CACTUS promoting rebroadcasting strategies with local communities

Hundreds of Canadian communities could lose access to free television signals in non-mandatory markets if broadcasters don’t replace ageing, analog transmitters, the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) says. But the organization says it has a fix and is trying to empower people to take control of the future of TV in their communities. Broadcasters in the CRTC’s 30 mandatory markets are upgrading their signals to digital this month, but local broadcasters in small, non-mandatory communities are not obligated to replace their analog transmitters when they eventually fall into disrepair, Cathy Edwards, a spokeswoman for CACTUS, said in an interview. Edwards is encouraging communities to take advantage of the digital transition’s opportunities and start their own community rebroadcasting services, which could also include a community television channel and local Internet service. She said hundreds of communities have been rebroadcasting signals since the 1980s, following a government push to get the CBC into every community with more than 500 people. But many communities decided they wanted other channels, too, and set up links from bigger centres to retransmit signals using microwaves. When satellite television was introduced in the 1990s, it became easier for satellite uplinks to receive broadcasters’ remote signals. Edwards said the transition to digital provides another opportunity for more communities to start their own rebroadcasting, and CACTUS has put together a how-to guide. She said more than 100 communities are now doing it and that 70 others are part of community cable co-operatives. “Anybody could always do it, but why it’s more attractive now than ever before is because we know that broadcasters are not likely to start renewing their analog transmitters,” she said. “More and more communities are going to fall into the category of not having service by the broadcasters. There are more of them that are suddenly going to lose service and be forced onto expensive satellite subscriptions.” In the past, Edwards said, the cost of rebroadcasting multiple channels was more prohibitive because analog channels took up more space, requiring a separate transmitter and antenna for each remote channel. “With digital, you can retransmit six or eight or 10 signals all from the same box, so suddenly the barriers to doing it are way lower,” she said. “Communities that are going to lose service can maintain it, so that’s a big incentive. Secondly, for anybody anywhere, it’s way cheaper than it used to be.” Edwards said that, when analog equipment gets old, broadcasters will have an excuse to not maintain the transmitters as parts for the equipment become harder to find. Mike Woollatt, vice-president of government affairs at Bell Media Inc., said the company has no plans to close its 103 CTV transmitters across the country that aren’t required to convert to digital. “For the foreseeable future, we have parts,” he said in an interview. “You never know when manufacturers are going to stop, I guess, but all I can say is we don’t have any plans to shut them down.” Edwards said the acquisitions last year of broadcasters CTV and Global Television by BCE Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc., respectively, changed the incentives for those broadcasters to continue offering over-the-air signals in non-mandatory markets. “In particular, there’s now obviously a financial incentive, since Bell bought CTV and Shaw bought Global, for them not to maintain free over-the-air TV, because then you would have to get a pay TV subscription to get television,” she said. CACTUS’ guide on rebroadcasting says communities need the following infrastructure to take part: a tower or appropriate building; a satellite receiving dish to obtain remote signals; digital transmitters and antennas to rebroadcast the signals; and digital televisions and antennas in households to receive the rebroadcasts. Local signals such as those of CBC, CTV and Global, which are free over-the-air wherever they broadcast, are free to rebroadcast. CACTUS estimates that the cost of community rebroadcasting would be $1,500 to $15,000 for an engineer's consultation; up to $70,000 (but as low as zero) for a transmission site, depending on whether a new site must be built; $200 to $500 per satellite dish and receiver; $25,000 to $250,000 for a digital transmitter, depending on the reach necessary; and $50 to $80 per household for antennas. To conduct cablecasting, communities would need a location to serve as the “head end” from which the satellite dish receives signals and from which the cables carrying the signal spread into the community; a satellite receiving dish; a digital converter in the head end to convert the satellite signal; and a network of cables to each building receiving the service. The CRTC requires cablecasters to offer a minimum number of core Canadian services but there are no restrictions for rebroadcasters. Rebroadcasting is better suited to communities spread out over a wide area and cablecasting is more cost-effective in more dense regions, the guide says. “Valemount B.C., which has 1400 residents, offers its community 6 over-the-air TV channels, 3 radio channels, and a community-access TV studio staffed by 1 person, all for $70,000 per year, or about $40 per household per year: less than a 10th the cost of a satellite subscription,” the guide says. “Those are maintenance costs. The cost the first year to establish the transmission or cablecasting infrastructure may be higher, but the yearly savings are so great that such facilities can usually be paid off relatively quickly.” Communities that establish a tower can also offer Internet services. VCTV in Valemount wasn't available for an interview for this article, but its station manager, Andru McCracken told The Wire Report in May that rebroadcasting over-the-air was easy and required very little infrastructure. “They would be real competition ,” he said. “There’s a real opportunity.” Ivan Traill, general manager of community channel NACTV in Neepawa, Manitoba, which is aired on the Westman Communications Group’s community cable co-operative, said in an interview that most residents in his community have cable or satellite service now because analog signals aren’t reliable. He said the only local analog signal, CKX in Brandon, closed two years ago, partly because it couldn’t afford to upgrade to digital, while CBC, CTV and Global transmit through repeater stations. Traill said people are unsure what will happen to the repeater stations after the transition. “They may continue on the repeater stations to offer the analog signal for the next little while, and as soon as they go down on the them, in other words something happens, they’re just not going to repair them,” he said. “So they’ll just keep whipping out the analog signal on the repeater system until something happens and then they’ll just quit, because to go out to all these places—they’ve got repeaters all over Manitoba—to change them to digital, that’s quite an expense.” As part of the conditions attached to its purchase of Global, Shaw committed to upgrade Global’s transmitters to digital across the country. Shaw has already started broadcasting in digital in most of its 19 mandatory markets and will upgrade the other 66 transmitters no later than Aug. 31, 2016, spokeswoman Dervla Kelly said by email. Woollatt said that, rather than transmitter upgrades, Bell put money into MPEG-4 compression technology, which allows its satellite service to pick up all local stations. “Before, that wasn’t possible, so a lot of local stations weren’t up on the bird. They now will be. So we thought that was a better investment for local TV,” he said. Woollatt said CTV is converting its 23 transmitters in mandatory markets and will continue to broadcast in analog indefinitely on the other 103. Edwards said CACTUS has discussed the possibility of sharing a Global tower with a community channel in St. Andrew’s, N.B., and has held discussions with CTV about other community projects. She said there is general goodwill in the broadcasting industry but that she’s wary of how the distributors’ purchase of the networks will change that. The CACTUS guide says local broadcasters can help either by sharing space on towers or by leasing or selling equipment if they cease analog broadcasting. “This means that if you live in a community that has a Global transmission tower … but your community loses CTV, CBC or other over-the-air signals, you may be able to use Global’s existing facilities to rebroadcast these signals, including a community channel,” the guide says. Kelly said Shaw has had discussions with a couple of groups about sharing Shaw’s towers but that nothing has been formalized. “Sharing towers would not be a new concept,” Kelly wrote in an email. “Anytime a broadcaster wants to transmit in a new market, one of the options the broadcaster looks at is co-locating at an existing tower owned by another broadcaster (especially since building a tower from ‘scratch’ is expensive and can be quite a time-consuming process).” mburgess@thewirereport.ca

CACTUS promoting rebroadcasting strategies with local communities

Broadcast | August 15, 2011

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