CRTC wakes up, recalls it has a mandate

If the CRTC has decided to enforce the licence of History Television (owned by Alliance Atlantis, AAC.A:TSX), perhaps they should spend a few hours watching Much Music.

It is hard to imagine that Much Music received their wildly lucrative licence with the promise:

“In one twelve hour period, we will dedicate half of our air time (5.5 hours of 12) to anything but music videos. We’ll follow Jack Osborne to Latin America. We’ll try to find a new singer for the Pussycat Dolls. We’ll follow the career of Fergie. Well, we won’t do it. We’ll buy someone else’s product and run it on the station. But we will interview Perez Hilton for an hour in our own studio. That’s original content, right?”

What we do know is that the CRTC recently approved Much’s licence renewal and agreed that the amount of airtime dedicated to music vidoes could be reduced from 65% to 50%. In its place, they promised to show material about the music industry. Does Jack Osborne have a record deal? Unlikely.

As for promoting more Canadian content, this is how the CRTC rationalized their decision, in part:

“The Commission also considers that additional non-music video programming will serve to promote and provide exposure to Canadian artists, independent or otherwise. The Commission notes in this regard the programs cited by MuchMusic, such as Kane, Fandemonium, Caught in the Crossfire and Much In Your Space.”

Got that? Much In Your Space serves to promote Canadian artists. A show about redoing a bedroom in the theme of Linkin Park serves to promote a Canadian artist (did they mean interior designer?). Regardless, a year after the licence was renewed and none of these shows now appear to be produced by the channel. So much for mitigation.

Hopefully The Globe and Mail, owner of CHUM, which in turn owns Much, will show as much interest in this topic as they did covering Alliance’s compliance issues.

MRM