2006
CBC Fans lobby for broadcast service. Cable option not acceptable says organizer Pam Astbury View article in pdf format.
The CRTC has agreed to delay CBC/Radio-Canada's licence renewal for a year while it reviews over-the-air television.
CRTC chair Charles Dalfen confirmed the postponement this morning after Federal Heritage Minister Bev Oda's announcement of a six-month review of new television technologies, also to be performed by the CRTC. View link to CBC Arts and Entertainment
CBC clears the air over missed signal. CBC's chief of staff responds to Pam Astbury's inquiry regarding the loss of transmitted CBC TV. View article
July 19, 2006 Kamloops
Daily News
CBC treating Kamloops like a backwater. Hugh Jordan finds the CBC
response to Pam Astbury unacceptable. View
article
For Some, loss of CBC also means loss of unbiased news. CBC is obliged to provide television transmitters says David Charbonneau. View Article
And Now, No Word From Our Sponsors, by Kate
Taylor.
Since CBC Radio dropped commercial advertising in the 1970s, there have
always been those who say CBC-TV should follow suit. But until recently they
were dismissed either as starry-eyed idealists or as right-wing ideologues
looking to hand ad revenue to commercial broadcasters. As for those
who say the ad-free BBC is the best broadcaster in the world, well, Britons
pay for it through a licence fee on their tellies. Try telling
Canadians there's a new tax on TVs. No, an ad-free CBC Television has been
considered a non-starter for 30 years.
View article as it appears on the
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting website
CBC fans push case for CRTC review. The CRTC has delayed CBC's license renewal for a year while it reviews over-the-air TV. View Article page 1 page 2
View article as it appears on the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting website
Fred Mattocks, Executive Director CBC English Television Production and Resources, responds to Hugh Jordan's letter to the Kamloops Daily News on July 19, 2006 (above). CBC will not restore broadcast TV in Kamloops because "it is not efficient to expend significant resources to service a very small and shrinking proportion of the TV audience in the area." View article
CBC Executive Rules out Over-the-air Broadcasts, by Mike Youds. "There is a review of the entire Canadian broadcasting system," Mattocks noted, "One of the questions is whether public broadcasters should provide over-the-air transmission at all." View article
CBC decision makes little sense for Kamloops. Hugh Jordan says it's wrong to depend on data from the Board of Broadcast Measurement to justify the CBC's decision to cut broadcast service to Kamloops. Conservatively, at least 30 per cent of Kamloopsians watch broadcast TV not the 5 per cent claimed by the CBC. View Article
Saying that this Conservative government has a cool relationship with the national network would be putting it lightly. The Reform/Canadian Alliance contingent of the party has been outright hostile to the CBC. And a new local group called Save Our CBC Kamloops is fighting the shutdown, claiming that it's unfair to force residents in the B.C. town to pay for the service twice--through their taxes as well as having to subscribe to a pay-television provider.
Petition urges CBC's return. "We are focusing our energy principally on getting 15,000 signatures," said Pam Astbury, president of the lobby group.
View article in jpg format
The Canadian Media Guild Communications Coordinator Karen Wirsig told us that they support our campaign to restore over-the-air broadcast of CBC television. In their recent newsletter they advocate using cable subscription money to help pay for broadcasting.
View article from website
CBC petitioners build campus support. Thompson Rivers University faculty association support campaign to restore CBC over-the-air television broadcasting.
View article in jpg format
On the need for transmitters:
"One of the phenomena that’s happened since satellite’s been introduced into Canada is we always used to talk about the underserved areas in terms of channel selection as compared to the (urban) areas. If you look at the numbers - and it’s in our (TV Policy Review) presentation - the larger number of people who don’t have satellite or cable delivery are in urban areas. They’ve chosen not to get it. If you go into the hinterlands, it’s almost all now satellite or cable." [Italics ours]
City Council Wants to Save Our CBC. City council unanimously passes motion to send letter to Bev Oda, minister responsible for the CBC, requesting that the CBC restore over-the-air broadcasting of CBC television to Kamloops.
View article in jpg format
Kamloops a test case for CBC, union argues. The Canadian Media Guild which represents media workers, plans to take Kamloops' loss of over-the-air TV to the CRTC on December 1. Guild representative, Karen Wirsig, says that Kamloops may be the first of many smaller centers to loose broadcast CBC TV.
View article in jpg format
In an interview on radio, Karen Wirsig of the The Canadian Media Guild talks about her plans to present the loss of CBC over-the-air to the CRTC. She says that broadcast TV should be part of our national infrastructure and that it's unfair to expect Canadians who live and work in rural areas to pay twice for CBC signals.
Listen to interview in mp3 format, 8min 20 sec, 1.4 Mb
Lise Lareau and Karen Wirsig from the Canadian Media Guild and Barbara Byers from the Canadian Labour Congress tell the CRTC that the loss of over-the-air TV is not a future possibility, it is a current reality in Kamloops. They present an impact statement of the effect that loss is having on Kamloopsians (see appendix).
Read presentation with comments and index
Arthur Lewis presents a case for making multiplexed digital TV channels available to all as a basic package with Kamloops being a test site.
Read a transcript of Lewis' presentation
Arthur Lewis, executive director for the Ottawa based Our Public Airwaves told the CRTC hearing in Gatineau, Quebec that Kamloops should be used as a site to test new Digital TV technology. One transmitter could broadcast over-the-air digital signals that bundle a number of public channels to Kamloopsians for a nominal fee.
Read article in jpg format
Pam Astbury of Save Our CBC Kamloops says that Kamloops could become the test site for new digital technology that allows transmission of a number of channels from one transmission tower. That would allow for public networks like the CBC to be bundled together in one signal.
Read article in jpg format
Hugh Jordan of Save Our CBC Kamloops says we could have digital TV signals that bundle a number of channels on one signal. Either a digital TV or an old analog TV could receive the channels through a box that sits on top of the TV much the way satellite reception works.
Read article in jpg format
Read Article in pfd format
The minister responsible for the CBC might just as well be invisible. Ian Morrison of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting says "I can't think of anything significant that she's done." She is supposed to be reviewing the mandate of the CBC but nothing is happening. Meanwhile, Kamloops new CBC broadcast transmitter hangs in limbo.
Read Article as linked to the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
The federal Conservatives are pushing their vision of the Telecom world of less regulation and letting market forces control our airwaves. The CRTC is urging caution as the Tories recently overturned decisions. Think about consumers and new competition, the regulators urge.
Read Article in jpg format
