ARCHIVÉ - 0
Cette page Web a été archivée dans le Web
L’information dont il est indiqué qu’elle est archivée est fournie à des fins de référence, de recherche ou de tenue de documents. Elle n’est pas assujettie aux normes Web du gouvernement du Canada et elle n’a pas été modifiée ou mise à jour depuis son archivage. Pour obtenir cette information dans un autre format, veuillez communiquer avec nous.
Offrir un contenu dans les deux langues officielles
Prière de noter que la Loi sur les langues officielles exige que toutes publications gouvernementales soient disponibles dans les deux langues officielles.
Afin de rencontrer certaines des exigences de cette loi, les procès-verbaux du Conseil seront dorénavant bilingues en ce qui a trait à la page couverture, la liste des membres et du personnel du CRTC participant à l'audience et la table des matières.
Toutefois, la publication susmentionnée est un compte rendu textuel des délibérations et, en tant que tel, est transcrite dans l'une ou l'autre des deux langues officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le participant à l'audience.
The insert belongs after the lunch break on October 16,
prior to paragraph 2083.
THE
CHAIRPERSON: Before we proceed, I want
to forewarn that we will be sitting until seven tonight. We expect by then to be in Phase III, so
whoever has any control over your interveners, you should make sure that they
know this. We have attempted to tell
what our schedule is, but since we'll be hearing interveners, there won't be
the problem we would have had last night, of interrupting panels or
commissioners. So, seven tonight, and
please -- beepers and telephones must be turned off. Commissioner Cardozo?
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I understand before I start, Baljit Sangra wanted to add something to an earlier question.
MS. SANGRA: I just wanted to add something when we were talking about
independent production. I've worked on
some projects that I think definitely could have been co-produced. I worked on a BBC documentary on Sikhs and
it was Sikhs and Diaspora around the 300th anniversary. They filmed in England and South Vancouver
and India, that would have been an excellent project to be co-produced. I've also worked on a PBS series called the
Global Voyager and -- it's an American show but they were filming ethnic
communities in Canada, at that time in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. That would have been -- could be a good
example of a co-production. As well, I
shot some footage, I work on some South Asian films from India when they shoot
in B.C. and I've shot some footage of behind the scenes and that, you know,
when it's done, would be a good co-production or an independent
production. So, those are just some
examples of programs or projects that I think, you know, a station like Multi
-- could come in on.
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Okay.
Thanks. I'm going to be moving
on to the advisory board but I do have one quick question -- hopefully quick,
and it had to do with that last answer, Mr. Lee. The problem with the break is it kept ringing in my mind. You said you would run this business like
any other business and I would say to you that this business isn't like any
other business for at least two reasons.
One is it's regulated and so if you've let CRTC in there with their
little hands telling you what you can and can't do, based on what you agree you
would and wouldn't do here, and there's been a lot of discussion about the
sensitivity required and so forth. So this
isn't going to be a -- you're not going to be making scads of cash in this
business. Looking at your CV, somewhere
between selling raincoats and running a university, I suppose, is what this
is. Is that -- are you comfortable with
that? Do you feel you can, as a
shareholder and the shareholders, are you all, you know, fully aware that this
isn't going to be a money making opportunity.
MR. LEE: Commissioner, just to give you an example, when I was appointed
to the Governor, University of British Columbia, I, as a volunteer position as
you know, I thought of developing some of the land that the university owns, a
thousand acres, so I talked President Strangway in allowing me to form a
company, a real estate company at UBC and I appointed all the directors, who
are volunteer on the board, and we developed a place called Hampton Place
that's probably one of the most successful projects ever developed in the Lower
Mainland. What we did, we said we don't
sell the land and we don't -- they said they don't have any money and don't
want to take any risk but taking everything into consideration we did exactly
that -- and with -- I guess with my knowledge in real estate we presented a
cheque to Martha Piper a couple of years ago for $81 million, but we still own
that land out there. So that's the sort
of voluntary type of thing and I treat this similar to that because I like to
be involved with the community, I've been involved all my life and if I can
sort of just give some input or use this vehicle to help the community and
that's one of my main reasons for doing it.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay.
Thanks. It's not a non-profit
organization you're running but when you talked about -
MR. LEE: Yeah, but that it's half-way and the reason why I said -- like
I've run a lot of businesses but I agree, its got to be treated a little
different because of the regulation but the basic principle of business is
still the same. You've got to apply
some of that to survive and that's what I meant.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay.
