Rogers’ OMNI gets temporary mandatory distribution

Rogers Communications Inc. will get a three-year window to run its new national ethnic channel before having to compete with other proposals for its mandatory carriage, the CRTC announced Monday. The regulator partially approved the company’s application to establish OMNI Regional as a new national service to be carried on skinny-basic cable TV packages as part of its decision on licence renewals of large, English-language TV groups. Rogers had proposed what it called a not-for-profit solution to replace the ethnic-language newscasts it eliminated in 2015. OMNI Regional will have four feeds that mirror OMNI’s existing stations, with four daily newscasts in Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese and Punjabi. It will receive its requested subscriber fee of $0.12 in English-language markets and $0.1 in French-language markets. “We applaud the CRTC for recognizing the vital importance of delivering news and information to Canadians in their language of comfort. Canadians will get access to quality multicultural and multilingual programming no matter where they live, and OMNI Television will receive a stable revenue source to build a strong voice for all ethnic audiences,” Colette Watson, Rogers Media senior vice-president of broadcast and TV operations, said in a statement. “We are excited to work with our partners to bring OMNI Regional to life.” The licence, which is effective Sept. 1, is only for three years, instead of the requested five-year term, at which point, the regulator expects a new national service to take over. “Since the application does not fully meet the Commission’s expectations of a service that would receive mandatory distribution on the digital basic service, nor of a service that would fully address and reflect the needs and interests of Canada’s diverse ethnic and third-language communities, the approval of this licence is an interim measure,” the CRTC said in its decision. Monday’s decision outlined several shortcomings the CRTC identified in Rogers’ application, including that it is “unlikely that the service would ensure a sufficient reflection of Canada’s third-language communities as Rogers Media’s approach restricts its programming to the communities with which it already has an ongoing relationship through its OMNI television stations.” The commission also found “commitments to original, first-run Canadian programming” lacking, as well as that Rogers didn’t “propose specific amounts of programming relevant to each region of the country.” It also highlighted that the service “does not appear sustainable and would likely experience financial difficulties in the near future, even with mandatory distribution on the digital basic service.” However, not approving the service would leave a void in the two to three years the CRTC said it expects for a new service that meets the standard to get off the ground. Applications for the new multilingual and multi-ethnic service are due Aug. 18 “Canada’s ethnic and third-language communities do not have access to enough news and information programming in multiple languages from a Canadian perspective. By approving the licensing and mandatory distribution of OMNI Regional, we are addressing a pressing need,” Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said in a press release. “However, our standards for nationwide mandatory distribution are high. Rogers will have to remedy the shortcomings of their OMNI service and compete with other applicants to have the privilege of reaching Canadians across the country.” When first put forward, critics of the proposal, including the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, called it a “band-aid solution” that only revisited OMNI’s past practice and programming. Alysia Lau, PIAC’s regulatory and public policy counsel, said in a phone interview said she was pleased the commission recognized the faults with Rogers’ application but didn’t think Monday’s decision “brings a lot of justice for ethnocultural communities who were hurt by Rogers’ decision to cancel several different newscasts over the last four to five years, because they are still getting mandatory distribution pretty much based on the conditions they had originally proposed.” Rogers and OMNI are also getting a three-year head start over other potential applicants, Lau said, since in addition to being the main player in the multicultural space, they would also have the benefit of experience as a 9(1)(h) service. “And they’ll also know with the specific rate they’ve proposed what works for them and what they could propose to give Canadians maybe a better bang for their buck — or maybe less,” Lau said. Unifor, the union representing journalists and media workers, said in a statement Monday it was “pleased” by the CRTC’s decision with respect to OMNI. “OMNI plays a vital role in Canada to help our diverse communities feel more at home here,” Howard Law, the union’s media director, said in the release. “Its continued viability is essential.” The union was less impressed with the rest of the decisions the CRTC handed down on Monday, as it also approved five-year licence renewals for English-language groups BCE Inc., Rogers, and Corus Entertainment Inc., effective Sept. 1. For English-language groups, the decision standardized requirements for Canadian programming expenditures (CPEs) at 30 per cent and programs of national interest (PNIs) at five per cent for all groups, conventional stations and discretionary services. It also implemented a condition of licence for new standards of three hours of locally reflective programming in non-metropolitan markets and six hours in metropolitan markets, as part of the seven and 14 hours, respectively, of local programming they are expected to broadcast. The decision doesn’t do anything to help local news, the union said. “Local TV in this country is in crisis. Unifor had hoped that the CRTC would take that seriously with today’s ruling. We are now looking to the government to act swiftly,” Jerry Dias, Unifor national president, said in the release, noting a lack of requirements for staffing of local newsrooms. To boost support for underrepresented groups, the CRTC is introducing an incentive of a 125-per-cent CPE credit for groups that do business with official languages minority communities, and a 150-per-cent credit when working with Indigenous producers. The CRTC also moved to address an issue it said was raised during the November public hearing, that licensees might shut down their TV stations during the five-year licence terms. In the decision, the commission said it wanted to make sure licence holders “can be held accountable if they opt to no longer provide programming that is valuable to Canadians,” and imposed a requirement for licensees to inform the CRTC at least 120 days before shutting down a station. “It therefore considers it appropriate that stakeholders and members of the public can voice their concerns through a public process in the event that one of the groups wishes to close down a station,” the CRTC said. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Rogers’ OMNI gets temporary mandatory distribution

Broadcast | May 15, 2017

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Rogers’ OMNI gets temporary mandatory distribution

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