Here are some of your comments and our correspondence in 2007
Go to comments in 2006
Committee reviews mandate of CBC
The comments below are excerpts from the Parliamentary Committee reviewing the future of the CBC. These quotations are relevant to our loss of CBC in Kamloops.
S.O.C.K. has been invited to appear before the
Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. The Committee is now
undertaking a full investigation of the role for a public broadcaster in the
21st century. S.O.C.K. makes it's presentation on March 14.
Our organization has been included in the list of potential witnesses to
appear before the Committee on this study. The Committee requests a
written brief.
January 30 Read letter from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage
January 31 Read mandate of the investigation
January 31 Read response from Pam Astbury, president of S.O.C.K., to the Committee
January 31 Read response from the Committee to Pam Astbury
January 31 Read letter from from Betty Hinton, MP, to Pam Astbury
February 2 Read letter from Charlie Angus, MP and member of Committee, to Pam Astbury
March 14 SOCK gives presentation to the Committee. Click on links to view transcripts from Pam Astbury and David Charbonneau from this government site.
March 20 The chair of the committee wonders what the CRTC is going to do about the loss of over-the-air CBC TV in places like Kamloops? The CRTC says they are working on it. Read exchange.
April 20 The president of the Canadian Media guild is concerned that more small centres like Kamloops will loose free CBC transmitters. Also, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network manages to transmit over the air signals to its small audiences. Read testimony.
April 24 Charlie Angus says that free television from rabbit ears is part of a social contract with Canadians. Arthur Lewis regrets this trend that started in Kamloops but given the lack of funding for transmitters, it may be inevitable. Given a choice, he would rather money went into programming rather than transmission towers.
May 10
Mr. Bernard Caron (Vice-President, Broadcast Technology Research Branch /
Communications Research Centre Canada, Department of Industry) says:
"New over-the-air digital TV stations can be used to transmit a single HDTV
program, but it's also possible to use the same station to transmit multiple
programs.
Digital TV also enables broadcasters to offer more than one soundtrack. Just
as you can select a language option of English, French, or Spanish when you
turn on a DVD, similarly a broadcaster could offer its viewers a choice of
different languages."
SOCK advocates this technology for Kamloops so that five channels could be broadcast from a single station. Viewers would need to purchase a digital box to view the stations. New TV's would likely have the digital decoder built in. Here are some of the bundled stations that could be transmitted:
- CBC Network TV
- CBC French TV (Radio Canada)
- APTN Aboriginal Peoples Television Network
- Country Canada
- Knowledge Network
- Open Learning courses from Thompson
Rivers University
Fred Mattocks responds to S.O.C.K.'s proposal for establishing digital pilot transmitters in Kamloops. Mr. Mattocks regrets the loss of CBC television to Kamloopsians but states that Kamloops will not be one of 44 Canadian communities to receive digital transmitters. He repeats earlier claims that the cost of new transmitters does not warrant the television service to Kamloops.
Read original proposal to CBC from Pam Astbury
Read response (page 1)(page 2) from Fred Mattocks, Executive Director, CBC Television Regional Programming, CBC Television Production and Resources.
Jason Meyers from The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting supports SOCK in our presentation to the parliamentary Heritage Committee that is reviewing the mandate of the CBC. They are also making a presentation.
Read his email and send a letter to the Heritage Committee
Pam Astbury asks Bev Oda, Minister responsible for the CBC, to restore over-the-air television to Kamloops. The Conservative's recent grant to the CBC of $1.2 billion should be put to restoring lost services.
John Agnew, Director of Radio and Television, CBC North, says that CBC will not abandoning Canadians. Anyone who currently receives television over-the-air will continue to receive that service into the foreseeable future.
Read article
Bev Oda, Minister responsible for the CBC, writes to SOCK to say that the CBC is an autonomous Crown Corporation and is responsible for its own operations.
Read letter
Karen Wirsig responds to Bev Oda's letter above and says this is exactly what each government of the day does to insulate themselves from potentially unpopular decisions (ostensibly made by the CBC, which is too often forced into difficult choices these days because of years of inadequate funding). Wirsig is the Communications Coordinator for the Canadian Media Guild.
Read email
The CRTC report. In a nutshell, broadcasters will be permitted to keep analog transmitters going in places where there is no digital transmission after the transition in 2011, but they won't be obliged to. That means that as those transmitters age and come to the end of life, they don't need to be replaced.
Read report in pdf format
The lobby group "Our Public Airwaves" condemns the above CRTC report. “Private broadcasters are getting a new licence to print money,” says Executive Director, Arthur Lewis, “while the CBC is being denied access to much-needed new revenue through subscription fees.” Also, is CBC chief Robert Rabinovitch on his way out?
Read Newsletter
Ian Morrison of the Friends of Canadian
Broadcasting requests support for expansion of Kelowna's CBC Radio One
programming into the Kelowna area with a new transmitter and several hours
daily of locally produced programming. It's part of a welcome
plan to rectify a longstanding gap in CBC radio's local availability to
Canadians in and around some fifteen cities.
We understand that CBC's proposal projects the operating cost for all these
new stations taken together to be about $25 million each year on top of an
initial capital cost of $25 million for the transmitters and studio
equipment.
See responses below.
read
article
Hugh Jordan says that Kelowna already has a CBC radio station and Kamloops would have one too if the plan was not vetoed by Mr. Harper. The plan that Friends of Canadian Broadcasting asks us to support is is apparently a Harperized illusion of the original CBC plan.
The Kamloops area is geographically and demographically distinct from Kelowna. It is also the area that CBC TV has decided not to bother with over the air broadcasting.
read email
David Charbonneau grudgingly supports CBC's plans for radio in Kelowna. He hopes the citizens of Kelowna will return the favour and support CBC coverage in Kamloops. As it is, we have none. No radio studios, no TV transmitter. We are the only place in BC (perhaps Canada) that doesn't have a CBC TV transmitter.
Even the little town of Barriere, north of Kamloops, can watch over-the-air CBC TV.
read email
David Charbonneau says that it's inexplicable why Kamloops is the only place in B.C. without a CBC TV transmitter. CBC executive say that too few viewers watch TV over-the-air and that it's too expensive but they plan to build a new radio transmitter in Kelowna and expand hours of broadcast. Much smaller communities than Kamloops have transmitters.
In November 2006, Kamloops was one of 12
Canadian cities scheduled to get a CBC Radio One station. That
decision has apparently been reversed, and a new transmitter and more air
time substituted, instead, for the present Kelowna station.
Why was the decision changed?
Read letter
"Kamloops, like a number of other communities across the country, is growing and has a thriving cultural community and in a perfect world is deserving of its own local CBC Radio Station. We recognize Kamloops is not the Okanagan. We would be very happy indeed if a Kamloops station for CBC Radio One were to become a reality."
read letter (in PDF format)
The CBC and the CRTC are autonomous bodies independent of government and responsible for their respective affairs. The Commons Standing Committee launched a full review of the role of the CBC and heard from SOCK. We have done all we can with the CBC and the Committee.
Mr. Carson suggests we write the Secretary General, Robert Morin, with our concerns.
