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--- Upon resuming at 1814 / Reprise 1814 9857 THE CHAIRPERSON: Welcome back. 9858 Madam Secretary. 9859 MS SANTERRE: Thank you, Madam Chair. 9860 We will now hear the reply by Mr. Pachul. REPLY 9861 MR. PACHUL: Thank you very much. 9862 I also want to thank our supportive intervenors who made such a great effort to show up today. I was quite impressed with the eloquence of the people who appeared today in support of our application. 9863 I did not know in advance what they were going to say, so I was quite surprised when I heard it. I did not have any influence whatsoever over the content of what they were going to say -- and I didn't really want to either. 9864 We have had quite a few positive intervenors. I think altogether we had about 46. Most of these people we got through this outreach program that we did work on for a few years. 9865 Our negative interventions talk about doing studies and surveys. But being one that took advanced statistics in college, I can make a poll do anything I want it to do. I can skew the results to have a poll express anything I would like it to express. I can structure the questions in such a way that I can elicit certain answers. I don't know what is so scientific or legitimate about polling. 9866 I think our outreach program is much more legitimate than any polling as far as the need for the station. 9867 If you want to talk about need for our service, just look at our positive interventions. Also, look at how many negative interventions we got from the general public: none. 9868 There is not one single viewer that does not support Star Ray TV. That is a fact. 9869 If we look at our negative intervenors, it seems like there is no diversity whatsoever in their interventions. All they are doing is misquoting and misrepresenting the same documents. I don't understand how we could be reading the same document. 9870 One document that they seemed to be pulling out all the time is the document that I am extremely familiar with, because back in 1994 I had some conversations with Peter Foster of the CRTC and we did talk in detail about -- I believe the document is 1987-8, which is Regulations Respecting Television. 9871 What these negative intervenors have done is they have taken a document that is designed to encourage and promote television in rural areas, and they are claiming that these are low powered television regulations. 9872 I fail to see where any of this restrictive language that they are coming up with is anywhere in that document. For instance, both the CCTA and Rogers -- let me see if I can get the exact quote here. I wrote it down somewhere. 9873 Here is the quote. "These are four criteria that have to be satisfied by an applicant before the Commission would issue a licence." (As read) 9874 Where is it? I don't see that in that document anywhere. 9875 I see the word "flexibility"; I see the word "encourage". So where is this restrictive language? 9876 It seems to me that what these people are doing is inventing some kind of regulations for their own purpose. I don't really see the intent of the CRTC to limit low power TV just to rural areas. 9877 I think what the CRTC was trying to do with that document was encourage stations in remote areas. But there is nowhere any kind of restrictive language that says that a low power station cannot be established anywhere else. 9878 Going further on this regulatory flexibility, we never really asked for any regulatory flexibility. We did not ask to be relieved of doing logs or any other type of flexibility that is specified in that document. It never happened. 9879 Also, another document that seems to be greatly misrepresented in their interventions is the proposed Community Channel regulations which were proposed, I believe, in document no. 1989-176. 9880 Is that correct? I believe that is correct. 9881 This is a proposed document. The CRTC in its wisdom has a disclaimer right at the end stating that this document is not supposed to be misconstrued as regulation. 9882 They are claiming that this is the regulation. 9883 From what I can tell through researching CRTC documents, there is a void right now in the regulation of low powered television. We tried to address that void with our exemption from the Broadcast Act application, where we had proposed a three-year trial to assist the CRTC in developing final regulations. 9884 Also, I wonder why there are not final regulations to this day. We are looking at a document that was originally released in 1989. 9885 And to top everything off, if we go to that other regulation, 1987-8, there is a disclaimer in that document that states that this document is not community television. So it is quite obvious that they are misrepresenting all these documents, and they all did it in the same fashion. 9886 Obviously they are comparing notes. If they can't even provide diversity in their interventions, how are they going to provide diversity in programming? --- Laughter 9887 Another thing that was quite upsetting -- I believe it was Ms Watson from Rogers. She seems to be putting Rogers in the position of censoring programming material, which I think is totally out of their purview. 9888 More than that, I believe it is against the Constitution of Canada to even talk in that respect. 9889 Who are they to censor what material goes on the air, and who are they to make a judgment call as to whether our programming is good or whether our programming is clearly inferior to theirs? 9890 We never stated that our programming is so much superior to theirs. 9891 I received an e-mail a few days ago from a gentleman from Mississauga. He read my Web site and he read all these interventions. He seemed to think that well, since all these high priced lawyers were saying the same thing, it must be true. 9892 In Rogers case they seemed to be of the opinion that the only people that are allowed to watch a community channel are people who are cable subscribers. But it seems to me that the CRTC opened up competition in distribution. There is LookTV; there is ExpressVu; there is Star Choice. Are these people all supposed to run their own community channel? 9893 Why can't Star Ray be the community channel for all of them? 9894 At the beginning of my presentation you saw Charlene Zacks. If Rogers was as good at local television as they claim they are, how come Charlene Zacks, of her own volition, tells us how she has been denied access to Rogers, where she applied several times and go nowhere? 9895 It is true that Rogers seems to just want to use the community channel as a value added to their cable. They don't really care what is on it, just as long as they can say: We got it; therefore, that is a reason why you should get cable. 