PIAC joins media groups’ fight against OMNI decision

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) has endorsed a number of petitions to the Governor in Council, joining the call for the government to send the CRTC’s June decision granting a mandatory carriage license to Rogers Communications Inc.’s OMNI channel back to the CRTC. Since the June decision, four of the groups that had also applied for the license and were rejected when the CRTC chose Rogers for the license have filed petitions to the Governor in Council: Corrcan Media Group, publisher of Toronto-based Italian-language newspaper Corriere Canadese; Montreal-based Independent Community Television (ICTV); Ethnic Channels Group Limited; and TLN Media Group together with Asian Television Network. One of the petitioners, ICTV of Montreal, has also filed a request to appeal the CRTC’s decision in the Federal Court of Appeal, citing meetings between Rogers and CRTC commissioners as arising to reasonable apprehension of bias. Rogers said the meetings were above board in a July court filing. In its submission to the Governor in Council filed on August 9, PIAC said that while the advocacy group supports the creation of a national, must-carry ethnic channel, the decision to give the license to Rogers “may weaken ethnic television in Canada and may create a potential tool for anti-democratic control of all Canadian ethnic groups through Rogers’ discretionary power over news and opinion delivered only to its favoured ethnic groups.” Because the CRTC’s decision to grant Rogers the license does not specify which minority languages need to be featured on the broadcast service, the choice is left fully up to the licensee’s discretion, PIAC argues. In 2014, Rogers Media president Keith Pelley told the CRTC that the channel was facing “serious financial challenges,” and resulted in job cuts and the elimination of newscasts in Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Italian, PIAC’s submission points out. After Unifor -- the union representing Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking journalists at OMNI -- filed a complaint with the CRTC saying the cuts violated elements of the channel’s license in September 2017, the CRTC ruled in April 2018 that OMNI was allowed to outsource its production of newscasts without violating the license. PIAC’s submission also asserts that the CRTC’s decision in the matter guarantees the telecom giant an additional income stream of $20 million every year because of the mandated wholesale rate of $0.19 per subscriber per month Rogers will be allowed to charge broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs), and calls for an overhaul of the CRTC’s 1999 Ethnic Broadcasting Policy. Rogers charged $0.12 per subscriber per month when it held the licence for the previous three-year period. Executive director of the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications Monica Auer endorsed the call for the decision to be sent back to the CRTC. “We were perplexed by the CRTC’s decision, in particular because so few reasons were given,” Auer said in a phone interview, referring to the original decision. “Is this the proper exercise of discretionary authority? Or is it pure whimsy? One doesn’t want to think that an agency, a tribunal, that’s in charge of operating a multi-billion dollar industry is in fact acting out of whimsy,” Auer said, adding that granting the renewal of the license to OMNI without updating the 20-year-old Ethnic Broadcasting Policy “for the 21st century” was an instance of “putting the cart before the horse.” OMNI, for its part, says that the CRTC's process was a "fair an open competition," and that the network will be "required to seek the local insights and expertise of our four regional Advisory Councils, comprised of community leaders and business professionals from the local ethnic and third-language communities we serve," according to an emailed statement from OMNI Television director Manuel Fonseca. It’s unfortunate that some of the unsuccessful applicants have challenged the decision with misleading information, but we have full confidence the decision will stand," the statement said. The CRTC had granted Rogers’ OMNI channel a provisional three year mandatory carriage license back in 2017, set to expire in 2020, after which the new license granted by the CRTC this past June will kick in and last another three years until 2023. The Governor in Council has 90 days from the date of the original decision to respond to the petitions. — With reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

PIAC joins media groups’ fight against OMNI decision

Broadcast | August 14, 2019

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