Canada-wide
Paper: "Public-Community Partnerships to Improve Local Media"
Research paper presented by Karen Wirsig of the Canadian Media Guild and Catherine Edwards of the CACTUS at the Journalism Strategies conference at McGill April 19-22, 2012.
Journalism Strategies Conference at McGill April 19-22

From April 19-23, McGill hosted a "Journalism Strategies" conference. The goal was stated as follows:
"We think something important is at stake: the health of Canadian democracy. We believe the more ways we can find for more Canadians to be involved in public discourses and questions of governance, the better off we will all be. We believe journalism can and should play an important role...
We are bringing together established academics, graduate students, journalists, activists, policy-makers and others interested in journalism policies. Our goals:
1) help mobilize a broad network that will recommend public policies for ensuring spaces in the Canadian media ecology for journalism that places public deliberation and citizen participation at the core of its mission.
2) undertake a process of policy-making that is itself participatory (within the limitations of time and resources available.)"
This sounded like a perfect venue to discuss the important contributions played by community media in the Canadian "media ecology", so Karen Wirsig of the Canadian Media Guild and Catherine Edwards of CACTUS co-submitted a paper the explored ways that public and community broadcasters could work together for mutual benefit and to the benefit of Canadians.
The paper is available here:
Public and Community Partnerships to Improve Local Media.
You can also see our presentation at the conference (as well as the other conference presenters) here:
CACTUS Presentation at Journalism Strategies (starting at minute 43).
The most pressing need for public-community collaboration that surfaced at the conference was for CBC towers and transmission infrastructure slated for decommissioning on July 31st this year to be offered to communities to maintain going forward. We proposed that they be offered to communities not just to keep the CBC going, but to offer new services: community TV or radio as well as rural broadband (wireless Internet) and mobile services in underserved areas.
Let us know what you think about the conference and stay tuned re. CBC transmission infrastructure. There will be further announcements by the CBC, by CACTUS, and by the CRTC this week.
May 7, 2012
LPIF Principles
A set of principles signed by ten industry groups to guide the operation of the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF or FAPL in French). The principles were included with these group's submissions to the 2012 review of the LPIF.
Le ressource est disponible dans les deux langues officielles.
CACTUS' LPIF Submission to the CRTC
CACTUS' Written Submission to the CRTC's 2012 Consultation to Review the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF or FAPL in French)
LPIF Hearing Winds Up
The Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) was created by the CRTC in 2008 to stimulate more local TV programming in 'markets' having fewer than 1 million people.
As far back as the 2002 Lincoln Report, "Our Cultural Sovereignty" (initiated by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage), a fund had been recommended that would stimulate more TV AND radio content, at the "community, local, and regional levels". However, when the CRTC asked the Canadian Association of Broadcasters to design eligibility criteria for the fund in 2008, community broadcasters were not invited to the consultation (and are not members of the CAB). Eligibility criteria were subsequently defined that stated that the fund was only available for "conventional broadcasters" (i.e. those in the public and private sectors) and that a qualifying station must establish "local presence" by producing at least 5 hours of "local news" per week and by the employment of local professional journalists.
The CRTC is currently reviewing the LPIF. CACTUS spokesperson Cathy Edwards appeared before the CRTC last week, making the case that community broadcasters have in fact the most true "local presence" (almost 100% of what they produce is typically made for the local market) and that funding community broadcasters would stimulate content at a rate six times greater than funding 'conventional broadcasters', since a community production on average costs just one sixth what it costs a public or private broadcaster to produce, thanks to the multiplier effect of volunteer labour.
We went to some length to describe how community broadcasters--while they typically don't produce a daily 'newscast' consisting of short segments--in fact produce more in depth content in all the same genres typically produced by a conventional broadcaster: politics, local affairs, arts and culture, sports, health, and so on.
We asked that commmunity TV licence holders be eligible for the LPIF at 1/6 the rate of a conventional broadcaster in recognition of our more efficient production model, and also of the fact that most current community licence holders are active in markets considerably smaller than 1 million.
