix of video, text, graphics and audio content, the company said. Corus did not say that it intended to establish local news bureaus, but the stations were expected to rely on video feeds, newswires, RSS feeds from Corus’ chain of radio stations, user-generated content, and press releases for information. Ian Morrison, a spokesman for watchdog group the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said he is happy with the CRTC decision because he wanted to see Corus put more resources into the network, creating local newsrooms and studios. Corus' proposed service may have been a profitable business model, he added. “My working assumption is that it would have been a money maker,” Morrison said. “If you can keep your expenses way down, that’s one way of making money.” sdoyle@thewirereport.ca

Local1 proposal was more weather than news, Pelmorex says

Broadcast | February 14, 2011

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