9896 Also, another thing that I particularly don't understand is how the cable companies can be making these value judgments over what programming people should watch and what they should not watch. I think that is totally out of their purview; it really is. 9897 I am really offended that these people have this kind of attitude. 9898 Going back to this e-mail I received from this gentleman, he basically said that he experienced this Rogers superiority complex first-hand. Rogers believes that everything they do is so much better than everybody else and there is nobody that could even hold a candle to them. 9899 I think, if you look at all of the negative interventions, that is true of all of them. They all think that they are the best, and whatever we could possibly come up with is crap. 9900 I think if we receive a licence we will be a breath of fresh air in the Toronto market because we just don't have their attitude. 9901 I would never misrepresent documents. If I were Rogers or Citytv, I think I would just stick to the cable issue and that's it. Everything else -- quite frankly, all I think they are doing is embarrassing themselves. And they are also embarrassing Canada too, because we posted all that material on our Web site and anybody in the world can see what these people are actually like. 9902 So I would like to know what they are trying to prove. 9903 One statement that was made many years ago which I think is very apropos right now is that "freedom of the press belongs to those that own one." I think is very true. 9904 I think it has been very true in our case. We have never been able to break through to any of the mainstream press. Certainly none of our opposing intervenors ever ran a story about us and probably never will. I doubt we will ever become a member of the CAB. You know, that's kind of obvious. I think we are always going to be outsiders. 9905 I don't think mainstream broadcasting will ever accept us. I think the main reason why they are so after us is because we are coming up with a few policies where we are going to lead by example, and they certainly don't like the example we are going to set. 9906 For one, do you think they like the concept of 100 per cent Canadian programming during prime time or "Prime Time for Canadians?" They don't want anybody to start anything like this because then what is going to happen is people are going to question, "Well, how come these guys are doing this and you are doing that?" 9907 Also, other policies we have I'm sure they are not going to like. We have been trying to separate ourselves from the culture of the other stations in Toronto, especially Citytv. Citytv, our culture is nothing like theirs. We have been trying to do our best to distance ourselves from their culture and the culture of other stations. 9908 For one, we want to be content-rich. We don't want to be vapid. We don't want to be doing 15-second news bites where nobody really knows what is going on. We want to have a station where people can watch the station on a regular basis and have fun watching the station. 9909 I think that is exactly what Charlene Zacks was talking about. She wants to have this sense of fun in doing what she was doing, and she definitely misses it now. She seems to attribute most of the problems she has had with access to Rogers taking over the cable systems. 9910 One of the biggest oxymorons I have ever run into is a regional community channel. How can you be a community channel and be regional at the same time? I can never figure that one out. But that is what Rogers is trying to do. 9911 As far as TV stations in Canada, yes, we want to set a precedent. It is a joke as to the amount of TV stations that are on the air right now if you look at any country in the world. According to the CRTC figures I have, every station, including rebroadcasters, amounts to something like 156 stations in a country as big as Canada. Here we have people arguing against us going on the air? You could easily put on 200 low-power stations overnight. 9912 Also, they are saying, "Well, the floodgates are opening up." How many applications have you gotten from people like us in the last 10 years? I really don't know if too many people even attempted anything like this. The application process is fairly extensive, and I think the process alone will prevent a lot of people coming forward. 9913 As far as a call for applications, that would do nothing for diversity of ownership. For instance, you had a call for applications out in Vancouver. Who got the licence? The same old people again. I don't know how many licences CTV controls, but do they want to control another one. Is that the idea? 9914 You know, CHUM Television is knocking us but yet, as far as I know, they are controlling 17 licences at the present time in television undertakings. I'm also including their specialty channels too. 9915 Also, none of the opposing intervenors came up with anything of substance. None of them said anything about how many viewers we are going to take away from them, how we are going to impact them financially, anything about their ability to fulfil their licence requirements. There is none of that there. All I see is a bunch of misrepresentation of documents and that's about it. 9916 The only real argument that they have I believe we addressed, which is cable carriage. We are willing to take whatever cable channel they want to come up with, which I think is fair. 9917 What about the legitimacy of our station? Do we need to broadcast 50 per cent American content during prime time to get on cable? Is that how we do it or what? 9918 Now, about low power in the U.S. I have this little thing here that I got from the FCC. It says it was established by the Federal Communications Commission in 1982. It was primarily intended to provide opportunities for locally-oriented television service in small communities, both rural communities and individual communities within larger urban areas. "LPTV presents a less expensive and very flexible means of delivering programming tailored to the interests of viewers in small localized areas providing a means of local self- expression. In addition..." (As read) 9919 And I think this is quite important as far as what they are looking to do with LPTV: "...LPTV has created abundant opportunities for new entry into television broadcasting and has permitted fuller use of the broadcasting spectrum." (As read) 9920 This is a quote from the FCC in the U.S. on low-power TV. 9921 I guess that is about all I have to say for now. 9922 I really appreciate this opportunity that the Commission has given us. I thank all our positive intervenors. I don't know what to say about our negative ones. ---Laughter 9923 I guess that is all I have to say. Thank you very much. |