Thanks. Let me move to the advisory
board then and ask how you, whoever it was selected the advisory board, what
kind of criteria did you use? I take a
couple -- Mr. Segal said you're not a token board and Ms. Deol, you said you're
not a group of shrinking violets so I get a sense of who, of the kind of
approach that the members want to take and I did my own math just looking at
the backgrounds and it came out to something like one, two, three, four, five
business people, a couple of people I had called writer and arts, two
politicians, a couple from broadcasting, one from community, one from medicine
although that's very arbitrary because each one had several different things in
their background. So what did you --
what do you look at for the overall composition in the advisory committee?
MR. LEE: Well, when I was first asked, Commissioner, when I was first
asked to join as a partner, we sat down and discussed -- and I said the first
thing we have to do is get a good advisory group and based on our background,
volunteer group at university and Joe Segal at Simon Fraser University and all
the other associations with different groups in Vancouver, we got to know a lot
of people that are leaders in the community.
So we went down the list and said who are the best in that community and
who contribute the most, who has the best influence in that community? And we noticed that in the South Asia group,
there's so many different factions of -- so we picked the best person who is
sort of the father of that group, Asa Johal.
So these are the people that we picked and similar with all the other
advisory groups that we appointed so we put a lot of thought into it. We had hundreds of names and we just went
down, the group of us just went down the list and spent quite a bit of time
looking at who is the most influential in that group and we listed all the
names in a process of elimination and we came up with this 13 that we thought
was the best in the business.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay.
And do you think you've got enough grass roots involved in it because I
look at it and the word pre-eminent and eminent comes to mind, you've got more
university transfers than any other group I've ever seen, which is fine and
good but are there -- I don't want to take away from you, Mr. Segal, and other
people who are also, you know, there's a mix so you've got people who you could
think are grass roots as well?
MR. SEGAL: Can I just add to that.
The advisory board consists of a group of people that understand the
process and understand the project, but the most important component in this
advisory board is the simple fact that they represent a cross section of the
community and that they are respected within their community and not just their
community. But in the general ethnic
community and that's very important too, you know, I can be respected in the
Jewish community and a bum in the general community, so you have to have the
ability to network in the community at large and particularly the ethnic
community.
MS. DEOL: I think -- I wouldn't mind adding to that, that there are a lot
of successful people in this city.
There are a lot of very accomplished people in this city. I think the number one thing that I have
seen on this board is, along with being successful, these are people who
believe in giving back. These are
people who have a sense of their roots.
They have not forgotten where they come from. A lot of people who are successful tend to ivory tower themselves
and they do remove themselves from where they come from. I think the most important thing about this
group is that they are still involved with who they are and where they come
from. I think that is, you know, the
number one common thing in all of them.
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Okay.
How often -- so you meet four times a year, is that right, the advisory -
MS. DEOL: I think initially, if we were to get the station, initially I
would see us meeting once a month, in all honesty, at the very least. Maybe not all 13 but most of the people
should be there once a month, because I think that the role we play is sort of
the conscience, I guess, for the owners.
It's up to us to keep them honest and to keep them on, you know, like
we're not afraid to say you guys said you'd be doing this. And you know, again with -- you know, with
you saying that all these people are eminent, they're also people who would not
lend their names very easily to that many projects. They have a lot to lose.
I think they had to have a lot of confidence, a lot of faith in the
owners to say yes, you can, you know, attach my name to this, because they
don't really need any more glory, you know, and they don't need another thing
to do. They're all very busy. I think it was very important to them that
they had faith in these people.
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: How often does the board -- will the board
meet with the shareholders or the management?
MS. DEOL: How often will the -- again, I think initially it should be once
a month.
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: So your meetings will always be with the -
MS. DEOL: We'll -- we'll probably meet -- well, I -- what I see is that we
would meet on our own, have, you know, a few days to kind of process our
thoughts and then meet as a whole group.
Once we feel that we're comfortable kind of letting go a little bit then
we'll probably go to once every two or three months.
MR. HO: Okay. The other thing is,
you know, Vancouver is a small community.
A lot of the advisory and a lot of the owners are partners here,
actually will be seeing each other on a weekly basis in any case. It's not something that we're far apart and
we do not see each other and only see each other once a month. It's quite frequent meetings as well.
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Okay.
Let me put forward a few scenarios to you and ask you how you would
respond to these and I take a few things out of some of the surveys, the IPSO
Reid survey, as Commissioner Pennefather mentioned, talked about a couple of
things. The people who would be most
interested in this service, older viewers and were -- there were a lot of
people interested in late night viewing, so you the advisory board sees that --
how do you transfer that over to the management and I'm still not clear where
that late night viewing of ethnic programming is because the late night looks
to me like English.
