[Demcom] La CRTC va-t-il décider lafin de la télé communautaire

[Alain Ambrosi]

La CRTC est-il en train de mettre la hache dans la télé communautaire?
Voici un article du Globe and Mail sur le sujet. Beaucoup d'autres 
exemples réussis pourraient être pris au Québec pour matcher ceux qui 
sont décrits dans cet article. Car en fait tout a commencé au Québec au 
début des années 70 puis s'est propagé dans le reste deu Canada bien 
plus tard. Au Québec Vidéotron a contribué à étouffer la tv 
communautaire en 1999 ( ?) . Dans l'ouest c'est Rogers et Shaw qui ont 
fait la job. Et dire que c'est sur le modèle québécois puis canadien que 
ce sont créées partout dans le monde des tv communautaires.
Certains sur cette liste pourront maintenant compléter l'histoire de 
cette aventure des médias audiovisuels alternatifs.
AA


Is community TV facing its Waterloo?

Grassroots local TV has been a source of community information and a
training ground for future professionals. But as part of a sweeping
review, the CRTC may rule cable distributors will no longer be required to
carry the service

MARSHA LEDERMAN

>From Thursday's Globe and Mail

April 10, 2008 at 4:09 AM EDT

VANCOUVER — When Steven Kerzner was 14, he put on his slightly-too-small
bar mitzvah suit, grabbed a briefcase he found in his house, and took the
bus over to the tiny local community television station in his Toronto
neighbourhood. He walked in, pitched a show called Let's Talk, and was
hired - as a volunteer - on the spot.

By the time he was 18, Kerzner was running the station. In the meantime,
he had created several shows and personas - including Ed: a mouthy,
cigar-toting, politically incorrect sock puppet.

Ed the Sock is now a bona fide TV star, having made the leap from
community to mainstream television in 1994. Guests of Ed's Night Party
(now Ed & Red's Night Party) have included Christina Aguilera, Hilary Duff
and Coldplay.

The red carpet Ed now frequents seems a very long way from the threadbare
studios of Newton Cable, but community TV was integral to Ed the Sock's
creation. "It was a great opportunity to have all these toys there to play
with, without the commercial pressures that are there now," says Kerzner,
40. "We could go and play around and have fun and see what worked and
learn ... without there being [the] pressure of being graded for it."

This week, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
is considering removing the requirement that community channels remain on
basic cable as part of a sweeping review of broadcast distribution
regulations. The public hearings began Tuesday in Gatineau.

Alarmed by the possible disappearance of community television, where he
spent more than 30 years as a volunteer, Richard Ward of the Community
Media Education Society has written to the CRTC, urging it not to expel
community TV from basic cable.

While Ward acknowledges that the issue is just a tiny part of the CRTC's
review, the overall discussion about deregulation has him worried. "We
have got distinctly Canadian things to say and the community channel [has]
the broadest reach of all of the parts of Canada's broadcasting system,"
he said from Calgary. "I think it's prudent to be on guard, even if the
threat is not directed primarily at the community channel. I don't think
you wait until everyone else has been destroyed before you speak up."

In probably the most documented rise from community television, Tom Green
went from hosting a show on Rogers Cable 22 in Ottawa to The Comedy
Network in Canada to MTV in the United States. The Tom Green Show - part
talk show, part gross-out prankfest - made him a star.

Like Kerzner, Green was an early community television volunteer, starting
when he was 15 at Rogers 22's predecessor, Skyline Cable, learning
lighting, camera and reporting. He vividly recalls seeing himself on TV
for the first time, reporting for the station's news program about an
earthquake fault in Ottawa. "I remember just being completely amazed when
it aired," he says. "I was sitting at home watching it on my television
and I just literally couldn't believe that I was able to sort of volunteer
there and then be on TV, on real TV."

Times have changed: Tiny stations like Skyline and Newton Cable have been
swallowed up by conglomerates like Rogers and Shaw. And thanks to
regulatory changes introduced in 1997, advertising is now allowed.
Nowadays, much of what's on community television is slick, professionally
produced programming. Fourteen-year-olds aren't running the show any more.

Take Reel to Real: The Rogers-produced film review program is a
community-TV hybrid, the hosts are paid freelancers, a Rogers-employed
staff person runs the show and volunteers do the technical work.

The show, in its 15th season, attracts A-list guests like George Clooney,
Halle Berry and Jerry Seinfeld. Only once in recent memory has it been
denied a big-name guest because it was a "community TV" show (the U.S.
publicist's decision was reversed, and the guest, ironically Canadian
music producer Daniel Lanois, did ultimately appear).

Reel to Real has made a celebrity of co-host Richard Crouse, who has
parlayed the gig into other projects, including books (his sequel to The
100 Best Movies You've Never Seen, called Son of The 100 Best Movies
You've Never Seen, comes out in September) and a just-launched radio show.

"We're on a low number on the dial in the biggest TV market in the
country," Crouse says. "It's created a loyal following for us."

Being low on the dial is key, Ward believes, to community television's
survival. "A lot of people still watch television as opposed to watching a
particular show," he says. "They flip through the dial [and] when they
pass the community channel, a surprising number of them stop there."

It can be surprising indeed to discover how many people have seen a
particular community-TV show episode. Ed the Sock's public access tipping
point came the night actor Robert Vaughan, who was in the area doing
dinner theatre, was a guest. The former star of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
seemed furious at Ed's questions, and the segment created all kinds of
buzz. "Nowadays it would be all over YouTube," Kerzner says. "But in those
days, people just videotaped it and took it to their friend's house and it
sort of spread and from there it kept going."

So in the age of YouTube, is community television still needed?

Steve Anderson, the co-ordinator for the Campaign for Democratic Media,
says yes. "Most people still get a lot of their news and information from
TV despite the Internet," says Anderson, who is also a graduate student in
communications at Simon Fraser University. "Also, the Internet is a very
global medium whereas community television ... is locally focused, locally
produced and locally watched."

And for people starting out in TV, Green says, an online forum can't
possibly replace a hands-on experience. "At the end of the day, if you go
down and volunteer at a public access television station, there's a lot of
people there who are really passionate about television and they'll teach
you a lot of stuff," he says. "You wouldn't really be able to learn any of
that kind of stuff on your own just sitting at home putting clips on
YouTube."

Green, who this year launched a new show, Tom Green's House Tonight (The
Comedy Network), says he used the skills he learned from community
television to create the program. "I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now
if it wasn't for that," he says. "If I hadn't picked up all that stuff on
the way at Rogers Cable, I wouldn't have even known where to start."

c. Globe and Mail

Link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080410.wcommunitytv/BNStory/Entertainment/home