Major cable TV companies’ licences renewed: What the CRTC decided

On Aug. 2, the CRTC renewed the broadcasting licences of most of Canada’s major cable TV companies, including Videotron, Cogeco, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel, Eastlink, Telus, VMedia and Bell MTS.

Though it wasn’t technically a policy proceeding, the omnibus licence renewals allowed the commission to impose a bunch of de facto policies, or clarify existing ones, on everyone at the same time. (Licenses for Bell’s Fibe TV operations, Bell satellite TV, Shaw Direct and some other distributors weren’t part of this proceeding, and smaller distributors who are exempt from licensing aren’t affected.)

Here’s what was decided:


Community programming
It’s been four years since a complaint about Videotron’s MAtv community channel alleging it wasn’t giving the community enough access sparked what was supposed to be a wide-ranging review of the practice of community TV channels owned by cable companies. Though the original complaint was settled (the CRTC found Videotron in non-compliance but allowed it to keep its channel), the larger review kept getting pushed back. Now it has finally been resolved, kinda. CACTUS, the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations, filed complaints based on analysis of programming grids for community stations filed online. The CRTC dismissed these because they were incomplete or inaccurate, but asked community channels directly for programming logs and recordings, basing its analysis on that instead.