CBC/SRC Licence Renewals Summary
Overview of the Licence Renewals
The licence renewals for all of CBC/SRC’s services (radio, conventional television, and specialties) have been scheduled by the CRTC. The hearing will be held in September and interventions are due on July 18th. Similar to its cross-country consultations in the last CBC licence renewal, the CRTC is also inviting the public to share their thoughts about whether the CBC is fulfilling its mandate.
We encourage all DOC members to participate in this online consultation. Here is a brief analysis of the application and how it relates to the documentary industry.
Our Analysis of the CBC/SRC’s Application
Conventionals: CBC/SRC are proposing that they will broadcast 7 and 6 hours (respectively) of programs of national interest (drama, docs and award shows) where 75% of those hours will be independently produced.
Specialties:
a. CBC is proposing to expand the program categories it can broadcast on documentary and ARTV to include all programming categories
b. CBC is proposing to reduce the Canadian program expenditures of documentary
c. CBC is proposing to remove a restriction on broadcasting live news and sports programming on documentary
Regional Production: CBC/SRC wants to remove all regional production conditions of licence for non-news programming on conventional services.
Expenditures:
a. Documentary’s share of overall expenditures will decline as news, sports, and drama rise
b. French services will have a higher share of overall documentary expenditures
c. English services’ share of documentary expenditures will decline
d. In-house production will dominate documentary expenditures overall
Key Messages
The CBC is proposing these changes. You can comment on these proposed changes online.
DOC encourages you to take part and ask for:
A firm commitment to independent documentary production on conventionals
A firm commitment to regional production above and beyond news services
Maintaining the programming integrity of ARTV and documentary
Making actual commitments to the genre overall rather than maintaining the status quo.
What do you think? Should a public broadcaster even consider making these changes given its unique and privileged place in the Canadian communications environment and the public sphere?