Speech
Notes for an address
by Ronald D. Williams
Regional Commissioner, Alberta and Northwest Territories Regions
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
to the Conference of the Western Association of Broadcasters
Kananaskis, Alberta
June 4th, 2005
(CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)
Thank you for that kind introduction, Jim. I'm delighted that as part of my Commission duties I get to join you for these wonderful days at Kananaskis.
In fact, this is the appropriate place to make an announcement: After due consideration, the CRTC has decided that it will make no attempt at this time to impose any regulatory requirements on the game of golf.
It is our view that it is already hard enough to get the little ball in the hole.
I'll be touching on a few points of the Commission's actual agenda a little later. First, though, I'm happy to say that this is a proud time for Westerners. I bring the congratulations of the CRTC to Alberta and to Saskatchewan, which are both celebrating their one-hundredth anniversaries this year.
Of course I feel rather modest and humble in bringing you these good wishes, because frankly it's kind of intimidating to be following in the footsteps of the Queen. But if Prince Philip can handle it, so can I.
Canada has one of the greatest broadcasting systems of the world. In the two official languages, Aboriginal languages, and many others, private and public networks alike serve this vast country. And yet it is at the local and regional level that we can see just how much broadcasting can mean to Canadians in their daily lives in their own communities.
The Broadcasting Act stresses the importance of local and regional programming. For the Commission, it is a high priority to ensure that the Canadian broadcasting system continues to provide citizens with high-quality news and information through a diversity of voices.
The local broadcasters, who are the heart and soul of the WAB, provide services to the people of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba that no national broadcaster could deliver. In your programming you give them coverage of the things that matter to them. You understand their own particular interests and enthusiasms and concerns, and you help them hear and see themselves in their local broadcast media.
Your achievements were also recognized last month by the Prairie Region awards of the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada. Radio and TV stations in all three provinces were honoured for outstanding work in categories ranging from Spot News and Special Events to In-Depth and Editorial.
Congratulations to the winners, and I wish them well at the National Awards next week in Toronto.
High-quality news and public affairs programs provide you with strong audience results, and we look forward to your continuing and building on your excellent work in this area.
As local broadcasters, you understand your audience. You have a sense of the standards of taste and tolerance that Canadians respect. Striking a balance between freedom of expression on the one hand, and equal rights and tolerance on the other, can be as delicate a matter for broadcasters as it is for the Commission.
As you know, the Commission faced some difficult situations in this regard in the past year.
The Broadcasting Act and Broadcasting Regulations guide us with provisions that don't allow the broadcasting system to be a platform for abuse that violates the rights of individuals or exposes particular groups or individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, sex, or other attributes.
And indeed, this approach echoes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The fact that complaints of abusive commentary so rarely require the attention of the Commission is a tribute to the ability of broadcasters, together with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, to self-regulate with regard to content.
In consistently living up to your own chosen standards, you are strengthening your bonds to your communities.
But it's not only your programming that connects you to those communities. You take action for them and with them. You raise awareness and money for local charities and causes. In emergencies like floods, fires and blackouts, you're there to get the word out and help mobilize the community to do what needs to be done.
And you've recently shown that when disaster strikes halfway around the world, you can bring out the generosity of your audiences to send help quickly.
The response of Western broadcasters to the tsunami disaster in December was extraordinary. From the smallest of the local independents through the large station groups, in rural communities and in big cities, on radio and on television, you raised huge sums of money in a very short time to help the people affected in South and Southeast Asia.
You can feel very proud of what you've done.
I'd like to take a moment here to say a few words about a man who exemplified the connection between a broadcaster and his community: Wes Montgomery. Wes was only 66 when he died in April, but 47 of those years were devoted to a legendary broadcasting career.
He was a man with a great love of life and a wonderful sense of humour all his own that earned him some of the highest ratings ever recorded in Alberta radio.
Wes was a passionate fan of the Edmonton Eskimos and of the sport of curling, and until his death his voice was the distinctive sound of the morning for listeners to CFCW. He will be missed very much.
I'd also like to salute someone who, happily, is still very much with us: Fred Filthaut. Fred retired in January as Vice President and General Manager of CFRN-TV in Edmonton after a television career which he began in 1966 as a telecine operator in Lethbridge.
Along the way he served as President of this Association and a member of the CAB Board of Directors as well as playing a number of important roles in the industry. Best wishes to you, Fred, and thank you for your tremendous contribution.
I'd like to shift gears now, and discuss your economic contribution. The broadcasting industry is a strong and healthy one in the Prairies, as it is across the country. We can see this reflected in the financial figures that are assembled by the Commission each year.
Radio broadcasting in Canada continued in 2004 to show strong results, as it had in the 2003 broadcasting year.
