GATINEAU, QC — The Canadian Association of Broadcasters and two of its biggest members insisted on Monday that no new regulations were needed to ensure a diversity of voices, as the CRTC wrestles with what rules would be needed to deal with media consolidation in the future.

Although the seven-member CRTC panel continuously pressed the CAB, CTVglobemedia and CanWest MediaWorks — the latter two both being involved in major recent media acquisitions — for recommendations on what the new rules might look like, the response was always that consolidation to date hasn’t resulted in a decline in diversity of voices in the media, so nothing needed to be done.

‘It’s a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist,’ CAB president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell said, while referring to ‘a surplus of diversity’ in Canadian broadcasting. He said media mergers were creating stronger Canadian media companies that were increasingly getting into niche markets and providing more voices in an age of fragmenting audiences. He also noted that a number of new players have entered the broadcast market, such as Stornoway Communications and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.

Meanwhile, CTV president Rick Brace noted there could never be a surplus of diversity, but that the industry was indeed seeing a growth in media voices.

CRTC commissioner Stuart Langford pressed, asking: ‘Is there not a point we shouldn’t go beyond? When does the [media] package get too big? Is it at three or two or one national broadcasters?’ He noted the CRTC needs to have policy plans laid out in advance, rather than waiting first for a ‘calamity’ to occur.

CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein told Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw, the last intervener to appear on Monday, that the commission was ‘very concerned about concentration,’ and that the market couldn’t be left to resolve these issues.

The CRTC chair added that media mergers couldn’t be dealt with on a case-by-case basis because companies needed regulatory certainty in developing their businesses plans.

‘What if there was a major merger, such as CanWest and Shaw — would the present rules still apply? We have to be more prudent as a regulator [than to just wait],’ von Finckenstein said to CanWest, after its execs noted there were already policies in place.

By contrast, the CBC noted that media concentration had already become unhealthy in some Canadian cities.

Recommendations from CBC execs included: that a company not be allowed to own a TV, radio and newspaper in the same market — a benchmark already set in Australia; that ownership limits be expanded from the over-the-air universe to specialty TV (with a suggested 33% ownership cap by any company); and that broadcast distributors be prohibited from owning two distribution undertakings in one market.

CBC Television EVP Richard Stursberg pointed out that Australia’s points system — which was outlined in a Nordicity study prepared for the CFTPA — demonstrates that media concentration is too high in some markets.

The study applies Australia’s points system to the markets of Halifax, Montreal (English), Montreal (French), Ottawa (English), Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, before and after the three recent major media mergers of CTVglobemedia-CHUM, CanWest Global-Alliance Atlantis and Astral-Standard Radio.

After the mergers, Montreal’s English- and French-language markets would be in an ‘unacceptable media diversity situation,’ according to the Nordicity study.

Also on Monday, von Finckenstein noted that there would be a public hearing on the Canadian Television Fund. He said ‘a few limited issues’ raised by the controversial report by the CRTC task force on the CTF would be the subject of the hearing, which has yet to be formally announced.

The diversity hearings continue Tuesday, with Quebecor Media, Astral Media, Pelmorex Communications, Bell Video Group, Evanov Communications, Stornoway, Independent Programming Services and John Bitove scheduled to appear.