Rogers can outsource Chinese-language newscasts: CRTC

The CRTC has turned down a complaint by Unifor against Rogers Communications Inc.’s media division for contracting out its Chinese-language newscasts to Fairchild Media Group Inc. instead of producing them in-house. The regulator said in a decision Tuesday that Rogers wasn’t violating its licence requirements by doing so, and denied an application asking the CRTC to order Rogers to produce its Cantonese and Mandarin newscasts in-house. The union, which represents Chinese-speaking media workers at Rogers, filed an application in October that was supported by the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic (CSALC) and the Urban Alliance on Race Relations (UARR). Unifor asked the CRTC to call Rogers to an expedited public hearing over its compliance with a condition of licence for OMNI Regional, which requires it to produce seven hours per week of Chinese-language news. It said Rogers was contravening that condition of licence by contracting Fairchild to produce daily news coverage. But in its decision, the CRTC noted that when it gave Rogers a licence to run OMNI Regional, it did so only on a temporary, three-year basis, and the licence conditions didn’t specify that production had to be in-house. If the CRTC had meant to order Rogers produce the programming in-house, it would have said so in the licence conditions, the decision said. The CRTC “understood that the licensee would be operating the service with only short-term regulatory certainty. In its decision, the Commission also emphasized the public interest in meeting the pressing need of Canada’s ethnic and third-language communities for news and current events programming as soon as possible,” Tuesday’s decision outlined. “Expediency and efficiency in serving these communities were significant considerations when granting the OMNI Regional licence and the accompanying mandatory distribution order. Consequently, it is reasonable for Rogers to have sought out programming partnerships as a means to ensure that the needs of these communities were met as efficiently and quickly as possible.” The decision also noted that groups behind the application were worried about a loss of editorial diversity, given that “Fairchild is the only other major Canadian producer of newscasts in Cantonese and Mandarin.” However, the commission concluded that wasn’t a concern, saying that there are adequate safeguards in place, with Rogers retaining final editorial control and “restrictions on the degree of overlap that can occur between the programming produced for OMNI Regional and the programming produced by Fairchild for its own services.” It said that those safeguards “along with the fact that Rogers continues to produce its weekly current affairs programming in-house, offer sufficient diversity in news programming.” In a press release Tuesday, Unifor called the decision “a huge loss for local news.” "Local news is essential and licensed news broadcasts are not playing cards to be swapped with the only competing TV station in the community," Unifor national president Jerry Dias said in the release. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

Rogers can outsource Chinese-language newscasts: CRTC

Broadcast | April 10, 2018

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Rogers can outsource Chinese-language newscasts: CRTC

Broadcast | April 10, 2018

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