Rogers is looking to breathe new life into its financially challenged OMNI Television operations with the proposed launch of a new regional multi-cultural channel that would be granted mandatory carriage on the country’s cable and satellite systems.
The media company has filed an application with CRTC for a new national multi-cultural service called OMNI Regional that would be comprised of four feeds: Pacific, Prairies, East and ICI Quebec.
The Pacific, Prairies and East feeds would mirror the local OMNI stations in those regions, while ICI Quebec, the result of a strategic partnership with the Montreal ethnic TV station International Channel/Canal International (ICI), would service the province’s French-language ethnic communities.
Rogers’ application calls for its existing OMNI channels in Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver to continue operating as free over-the-air stations, reliant solely on advertising for revenue.
Colette Watson, vice-president, broadcast and TV operations with Rogers, told Marketing that subscription revenue of 12 cents per customer month is a “break-even proposal” that would enable the company to reinstate the four daily newscasts in Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese and Punjabi that it eliminated last year as part of cost-cutting measures, as well as fund one scripted drama program per year and reinstate in-house productions in Alberta.
“We’re not looking to make money off OMNI,” said Watson. “We’re looking to keep it going and as a company seeking to no longer lose money.”
Watson said that declining ad revenues for all over-the-air channels suggest that subscriber fees are the only way for the OMNI stations to achieve and maintain financial stability.
“After we made our difficult cuts last year, I had to look at creating a three-year plan for OMNI looking at its financial sustainability,” said Watson. “Advertising revenue continues to decline for all over-the-air [stations] not just ethnic over-the-air, so we looked at how to give this a more solid financial and sustainable future.”
Rogers is also pledging to devote 80% of OMNI Regional’s schedule to ethnic programming – up from 20% currently – and maintain its requirement to devote 50% of its schedule to third-language programming.
It is also committing to devoting a minimum of 40% of the channel’s annual revenues to the production of Canadian programming; maintaining local daily current affairs shows in Mandarin, Cantonese and Punjabi; and re-establishing in-house production in markets served by its existing over-the-air stations.
The application comes as OMNI Television struggles to find a way forward in a markedly different TV climate from the one it entered 37 years ago.
In 2014, former Rogers Media president Keith Pelley told the CRTC that OMNI Television was in the midst of a “financial crisis” and could not continue to operate as a viable business unless the situation was reversed.
He said that revenues for the ethnic broadcaster had fallen from more than $80 million in 2011 to less than $35 million, citing the now widespread availability of strip programming like The Simpsons – which had generated as much as 70% of its revenue – a major factor in the loss.
Speaking from the Banff World Media Festival in Alberta, Watson reiterated Pelley’s remarks, saying that OMNI Television is “not sustainable” for the long-term in its current state.
“We think [the proposal] is a fair and balanced approach to achieving public policy objectives on ethnic broadcasting,” she said. “It’s a strictly not-for-profit venture for us, and we the think…that 12 cents per month is a very reasonable cost. We think it’s a win-win proposal, and we hope the Commission will agree and we can all move forward.”
