New marketers would dispute the need to overhaul Canada’s ethnic broadcasting policy.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission introduced the policy in 1985, when this country’s multicultural landscape looked very different than it does today. And there are many who now argue that it no longer serves the needs and interests of all Canadians.
It was with this in mind that the CRTC recently launched a review of the policy. Public consultations took place in early February.
While there’s general consensus that the policy should be changed, not everyone agrees on just how it should be changed.
Take, for example, the question of whether Canada needs a national multicultural television network – one of the major issues that the CRTC proposes to tackle in its review. Frankly, it would be hard to find a point on which opinion is more sharply divided.
Among the proponents is Elizabeth Reade, vice-president and general manager of Toronto-based ethnic marketing agency EthnoWorks.
A national network, she says, would attract enormous numbers of viewers in the Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal markets, and would generate greater interest among national advertisers in targeting ethnic audiences.
‘[The opportunity to do] one buy would make it a lot easier for them,’ she says.
However, Reade does have certain reservations about the idea.
For one thing, CRTC Canadian content requirements could prove problematic. The best and most readily available ethnic programming, she says, frequently comes from the country of origin. Producing Canadian shows of comparable quality would take considerable time and money – and the network could lose out on a great many advertising opportunities as it struggles to get up to speed.
Reade says the CRTC should be flexible about Canadian content requirements for ethnic programming. It should also loosen the rules that require ethnic radio and television stations to provide programming for a cross-section of ethnic groups.
‘If a station thinks it can sustain enough revenue to supply good programming and keep itself going, then it’s up to that station to determine whether it wants to be 100% Chinese or carry 13 different languages,’ she says.
Patrick Fong, president and creative director of Can-Asian Advertising in Toronto, also supports the concept of a national ethnic network.
Heightened competition can only improve the market overall, and create a more advantageous situation for advertisers, Fong says. ‘The golden rule is: the more, the better.’
Not necessarily, counters Justin Poy, president of Toronto-based Justin Poy Media.
Canada’s ethnic populace is so diverse, he says, that a single national network cannot promise advertisers true one-stop shopping.
‘A lot of clients would like to have the ethnic market taken care of [that way],’ Poy says. ‘But one network isn’t going to do it.’
Such a service would also have its work cut out trying to create a schedule that caters to many different ethnic communities, he adds.
Broadcasters interested in the idea of a national ethnic network should take a lesson from the failed attempts of Maclean’s and Toronto Life to create Chinese editions, Poy says.
Those publications, he says, were launched in the hope of attracting new advertisers to the Chinese market with the promise of a single vehicle that would make it easy to target this large and diverse group.
Most of those advertisers, however, weren’t particularly committed to the Chinese market – a fact that was all too evident to the readers. Indeed, many of the ads in the Chinese Maclean’s weren’t even created for the audience, Poy says. They were simply translations of English-language ads – an approach that rarely proves successful.
Bob Mackin, founder of Vancouver-based Ethnimark Marketing & Research, also opposes the establishment of a national multicultural network.
The idea, he argues, is based on the mistaken assumption that all members of a given ethnic group have the same needs, regardless of geographical location. But in a country as large as Canada, Mackin says, there may be few commonalities between ethnic populations in different regions.
Ontario, with its strong manufacturing base, tends to attract an immigrant population with a much higher concentration of unskilled labourers, Mackin says, while B.C. attracts a more educated group. As a result, the South Asian or Chinese communities in these two provinces may well have very different viewing preferences.
Mackin also worries about a national network’s potential impact on smaller media outlets.
After years of struggle, he says, ethnic media are finally flourishing, supported heavily by local retailers. ‘Should there be a national ethnic network, it could hurt some of the smaller publications and smaller regional broadcasters.’
Mackin says the CRTC should look at improving the existing environment before contemplating the possibility of adding new players.
One good starting point, he suggests, would be to ease the regulatory restrictions that prevent Vancouver’s Rogers Multicultural Channel from carrying advertising. (At present, the station can only sell sponsorships.) The CRTC should also take a long, hard look at the U.S. model, in which local cable access channels have become a popular means for delivering programming – and advertising – to ethnic communities.
Ultimately, Mackin says, Canada’s ethnic communities will be best served if the CRTC figures out a better way to use what already exists. ‘We don’t need another over-the-air broadcasting channel.’
A slightly different view, however, prevails over at Toronto-based CFMT, arguably Canada’s most successful multilingual TV broadcaster.
Madeline Ziniak, the station’s vice-president and executive producer, says that Canada’s ethnic communities clearly do desire some form of national service. At the CRTC’s public consultations in Toronto, she points out, the main message from groups in the Toronto area was that they want to be able to communicate with their counterparts across the country.
One of the advantages of a national network, Ziniak says, is that it would afford many smaller communities the opportunity to plug into the signal and produce, say, an hour of local programming each week.
CFMT currently devotes 40% of its airtime to mainstream English-language programming. The advertising revenue generated by these successful shows, in turn, helps support many ethnic programs. The model, Ziniak says, is one that could make sense for a national network.
Also in this report:
– Grassroots efforts key to ethnic success: Public relations often a useful tool in reaching out to communities p.27
– Plethora of media vehicles target ethnic groups: But lack of research data still creating obstacles for national advertisers p.29
– Bell ExpressVu promises a dose of ‘dishum dishum’ p.31
