Bell seeks to challenge CRTC community programming fine in court

BCE Inc. has filed an application for leave to appeal a $17.9-million penalty imposed by the CRTC last month for violations of its broadcasting license, arguing that the CRTC failed to give the broadcaster adequate notice that it was misallocating its community programming funding towards its own local news programming. In an Oct. 22 decision, the CRTC required Bell to pay $17,924,607 to the Canada Media Fund, "an amount that corresponds to the excess portion of its misallocated contributions to local expression," the CRTC wrote. The regulator further said in the decision that Bell had interpreted flexibility in the conditions of its license in a "self-serving" manner, "as evidenced by the amounts that were allocated to its own local stations rather than being paid to the CMF or directed towards community programming." Now Bell is seeking to argue before the Federal Court of Appeal that the CRTC denied the company procedural fairness by "providing Bell with no notice that it may depart from its longstanding approach," the company wrote in the application filed Monday. Bell said in the application that the company perceived a new flexibility afforded by the 2017 broadcast distributions, allowing it to direct more of its required "local expression" funding toward its local news and television stations than had been initially required in its 2013 conditions of license. Bell says that it first informed the CRTC in April 2018 that it was directing resources away from community channels towards local news stations in Montreal and Toronto. The CRTC, Bell argues, did not raise objections until October 2019, when it asked Bell a number of questions during license renewal proceedings. When the CRTC ruled last month that Bell had violated the terms of the license, it "was a legal position the CRTC expressed for the first time in the Decision, having never given Bell any previous notice of this nor an opportunity to make submissions about it." "The CRTC's delay was unreasonable, abusive and caused significant prejudice to Bell," the company argued, adding that "Bell's reputation has been irrevocably damaged." Bell has been arguing for several months for the CRTC to relax its Canadian content regulations in light of the damage to revenues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, through both interventions to a Canadian Association of Broadcasters Part 1 and at the Canadian Telecom Summit last week. “Hard decisions will continue to have to be made, absent regulatory relief. Station closures will affect coverage of local news, something that Canadians desire and something that we are very proud to provide to them,” Bell wrote in its October intervention. Community radio stations and the organizations representing Canadian creatives have pushed back against the request. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Bell seeks to challenge CRTC community programming fine in court

Broadcast | November 25, 2020

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Bell seeks to challenge CRTC community programming fine in court

Broadcast | November 25, 2020

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