Community TV Review Backgrounder
CRTC Public Notice of Consultation 2009-661 (available at: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-661-1.htm in English or http://www.crtc.gc.ca/fra/archive/2009/2009-661-1.htm en francais) invited the public to comment on the performance of Canadian community television channels for the first time in eight years.
Under the Canadian Broadcasting Act, the broadcasting system consists of three elements: public (the CBC and provincial broadasters), private (over-the-air channels like Global as well as specialty channels like Discovery), and community. The community element is meant to enable the public that owns the broadcast system the opportunity to participate directly as program producers.
The dead-line for public comment was February 1st.
For comparison, a report written by TimeScape Productions about community television in other countries is available here.
There is very little information provided in the public notice about the performance of community TV channels in Canada, however. CACTUS is concerned about this absence and requested under Access to Information legislation for information that all cable companies are required to keep: logs of hours of "community-access" programming, the titles of such programs, and the names of parties provided access. We received a letter back from the CRTC saying that while it is true that cable companies must collect and keep such information for one year, since the CRTC itself has never requested such information, it cannot provide us with this information. We had asked for information going back to 1990. So, the CRTC's reply is in effect an admission that it has not monitored the cable industry's spending of more than $100,000,000 annually on "community programming" in almost 20 years.
Since that request, we have discovered that limited audits were done of selected cable companies in 2003, 2004 and 2005, that confirm what we had been hearing anecdotally... that many cable-run community channels repurpose programming among different systems, that levels of access programming are very low, and that misreporting about original hours of production and access hours of production is common.
We believe that Canadians need more complete information to understand what has happened in the community television sector, and filed another request on March 2nd, asking that the CRTC request BDUs to provide their programming logs for the most recent programming year, so that the public could review the volumes and types of programming (include access programming) appearing on Canadian community channels. We hope that this information will be available before the oral hearings commence on April 26th.
For the CACTUS vision for a revitalized community media sector, see our VISION for Community TV.
For a summary of the data we presented in our submission to 2009-661, see our Executive Summary.
If you have comments that you would like to share with others in the lead-up to the oral hearings, just click "Add New Comment" at the bottom of any page you'd like to comment on.
Okay everyone, here is a
Okay everyone, here is a response to Greg O'Brien's thoughful piece on Community Television moving to Facebook. The original article was here:
http://www.cartt.ca/news/FullStory.cfm?NewsNo=9770
I posted a comment, but it looks nasty so I thought I would post my reply over here.
Despite being involved in it, Greg holds a pretty damning opinion of community television. I know that this is a drastic over simplification but, he ought to have said ‘It’s crappy and we don’t need it anymore.’
My argument is essentially the same but with a different result.
‘It’s crappy and we need it more than ever.’.
If you’re interested in the argument, please watch for my presentation at the CRTC Hearings. I run a kind of cool community television station that is completely community funded. We don't take a cent from anyone, besides landholders who actually approve of our existence. I get paid (in dollars). We serve the community in a quirky way. We record its major events and we have a weekly fake news program that sometimes accidentally speaks for the community, where others don’t. (eg: the community newspaper)
I know this is terrible, but isn’t there something worthwhile here? Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM9moS9k3sY#t=2m56s
At the hearings I'm going to argue that the existing programs that cable companies implement have actually been an impediment to developing vibrant community TV.
Vibrant community TV is possible and very funny at times or occasionally even relevant.. Though, like Greg, I have produced far more bad television then good.
I think that is okay.
Television and video is the dominant media of the age right? So just because what we produce is badly done doesn’t mean it isn’t important. I just read Canterbury Tales and Chaucer in most every regard was a really shitty writer (like get your characters straight at least, male or female). No matter, people weren’t really that literate before the Gutenberg press. Just like now… Though everybody watches television, few have a clue how to produce it (myself included).
Having most of the country shut out of television production is not good for the country.
If there was a way to get more people involved in production that would be good, and we would have better television (and online video) as a result.
Ask me to rank my nightly news. I don’t give good grades to any of them. Judged against what I think television should do as a society, it blows. More Canadians in more community television stations will help our terrible tv improve.
Community television is not about viewership. I can’t speak for all of Canada, but there are enough slovenly counch surfing Canadians already, my job isn’t to get even more eye time! I’m doing this to improve the community not give it a heart attack!.
Watching television is proven to be bad. Making television is good. No matter how bad the result. At least you come to know how little you know about it.
That CRTC posted the viewership numbers for community stations tells me we’ll have an uphill battle to argue for good stable funding for community tv.
Stable funding, a nonprofit board and a mandate to serve the community are very powerful with tremendous consequences for the whole country. My situation, though apparently unique in Canada (WTF?) proves that.
Youtube and Facebook are important, and becoming more so. What institution is going to help raise the bar, the video literacy if you will? Community TV is far more relevant than ever, because of new media, not inspite of it.
Kids who come to my station learn how to hold a camera steady. Their children will thank me in the future! Just for home videos alone, I am drastically increasing the quality of life in Canada.