MS. DEOL: No, I think the news is -- I'm sorry, can I see your schedule
here -- our news is from eight o'clock on, is it not?
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: So you would say late night was eight to
ten, which is -- which is the essence -
MS. DEOL: That's what I think. I
think most people have families and have jobs and have lives and the other
thing is on the weekend there is a lot more for people. There's this NBC Sunday night -- I don't
know if any of you noticed that, did you notice that?
COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Yes.
MS. DEOL: It's a very interesting concept because as Jay said, just because
we're going to sleep late Sunday doesn't mean that, you know, the rest of the
world is still not going on. So I think
on weekends we're very strong and eight to ten, I think, is when most people --
most family people tend to watch television.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay, for the older viewers, are there some
programs that stand out more for older viewers?
MS. DEOL: James, what do you think?
MR. HO: For the older viewers, again, like I say, we take into
consideration of the complementary type of things that we do here. We do have programs that's also geared
towards the older viewers in the community.
Like, some of the lifestyle that you see here, for sure, would be part
of the older -- for the older viewers as well as the younger viewer but the
other thing that we also have to take a look at, a lot of these older viewers,
they tend to watch films that's from foreign sources as well.
And you know, what we have done here,
like I say, we build our schedule here, we've been very careful in looking at
all the different availability in this market here and we try not to take in
those part of their speciality, away from them, by that I mean Shaw Multicultural
-- a lot of their program are imported and I believe these are for older viewer
people because of the language base.
They do have some good programs, younger generation as well, but
predominantly, these are drama, older version, older dramas for the older
viewer. And the other reason why it is
available with them is because it is a lot cheaper to acquire for them.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay.
Let me ask you about another point.
The Meiklejohn study on pages 2 and 10 talked about cross-cultural programming
being highly desirable, a suggestion that people want to -- and I'm
paraphrasing here, people want to understand each other and increase
inter-generational understanding so the shows I see are A Table By the Exit and
Sounds Right Tonight. I'm not sure I'd
include the ethnic cooking necessarily as cross-cultural in the sense of
increasing understanding or maybe it is.
Are there any other shows that deal with cross-cultural understanding?
MR. HO: Yes. Yes, Commissioner
Cordozo, for instance let me just go into the news for one thing. The -- news from South Asian community, part
of it is going to be Punjabi and part of it is going to be English. On the English portion, again, I would treat
that as not only targeting the Punjabi community or the South Asian community
as a whole, but it would be cross-cultural as well within their own -- within
the South Asian community as well as cross-cultural towards the mainstream, for
them to understand what's happening in the South Asian community, for the South
Asian sometimes, also to have certain participation so that we can also
broadcast that out.
The other one is, that we also have --
well, international sports, that's actually English and bilingual in certain
areas such as -- you may have soccer from all over the world, sometimes they
are not broadcast in English and you have cricket, badminton sometimes
broadcast is bilingual. The ethnic --
sorry, the ethnic cooking, actually is broadcasted in different languages there
but in certain things such as the Chinese, the Cantonese program, you know,
there's a plan right now to have subtitles done in English and the other one is
-
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Well, let me put this differently. If the advisory committee felt, having
talked to people and thought about it themselves, thought there was a need for
a program that really involved, that was in English so that the community at
large could hear it but that brought people of different cultures together to
talk about issues, how would you go about if -- let's say that was something
hypothetically that you wanted to pursue.
How would you see it? What would
you do with that thought?
MS. DEOL: First of all, I think that's an excellent idea.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: I know it is.
MS. DEOL: Yeah, excellent idea.
Well, we would probably sit down as a group first and discuss why it
matters to us, why we think the owners should be paying attention to it and
then in our next meeting with them, we would talk about the fact that they
should perhaps think about doing a show, you know, like you said. And then they'd have to, of course, see
where there's room in their day for that kind of show. It could probably start as one-of special sort
of, you know, a talk -- a television show and, because, you know, we can't force
things on them either but there's nothing wrong with trying something
once. And based on how viewers felt
about it, then we could look at doing it more often or making it sort of, you
know, a weekly thing.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay.
