Olympics programming costs need to be excluded from CPE and PNI requirements: CBC

The CBC is requesting the CRTC amend its conditions of licence (COL), excluding programming expenditures from Olympic and Paralympic coverage in the calculation of its Canadian programming expenditures (CPE) and programs of national interest (PNI) requirements. In the Part 1 application, submitted June 20, the CBC said its CPE goes up during Olympic and Paralympic years, mainly due to licensing and production costs of coverage. As a result, their PNI requirements also go up, but because of budgetary limits and other obligations, they say they will be unable to meet their requirements in the coming years. Under its COL, renewed Sept. 1, 2022 for five years, the CBC is required to allocate at least 85 per cent of its programming expenditures to CPE, with at least 42 per cent and 55 per cent of that CPE allocated towards French- and English-language PNI, respectively. “Programming expenditures are significantly higher in Olympic and Paralympic years,” wrote the CBC in their application. This is largely due to licensing and sub-licensing fees paid to the International Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee for broadcasting rights. The CBC expressed frustration with how the CRTC went about establishing these requirements. The commission based them on the CBC’s historical three year programming expenditures from 2017 to 2020, which only included one broadcast year of the Olympics, the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. They argue this does not accurately reflect their expenditures over a five year licence term, which has two Olympic and Paralympic Games. To better illustrate how much they spend on Olympic coverage, the CBC included programming expenditures from 2020 to 2022 in their application, which featured the 2020 Tokyo Games (postponed to 2021) and the 2022 Beijing Games. In 2021, for example, the CBC under-spent on its minimum PNI requirements by 5.1 per cent in English-language programming and 1.3 per cent in French-language programming. However, with that year’s Olympic programming expenditures excluded, their PNI expenditures were 6.3 per cent and 1.2 per cent over the minimum English and French requirements, respectively. “We anticipate that the shortfall in meeting the PNI expenditure requirements will only increase during Olympic/Paralympic Games years over the current licence term,” wrote the CBC. “A 16 per cent increase in the cost of the rights between the 2024 Paris and the 2026 Milan Olympic Games will put further pressure on the corporation’s ability to meet the PNI requirements over the course of the licence term.” The deadline for the submission of interventions regarding the Part 1 application is July 31, 2023. – Reporting by Phalen Tynes-MacDonald at pcreed@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Olympics programming costs need to be excluded from CPE and PNI requirements: CBC

Broadcast | June 30, 2023

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Olympics programming costs need to be excluded from CPE and PNI requirements: CBC

Broadcast | June 30, 2023

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