CBC attacks Star Choice over diversity.

I wish that I were in a larger center where we have cable. Star Choice is annoying and expensive. Not only do many stations have endless ads but Star Choice itself spends time spouting off about their virtues and advertising their costly ad ons. I do watch some of the news programs but if it were not that my wife enjoys some of the movies and shows I would drop the whole thing and just listen to our three local stations that one can get free via our aerial.

Star Choice should be forced to keep to the terms of their licence. It is ridiculous that they should get away with this stuff.




Wednesday » May 14 » 2008

CBC attacks Star Choice over diversity

Barbara Shecter
Canwest News Service
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
TORONTO -- The CBC has filed an official complaint with the federal broadcast regulator, demanding that Shaw Communications Inc.'s Star Choice satellite-TV distributor immediately reinstate the public broadcaster's Saskatchewan channel, which was pulled last week.
Star Choice breached its conditions of licence by failing to carry an equal number of stations from each broadcast group to ensure "diversity," according to the CBC complaint filed with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Tuesday.
"It is our opinion that Canadians should have greater access to Canadian programming, not less," the public broadcaster said.
The CBC estimates that some 40 per cent of viewers in Saskatchewan receive their television signal from a satellite distributor.
Four other local channels were pulled down last Wednesday, including Citytv in Winnipeg, Global in the Maritimes, CTV in Calgary, and Sun TV, a Toronto channel owned by Quebecor Inc. CTV's Calgary station was reinstated the same day after Star Choice was deluged with customer complaints.
The return of the CTV channel served only to "exacerbate" the breach of equitable treatment, the CBC said in its complaint, arguing that Star Choice should be compelled to pick up additional CBC feeds to meet its obligations.
The removal of the local stations sparked outrage at other broadcast groups, including CTV and Global, whose parent company is Canwest Global Communications Corp. Broadcast executives said the move by Star Choice strengthened their pleas to maintain and even toughen regulations, rather than cater to requests from distributors to loosen the rules so they can determine what their customers see.
Ken Stein, senior vice-president of corporate and regulatory affairs at Shaw, said Star Choice needed to bump the local channels to make room for more high-definition channels, which customers are demanding.
Canadian cable operators are compelled to pick up local stations in every market, but domestic satellite-TV distributors are not bound by the same rules.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008

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