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These days, CJOH's direct, over-the-air competition includes not only CBC Ottawa and Global, but also the imported signals of Citytv and OnTV. Like Global, these two southern Ontario stations were granted permission to rebroadcast their signals in communities throughout the province, though they offer not one minute of local programming. The CRTC is convinced that such economies of scale allow the stations to increase their spending on the kinds of national programs it most wants to foster.

Baton, City and ONtv have roughly the same audience reach in Ontario, but only Baton operates local stations through the province.

"The result (of the CRTC decision) was to give Baton a disincentive to program locally," says Morrison. "They were taking the signal that the commission really didn't want (local programming)."

However, Baton is responding to its own imperative, as well as CRTC's, says John Beveridge, a former CJOH program director.

After more than 20 years overseeing CJOH's programming, Beveridge was made redundant several years ago when Baton's Toronto head office took over programming for the entire chain. Since then, Baton's goal has been a uniform schedule from sea to sea, he says. It helps to explain why Homegrown Cafe was cancelled even though it was one of the most popular programs in Eastern Ontario.

"They don't want to sell individual programs, they want everything on the system to be the same so they can take that schedule into the advertiser, and say, 'Here's what's on the system. If you buy it, your ad will be seen on stations across the country in that program.'

"What they hate doing is going in and saying, 'In Ottawa you'll be on Regional Contact, in Toronto on Sportsline, and in Saskatoon on something else,' " says Beveridge.

Such single-minded corporate marketing is convenient, but overlooks the benefits of local TV, says Beveridge, especially the development of local talent.

"As much as Homegrown Cafe was pretty hokey, I can think of a few people who have gone on to stardom who started there," says Beveridge.

He also cites the support CJOH's local programming gave to Alanis Morissette, a onetime You Can't Do That on Television moppet, who was later showcased on CJOH variety specials.

"Alanis may not have been as well known or risen to stardom as quickly if she had not been given the platform that CJOH gave her to develop."

Beveridge doesn't buy the argument that individual stations must spend less on local programming so they can contribute to national programs, such as Due South, which all can share. He notes that such major drama projects are already largely supported by various forms of government funding, none of which was available to broadcasters when the bulk of their Canadian content was local programming.

"In our day, there wasn't any handout. That (money) came out of operating expenses," says Beveridge.

"I don't quite understand why the CRTC has looked the other way (as local programming has declined), particularly in the last few years when (broadcasting) revenue and advertising dollars are flowing like crazy. Stations are just raking in the money."

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting's Morrison suggests that the CRTC may have convinced itself that the decline in local programming is offset by the presence of cable community channels.

Research by the Friends suggests that in B.C. as many as 20 per cent of viewers outside Vancouver rely heavily on cable community channels for community reflection because their local broadcasters have abandoned local programming.

"The community channels ends up, by default, being the source of community information."

The problem, says Morrison, is that the standards of journalism and production on volunteer-driven community channels are mixed at best, and often poor.

"It may be that in the grand scheme of things that some CRTC bureaucrats see that as a solution. We don't," says Morrison, whose group will make an issue of the sad state of local programming at a CRTC hearing on Canadian content this fall.

Local programming is not just the moral obligation of a TV station, says Beveridge. It's the law.

"The Broadcast Act basically says (a local station) is supposed to be a reflection of the community served. Well let me tell you, the only reflection that you'll get out of CJOH is on Regional Contact next year. While that's a nice little program and does very well, it's not the only thing that should reflect the community."

© The Ottawa Citizen

Local TV Shows Endangered Species by Tony Atherton

May 23, 1998

Source : Ottawa Citizen

National approach wipes out home atmosphere

by Tony Atherton

In the early '90s, CJOH's weekly schedule included 30 hours of local programming, everything from High School Confidential and You Can't Do That on Television, to the daily talk show, Eye on Ottawa.

Back then, CBC Ottawa carried the local lifestyles magazine, Metro, and the popular Sunday morning kids series, Switchback. Even tiny CHRO boasted a bumper crop of locally-oriented programs, including the award-winning Teen Machine and the weekly interview show, Political Memoirs.

Next season, with the demise of popular Homegrown Cafe, the only non-news shows made for an local audience by a local broadcaster will be CJOH's Regional Contact and CHRO's Base Journal, a half-hour weekly roundup of news from CFB Petawawa.

Local programming malaise is hardly unique to Ottawa. Similar erosion is taking place in communities across Canada. Local programming, once the backbone of Canadian content, is on the verge of becoming extinct.

"Everywhere in the country there is less local programming and a lower quality of local programming," says Ian Morrison of the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. "It's the piece that's falling out in the broadcasting system, and it's serious because if people can't rely on television to tell the stories that are going on in their own community, it means that television is no longer operating as a kind of community-building source."

CBC's retreat from local programming was relatively straightforward. As government subsidies were slashed in the '80s and '90s, the public broadcaster decided it was more practical and less controversial to eliminate local shows rather than weaken the network schedule. But among private broadcasters, there were more complex forces at work.

The beginning of the end of local programming can be traced back to 1987. That year the CRTC licensed the first batch of basic-cable specialty channels; CTV was ordered to triple its output of Canadian drama; Global built a new high-power re-transmitter at Camp Fortune; and CJOH gave Bill Luxton his walking papers.

Luxton's Morning Magazine, a local talk show which had been part of the station's schedule for 15 years, was cancelled in 1987 because, as CJOH general manager Bryn Matthews said at the time, the station could no longer afford modest, community-oriented programs. Cable's menu of imported channels had eroded the audience for low-budget, local-content fillers, Matthews said. To meet Canadian-content requirements, broadcasters had to make shows with a potential for national syndication; such shows would justify the kind of budget needed to attract an audience.

Accordingly, Morning Magazine's shortlived replacement was Brightside, an ambitious local pilot for a national lifestyles series starring a Toronto import, Mary Bellows.

Matthews couldn't foresee the mounting commercial and regulatory forces that would soon make any kind of local TV programming, even that with national as pirations, as scarce as hen's teeth:

The new specialty channels licensed in 1987 heralded a wave of unprecedented competition for conventional broadcasters, further fragmenting the TV audience. <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O />

CTV's new prime-time drama requirements signalled the beginning of the CRTC's single-minded quest to get broadcasters to focus resources on the most expensive and riskiest kind of Canadian content, even at the expense local programming.

Global's new re-transmitter, which vastly improved the Toronto station's signal in Eastern Ontario, was a symbol of a trend towards consolidation and regionalization that would continue for the next decade.