Community radio pushes back on CAB CanCon relief request

The National Campus and Community Radio Association, Alliance des radios communautaires du Canada and Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec have filed a joint intervention arguing against the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) proposal for broadcasters to receive regulatory relief, writing that it could deprive small community radio stations of funding. The trio of organizations stated that relief in the form of “deemed compliance” (where broadcasters would be exempted from certain expenditures and Canadian content requirements as long as they had acted in good faith) could “further destabilize the already fragile balance that non-profit radio is operating under, not just in a pandemic year.” This stance makes the community radio groups an outlier in their response to the CAB proposal, given every other broadcaster that filed an intervention expressed broad support for the CAB’s relief proposal (meanwhile, groups representing media producers, such as the Canadian Writers’ Guild, firmly opposed relief). Of particular concern to community radio stations are Canadian Content Development (CCD) funds paid by for-profit broadcasters, which partially support campus and community radio. “ would essentially stop the flow of CCD funding from Canada’s private broadcasters to our sector for an undetermined amount of time, and this would be catastrophic,” they said in the intervention. Noting that many community and campus radio stations in Canada operate without a financial buffer, community broadcast groups highlighted the fact that some smaller communities in the country are only served by community radio stations, so a loss of funding could cut such communities off from their only local news source. “Granting CAB’s request in its current form would not be in the public interest as it could impact listeners in communities that are majority serviced by c/c and indigenous stations only,” the intervention said. A response from the CAB seemed amenable to protecting CCD payments, although that organization suggested a “guideline” rather than a firm rule to protect that funding. “CAB members would accordingly accept a guideline to the effect that as a general principle radio stations not reduce payments to .” Community radio may have an ally in the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications, which argued against delaying or reducing CCD payments in an Oct. 29 letter. The Forum also pushed back on other parts of the CAB proposal, particularly its request for sweeping regulatory relief for broadcasters.

Community radio pushes back on CAB CanCon relief request

Brief | October 30, 2020

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Community radio pushes back on CAB CanCon relief request

Brief | October 30, 2020

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