Industry at risk, says head of TV fund by Maria BabbageJan 25, 2007 Source : Calgary HeraldCanadian PressVideotron's decision this week to stop making its monthly payments to the Canadian Television Fund makes it impossible for the agency to plan for the upcoming year and that could put thousands of jobs at risk, the fund's chairman said Wednesday. CTF chairman Douglas Barrett said the Canadian television production industry will become "chaotic" as the fund struggles with an impending $63-million budget shortfall after Shaw Communications said last month and then Videotron announced Tuesday that they would suspend their contributions. "This is tens of thousands of jobs," Barrett said in an interview from the Quebec's Eastern Townships, where the fund's board is holding a retreat until Thursday. "If these productions don't proceed, this has an impact on broadcast schedules and production companies in this country who are already in a fragile state." The fund said Wednesday it will ask Canada's broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to take legal action against Shaw and Videotron. "The CRTC has regulations and it's their legal duty to enforce them," Barrett said. "And we're going to ask them to do so." Quebecor Inc. , which controls Videotron through Quebecor Media, is also demanding that Heritage Minister Bev Oda launch a review of the management of the fund, which is coming up for renewal in March. CRTC regulations require medium and large cable and direct-to-home operators to contribute to the fund, based on a formula which includes gross revenues and the number of subscribers. The CTF invested about $264 million in Canadian programming in its 2005-2006 year and receives about $100 million annually from the federal government. But the two cable distributors say they are frustrated with the CTF, which they say isn't paying enough attention to the concerns of its private-sector contributors. A spokeswoman for Rogers Communications, owner of the country's largest cable distributor, declined to comment about the funding pullout. © Calgary Herald
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