The CRTC has denied an application from Blue Ant Media to reduce Cottage Life’s Canadian programming exhibition requirements for the broadcast day from 80% to 50% ahead of its next licence renewal.

In its initial application to the CRTC, Blue Ant argued “a high Canadian programming exhibition requirement leads to low viewership and less revenue to be invested in Canadian productions.” The CRTC said Blue Ant did not demonstrate the change would be necessary to ensure the ongoing financial viability of the service, arguing that Cottage Life has been a profitable channel since Blue Ant acquired it in the 2012-2013 broadcast year.

In its application, Blue Ant had provided the CRTC with financial projections for Cottage Life if the request was approved or rejected, but the regulator said it “did not provide any assumptions to support the projections.”

The decision also pointed to the CRTC’s approval of Blue Ant’s request to reduce Cottage Life’s Canadian exhibition requirements for the evening period from 80% to 50% at the channel’s last broadcasting licence renewal in 2013. The CRTC noted Blue Ant did not request a reduction in daytime exhibition requirements at that time. Blue Ant had stated then that “maintaining the broadcast day requirements would ensure that no less Canadian content is shown overall.”

“Had Blue Ant felt that its exhibition requirements for the broadcast day were too steep and detrimental to the overall health of the service, it could have made the request then and the Commission could have taken the overall impact of the proposed reduction into account at that time,” the decision read.

In the Let’s Talk TV decisions, the CRTC said access privileges for Category A services, of which Cottage Life is one, would be eliminated at the next licence renewal hearing. As such, Category A services will continue to enjoy access privileges until that time, in return for higher Canadian programming exhibition and other requirements, the CRTC said. In turn, Cottage Life should continue to make higher regulatory contributions, including exhibition requirements, until the access privileges are removed.

The CRTC said Blue Ant’s exhibition requirements should be reviewed at its next licence renewal hearing, as well as any other programming commitments. Cottage Life’s current licence expires on Aug. 31, 2018. In the Let’s Talk TV decisions, the CRTC said it would set the overall daily exhibition requirements for discretionary services at a level of 35% at the next licence renewal, as well as consider individual approaches to exhibition requirements on a case-by-case basis.

The CRTC also released Tuesday a decision relating to nature of service conditions for Fight Network. The channel had asked that its 10% restriction on airing professional and amateur sports apply only to stick and/or ball sports, including hockey, baseball, football, basketball, golf, soccer and tennis. Fight Media argued the channel must be able to produce and broadcast an unlimited amount of professional and amateur sports to survive in a post-Let’s Talk TV world.

The CRTC said it found Fight Media’s request “for flexibility regarding the standard limit on live professional sports is reasonable given the service’s focus on combat sports.”  In order to keep its focus on combat sports and to keep it from “from morphing into a mainstream sports service,” the CRTC said the channel’s condition of licence should be tightly focused on combat sports programming.

As such, the CRTC added a condition of licence to Fight Network, stipulating the channel cannot devote more than 10% of its monthly programming to professional sports. This calculation, however, will exclude combat sports, such as  boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, judo, karate, kung fu, jiu-jitsu, aikido, kendo, sumo, fencing and mixed martial arts.