With two months until its pitch for entry into Quebec is before the crtc, CanWest Global Communications has filed an amendment to the application which commits an extra $4 million a year for Canadian drama and entertainment production and turns its national program benefits package into a $165 million proposition.

Up $41 million over the last version of the CanWest national benefits pack, a $124 million proposal which aired at the Alberta hearings in July, this version of the bid is what Glenn O’Farrell, CanWest vp regulatory affairs, calls ‘the definitive package.’

Not included in the new $165 million bid but also outlined in the supplementary letter filed with the commission Sept. 6 is an extra $7.1 million in benefits for Quebec-based production. Details will come to light the week of Oct. 7 as applications standing at the Quebec hearings, scheduled for Dec. 2, are gazetted.

On the national production agenda, CanWest is proposing a new baseline commitment of $21 million in 1997/98 in the underserved programming categories of drama, music, and variety, up $4 million over the $17 million baseline it proposed at the Alberta hearings. Its projected news production investment of $57.5 million, the other key component of the national package, remains as detailed in Alberta.

Over the course of the next six years, the $21 million rises according to projected revenue increases to $21.5 million in 1998/99, $22.5 million in 1999/2000, $23.5 million in 2000/01, $24.5 million in 2001/02, $25.5 million in 2002/03, and $26.4 million in 2004.

The added injection into drama and entertainment programming will show up as an increase in licence fees, says O’Farrell.

The investment is contingent on approval of both a new licence for Alberta and approval of its partnership agreement with Tele-Metropole to turn cbc affiliate ckmi-tv Quebec City into a Global station.

While amendments to applications are generally considered unorthodox, the CanWest crew has maintained since the Alberta hearings that the change in sequence of the Alberta and Quebec hearings has forced its hand. The ckmi application was originally filed in the summer of 1995, with a hearing and decision expected by early 1996, months before the Alberta hearing. Groupe Videotron/Cogeco/cfcf tussles pushed the process back, leaving Quebec on the crtc slate five months after Alberta.

‘We didn’t want to be a prisoner of the chronology,’ says O’Farrell. ‘This adjustment was necessary to put the whole package in context.’

Although an incremental expenditure for a Quebec licence doesn’t split out of the national package, CanWest is offering up the guarantee that $5 million over the course of the seven-year licence will be spent with Quebec independents producing for the CanWest national system.

In addition to the other program propositions outlined in the original ckmi application, three new initiatives with a cumulative $7.1 million budget are outlined in the supplementary letter.

Spending $2.1 million over the licence term, CanWest is committing to provide occasional special events coverage of significant Quebec cultural and community events including the 1997 Quebec Winter Carnival Parade. A minimum of eight hours of music and variety specials per year will also be acquired from Quebec indies, on a $3 million budget over seven years. On occasion, those events will traverse the CanWest national system, says O’Farrell.

Finally, the partners of TVA CanWest will co-license one limited dramatic series or mow per year from a Quebec-based independent producer for exhibition in French on tva, English on ckmi and on all CanWest stations across the country. A $2 million budget is attached to this arm of the initiative, with CanWest looking to bring the English- and French-language partners together early in the script stage to hash out ways in which a bilingual production can serve both audiences.

What happens to these added benefits if CanWest isn’t blessed for Alberta isn’t food for thought until it happens, says O’Farrell.

‘If we don’t get Alberta, we’re going to have to have that discussion with the commission at the Quebec hearings. We feel that it works really well as an overall package and we’re working with the optimistic scenario. But to be very candid, the benefits would be off the table without Alberta.’

An Alberta decision is expected sometime in November, a month before the Quebec hearings begin in Hull.

In the meantime, CanWest is fielding what it says are erroneous reports in the international press that it’s wooing the u.k.’s Channel 3 with the idea of a share swap. CanWest continues to seek out opportunities in the u.k., says Leonard Asper, CanWest director of corporate development, but no discussions are in process with htv, the Wales-based arm of Channel 3, and no announcement is expected within the next 12 months.

Elsewhere on the CanWest international family agenda, TV3 New Zealand, of which it owns 20%, has just been awarded a new broadcasting licence, with startup expected mid-1997.

Closer to home in other Quebec-related news, cfcf and Tele-Metropole are putting more than CFCF-12, the CTV Television Network affiliate in Montreal, on the selling block.

Other ‘non-core’ business assets held by both companies are also candidates for a sell-off including high-end service operations Sonolab, Centre de Montage Electronique and Supersuite.

A spokesman with one of the companies says ‘there won’t be a fire sale,’ but the size of the Montreal market and the competitive cost of renewing equipment have kept major suppliers, including competitor AstralTech, from seeing profits.

As for Astral, industry sources say it’s now looking for a buyer for its money-losing cd-rom replication plant in Boca Raton, Florida.

(with files from Leo Rice Barker.)