MR. HO: Most likely the situation if that happens, most likely we'll be
getting a phone call ready from the advisory before they meet so most likely
the situation is, while they're meeting we probably will be participating if
we're
invited,
by the way -
MS. DEOL: Well, you wouldn't be invited to the first one, that's what I'm
saying -
MR. HO: And then, you know, timing is everything. If the issue is so significant, we probably
or we most likely will want to air it from -- as soon as possible time,
possible date before, you know, the whole thing sort of died down or it loses
its taste in the community or whatever, the interest. You know, something that will pace as accordingly.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay.
Can you tell me about program development, whether the advisory board
has a role in that and I'm thinking, you know, you start by talking to the
community in general, then maybe producers have certain ideas, there's the
station management and then something gets on the air at the end of a process. How do things move from being what the
community tells you they'd like to see to something that shows up on the
screen? Does the advisory board get
involved in something like trying to get a certain kind of program, or all the
programs that you're planning, the lifestyle programs, does the advisory board
get involved in all of those?
MR. HO: No, not all of the program because there's a limited amount of
time, a limited amount of people that, yeah, there is -- especially towards the
advisory board but however, like you were saying our application, you know,
between the owners and the management it's very limited amount of things that
we -- it's a limited time, a limited amount of situation wherein -- and then
with all your advisors who are even more, better in touch with the community,
they're our ears and they're our eyes.
When people get to know who these advisory boards are, I am -- I can say
for sure not only that we will be getting phone calls, they will be getting lots
and lots of phone calls as well with suggestions that come, recommendations and
perhaps complaints and things like that.
It's a lot of work that they have to do and it would be brought up to
our situation, like I say, initially at least once a month, perhaps more
frequent if the urgency arises. But at
the same time, I mean we will also will not close the door on the public, they
call us directly, I mean we will talk to them and perhaps if we think it's a
big enough of an issue that we do not understand how to deal with it or even if
we know how to deal with it, we probably would still have to run through the
advisory board and let them see how we do things whether it's proper, you know,
towards that certain community or not.
It's all the sensitivities that we are also trying to bring in, too.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Okay.
Let me just ask you, and Ms. Pennefather talked to you at some length
about this, but just in my mind, looking at the schedule, I thought it was --
if you allow me, rather thin in that you've got the different communities identified
but the word Lifestyles applies to most of those programs and it didn't look
that exciting to me. So before you go
to TV Guide, you're going to have to replace the word Lifestyles with something
else. Where do you see that -- I mean,
is it going to be laid-back relaxing TV or is it going to be, say, cutting
edge, exciting, captivating -
MS. DEOL: Okay. Well, first of all
these are just working -- working titles, the way that most, you know, film or
television projects are. I think it's
going to be a little bit of everything.
I don't think that good television is one thing to the viewer all day
and all night. I think it depends upon
the show, I think it depends upon what's happening with that particular group
of people at the time. Sometimes it
will be cutting edge and sometimes it will be more of, you know, a feel good
thing, depending upon -- I mean really, like you can't -- it's hard to predict
with television. Like, you can't say it
will always be this, because it won't.
It will change according to what's happening.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: Let me, since I gave the other group my
incredibly expert feedback on their video, let me do the same with you.
MS. DEOL: Please.
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: And it was visually appealing, very good
introduction to the key members, the voice-over was -- gave us a good sense but
I found what was missing was a sense -- in their case I said they had talked
about too many negative discrimination type stories. In your case, those were absent.
And they -- like, where is the balance between reflecting the reality,
the community wishes, challenges and discrimination that exist and yet the --
the contribution that people around this sort of group make every day. Can you give us a sense or at least reassure
me that what you're talking about is more than television shots of ethnic
markets and dancing and stuff like that, which has its place on -- in a roster
and as you say, people look for different things, so yes, people do want to see
dance and they do want to see market scenes or whatever, but is there more than
that, that you will be delivering to the viewer?
MS. DEOL: Well, I think that the other group had what they have on air to draw from, obviously, so they pulled stuff from off air. We went out and we used -- why don't you -- because you did the video, so you talk about the video.
MS. SANGRA: I think the video is a reflection of the excitement of having a
local station. I mean we wanted to show
that that's what we really love about being in Vancouver, why we choose to live
here. It has made me feel good in terms
of images but that's how we feel, I mean we're really coming -
COMMISSIONER CORDOZO: And I'm not asking you to defend the video
so much as, you know, look into the future.
I didn't get a sense from looking at the video that that would make
great TV, you know. It's good for a
certain number of scenes but overall, there's got to be more to it. There's got to be more -- there's got to be
some serious stuff and some celebratory stuff and music and dance.
- Date de modification :