Other questions under consideration by the Commissioners were:
- whether to keep the fund at all. Cable and satellite companies have to pay into it at a rate of 1.5% of their revenues, yielding a total of just over 100 million per year. All the large cable and satellite companies except Bell consequently want to see the LPIF discontinued.
- whether CBC local stations should continue to be eligible. CBC stations received roughly 40% of the Fund in its first year of operations. Some argue that the CBC already receives funding from Parliament, and that therefore Parliament should make up any shortfalls. Given heavy cuts to the CBC announced in the most recent budget, however, many feel the CBC should continue to be eligible for the LPIF.
- whether recipients should be automatically awarded funding for meeting the minimum eligibility criteria, or whether funding should recognize incremental additions to the amount of local programming created in a market by a particular broadcaster in each year
- whether the LPIF is still necessary given that many of the private broadcasters whose local stations were under threat of closure in 2008 due to the economic downturn have now been purchased by cable and satellite companies with deep enough pockets to continue to fund them without specific incentives or the LPIF.
If you'd like to see CACTUS' written brief, it can be found in our Resources section here:
If you'd like to see what we said at the oral hearing and what questions the Commissioners asked us, the full hearing is available in CPAC's Video-on-Demand service here:
CACTUS April 18th Presentation Before CRTC
(We are second, after Crossroads Television, roughly 44 minutes in.)
On May 2nd, we filed our final comments, including endorsement a set of principles for the LPIF which was signed by ten other industry groups:
Let us know what you think!
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Executive Summary of CACTUS Analysis of Cable Community Channel Logs 2011
The three-page executive summary of CACTUS' full analysis of cable community channel logs submitted for March 6-12, 2011.
2011 CRTC Community Channel Audit
In 2011, the CRTC conducted the most comprehensive audit of cable community channels ever undertaken. CACTUS has examined these logs and has published a comprehensive analysis of cable company claims (regarding local and access contents).
CRTC Audit of Cable Community TV Reveals Same Pattern of Abuse as Previous Audits

CACTUS just completed its review of cable company logs submitted by Rogers, Shaw, Eastlink, Cogeco and Videotron as part of the most comprehensive audit ever conducted by the CRTC of cable community channels. The logs detail all the programming aired on cable community channels in selected licence areas for March 6-12, 2011.
The findings? The same widespread abuse of this community resource as was revealed by the CRTC's previous audits, conducted in 2002-2005. As in 2002-2005, many cable companies failed to meet the 60% local programming minimum that is a standard condition of their licences, and almost all failed to meet the 30% minimum for programming produced by community members (as opposed to programming produced by cable company staff).
Also as in 2002-2005, programs are frequently claimed as "access" (produced by someone in the community) when in fact the companies' web sites suggest they are driven by cable staff. Some cable companies are charging community groups for access; others employ network templates for programs, which are used over a large area.
For us at CACTUS, these findings are no surprise. As we have stated in several public proceedings, the time when it made sense for small mom-and-pop locally based cable companies to administer community channels and media resources is long past. Canada's big five cable companies have no place in the "community media" universe; Canada continues to be the only country in the world in which "community media" is not administered by communities... duh!
Since the audit week occurred just six months into the CRTC's new community TV policy (issued in August of 2010), we are sceptical that the targets of the new policy can be met. If cable companies cannot meet the 30% access programming minimum currently in force, we fail to see how they will be able to ramp up to the 50% access expectation that the CRTC has announced by 2014.
For a full copy of our findings, click here:
CACTUS Analysis of CRTC 2011 Community Channel Audit
For an executive summary of our findings, click here:
The audited licence areas include:
Shaw:
New Westminster
White Rock
Saskatoon
Thunder Bay
Fort McMurray
Rogers:
Barrie
Moncton
St. Johns
London
Oshawa
Videotron:
Granby
Saguenay
Sherbrooke
Cogeco:
Hamilton
Drummondville
Eastlink:
Bedford/Sackville
Sudbury
Copies of the cable company logs submitted to the CRTC can be provided on request.
Politiques de télévision communautaires et pratiques dans le monde
Un rapport au sujet de la télévision communautaire autour le monde... dans 28 pays.
Preparé pour le CRTC en juin, 2009.