Later this month, the CRTC, Canada’s broadcast regulatory authority, will hold four days of public hearings to determine which one of a handful of applications will be awarded a special TV license to operate a multilingual TV channel with mandatory cable and satellite distribution across Canada.
Last year, the CRTC recognized citizens’ need for better multilingual, multi-ethnic programming, particularly for national, regional, and local news and information shows produced from a Canadian point of view.
Applicants include dominant telecom-media companies Bell and Rogers, as well as some well-positioned smaller groups. One of the most interesting ones is Toronto-based “CanadaWorld TV,” a partnership of ethnic media leaders, including Aldo Di Felice, president of TLN Media Group, Shan Chandrasekar, founder of Asian Television Network, as well as the minority participation of Corus Entertainment, one of Canada’s largest TV and media companies.
Di Felice and Chandrasekar commented, “We are honored to form part of the team that created this proposal. It is a partnership with the most dedicated, experienced and accomplished ethnic media groups in Canada. The CanadaWorld TV concept is the fruit of our mission to build an ethnic media operation that will super-serve our diverse population. The service will include many new elements in the selection, production, scheduling, and distribution of programming, which will appeal to a wide set of minority linguistic and cultural Canadian populations, including newcomers to Canada.”
The CRTC is expected to make a decision sometime in early 2019 and the successful channel will launch in September 2020.
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