CRTC turns down application for nation-wide HD network
The CRTC today denied HDTV Networks’ application for a licence to operate a national, English-language high-definition conventional television service.
“HDTV Networks sought to launch a television station that would be the Canadian equivalent of a superstation,” said Michel Arpin, the CRTC’s Vice-Chairman of Broadcasting. “The programming strategy associated with such a station is inconsistent with the objectives of the Broadcasting Act and the Commission’s policies. We have never granted a licence for such a conventional television station in the past and did not find any compelling reason to do so at this time.”
The requirement to make local programming available to audiences is an integral feature of the CRTC’s conventional television policy. HDTV Networks would only commit to providing two hours of local programming per week in each of the eight markets it wanted to serve: Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. By way of comparison, existing conventional stations offer on average more than 22 hours of local programming per week
In addition, the CRTC today denied YES TV Inc.’s application for a licence to operate an English-language high-definition conventional television service in the Greater Toronto Area. The Commission was not convinced that the applicant could fulfill its programming commitments, among other things.
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Mike Bryan, from Stittsville, Canada) wrote: This is unfortunate – not that Bitove’s application was all that meritorious in itself, but because delivery of HDTV signals to Canadians will continue to be dominated by greedy and manipulative third party signal aggregators/packagers such as Bell ExpressVu and Rogers who don’t want us to know that over the air signals are out there and who would of course prefer that there be none !
A more ample and competitive supply of such free off- air HD signals would be in the public interest.
CBC transmits such signals in major markets – but keeps this fact almost a secret by failing to publicize it.
No wonder that the ignoramus young men who sell HDTV receivers in big box stores tell buyers they have to subscribe to cable or satellite to….”get HDTV”.
Not true, but as I say, CBC keeps it’s over-the-air HD presence a secret. Why ?
Posted 03/04/08 at 3:53 PM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
Mike Bryan, from Stittsville, Canada) wrote:
This is unfortunate – not that Bitove’s application was all that meritorious in itself, but because delivery of HDTV signals to Canadians will continue to be dominated by greedy, monopolistic and manipulative third party signal aggregators/packagers such as Bell ExpressVu and Rogers. They don’t want us to know that over the air signals are out there and would of course prefer that there be no such signals available to us.
A more ample and competitive supply of such free off- air HD signals would be in the public interest.
CBC transmits such signals in major markets – but keeps this fact almost a secret by failing to publicize it. Not surprising that those alway not-so-bright young hustlers in the big box electronic stores tell customers they have to subscribe to cable or satellite to get HDTV.
This is false but CBC still hides its free HD signals from public view except in the case of the few of us who know about them through our own resourcefullness and no thanks to the CBC’s own promotion people.
Posted 03/04/08 at 3:53 PM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment*
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my local privates offer little more than a poor news show. This sort of rule looks an awful lot like enforced mediocrity.
Sometimes the CRTC does do the right thing.
So why is Global still on the air? Delivering Toronto’s local news to the entire province of Ontario should not qualify as local content.
You are right Sean. But then Canwest is driven by accountants. And they have this major thing about cost cutting by centralizing journalistic content production in all of their media empire. They do it with their newspapers as well and they are short-changing readers. They are the worst owners good journalists could have in my view, because their cost-cutting in newsrooms has gone so far that the quality of the product and its ability to properly cover local markets has been severely diminished.
This is an issue for the CRTC because Canwest is starving local content production and not living up to CRTC licensing obligations for markets like Ottawa where I live, or at least it would seem so to me.
[...] surprise surprise, the CRTC has denied the application. In its decision, the commission cites the lack of local programming as the main issue (HDTV [...]