In the Prairies, private radio stations brought in revenues of $282.6 million in 2004, an increase of 5.2% over 2003. Profit before interest and taxes was down slightly from 19.6% in 2003 to 18.6% in 2004 – still, a solid profit margin.
Private television revenues were up slightly at $345.4 million, with profit before interest and taxes up by 10.6%.
And independent TV production activities in the Prairies came to an estimated $149.6 million in 2004.
From the information available for the first half of 2005, the revenue and profit figures for radio are markedly up over 2004. TV margins remain positive but are under pressure from increasing programming costs.
The Commission recognizes that in the Prairies, as well as across the country, the financial results for small-market broadcasters tend not to be as robust as they are for those in the larger markets. We take this disparity into account in our decision-making.
Particularly in small markets, the granting of new licenses may raise concerns about market fragmentation. We therefore do rigorous research to satisfy ourselves that the markets in question can absorb new commercial stations without undue impact on existing licensees.
When Canadian broadcasting enterprises are financially strong, they can invest in a high quality of service, a wide range of offerings tailored to the needs of our diverse population, and advanced technologies for producing and disseminating content. These investments are essential to achieving the aims of the Broadcasting Act, so the financial strength of the broadcasters is a high priority with the Commission.
I'd now like to give you a brief look at the CRTC's agenda in the next little while.
In the fall we will issue a Public Notice calling for input into our Commercial Radio Policy Review.
As you know, we had originally scheduled this review for last year. But technological developments intervened in the form of license applications for subscription radio via satellite. We decided to postpone the review so we could take account of the changed environment.
During the licensing hearings we gathered a wide range of views from the broadcasting, performing and recording industries. We also heard from potential subscribers. We will release our decisions on subscription radio later this month.
Clearly our policy review will need to recognize a rapidly-changing technological context whose new developments also include Internet-based systems for delivering music and other forms of entertainment.
Technological development is of course a major theme in television as well. Digital and high-definition TV are advancing rapidly in the U.S. But in Canada we currently have only 15 licensed over-the-air digital stations and five HD pay and specialty services. And the actual amount of HD programming on these services is very limited.
We are currently developing a framework for the licensing and distribution of HD pay and specialty services. We're encouraging the industry to accelerate the transition, so that Canadian broadcasters will continue to be strong competitors for television viewers.
I'll return now to the Commercial Radio Policy Review. Our last review was released in 1998, and we'll be looking at the progress that's been made since then. At that time we opened the way for a single owner to acquire more radio licenses. This has led to significant consolidation in the industry, with a few large groups dominating.
We would like to examine this situation, and we'd like to hear from broadcasters as to whether they believe that independent operators have concerns that should be addressed differently from those of the major groups.
We'll also be reviewing our policy on Local Management Agreements. In the past we have recognized the benefits of allowing competing stations to pool certain cost centres and share revenues. But we now want to ask whether LMAs are leading to semi-monopolistic situations which risk marginalizing the players who remain outside these agreements.
In the last review, we raised the Canadian content requirement from 30 to 35%. This raised a certain amount of alarm in the industry, but we were pleased to see that broadcasters continued to attract audiences and revenues while complying with the new requirement.
We stated in that last review that we'd be looking in this one at the possibility of moving to 40% -- and in fact, many broadcasters are already offering up to 40% Canadian content in a number of formats.
But it's not only the volume of content we're concerned with. We'd also like to encourage the industry to play a greater diversity of Canadian music, including music by new artists. One supporter of Canadian musicians has put forward a proposal for incentives that would allow broadcasters to claim higher “Cancon credits” when they aired music by new or developing Canadian artists.
We will be reviewing the appropriate level of broadcasters' contributions to Canadian Talent Development. In 2003/04, Prairie radio stations contributed over $2 million to Canadian Talent Development. This doesn't include contributions as a result of benefits in ownership transactions. We'd like to explore ways of making sure that these contributions are effective, and that CTD funds help in producing music that can get played on the radio.
We hope that broadcasters and the music industry will come forward with their own ideas in all these areas.
Another subject we'll study is the licensing process for radio. The high volume of license applications has increased the demands on both the industry and the Commission for administrative effort and hearing time. So we want to explore the possibility of a more streamlined process that will ease the burden on everyone, while still allowing us to satisfy the objectives of the Broadcasting Act.
Streamlining, in fact, is something we want to do with a wide range of our processes. On the telecommunications side of our work, we have introduced expedited procedures for resolving competitive disputes before a panel of Commissioners.
We have recently introduced this streamlined system to broadcasting disputes as well, and we will be examining all our procedures to find ways to operate still more efficiently.
I've given you today a brief overview of where the Commission is going these days. It's a big and challenging agenda for Canadian broadcasting, and we can only succeed with your indispensable collaboration. We look forward to hearing your concerns and your ideas.
Thank you very much.
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Date Modified: 2005-06-04
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