Vancouver: Craig Broadcast Systems of Brandon, Man. will be among the applicants vying for a new television licence on the West Coast.

Sparking the interest of media entrepreneurs is Rogers Broadcasting, which recently applied to the crtc for a commercial multilingual station in Vancouver. The proposed station will be modeled after Rogers’ multilingual station, cfmt-tv Toronto, but with the main languages including Cantonese, Vietnamese and German.

‘Vancouver is recognized as an underserviced television market,’ says Boyd Craig, the corporate secretary of Craig Broadcast, which has three television stations and six radio stations in Western Canada. ‘The city is capable of absorbing another station and we’re interested in expanding there.’

Craig declined to describe the station his company will propose in its application.

In its announcement Aug. 22, Rogers acquired Vancouver-based Chinese pay-tv service Talentvision from Fairchild Holdings for $4.1 million.

If the application is approved, Rogers will invest $25 million in television facilities and programming in its first five years for new station cfmv-tv, convert the signal to a free service and attempt to meet the needs of community groups spanning 15 languages and 18 cultures.

Should the crtc open up the competition to companies such as Craig Broadcast, the arena will likely be crowded.

Toronto’s Citytv has done its own market assessment of Vancouver. Working on behalf of Moses Znaimer, Pia Southam, a broadcaster and actress recently returned home to Vancouver, is investigating the viability of a new licence in preparation for an application, expected this month.

Toronto’s Baton Broadcasting, Winnipeg’s Moffat Communications and Edmonton’s Shaw Communications are also expected to make applications.

One broadcaster that won’t be entering is The Jim Pattison Group, which owns a television station in Kamloops, b.c. And a rumored application backed by the Belzberg family of Vancouver has not been substantiated.

Dave Reid, a vp and gm of Bellingham, Washington-based kvos-tv – which serves the Lower Mainland as its major market – characterizes Vancouver as ‘a large and important market for any broadcaster.’ He points to its growing influence as a gateway to the Pacific Rim, its growing population bases and its diversifying economy as assets.

And by applying to the crtc for a multilingual station, says Reid, Rogers earns a positioning advantage over other more traditional applications. Znaimer’s bid, for example, is expected to propose a clone of Citytv.

If another licence were granted, Reid says, ‘the marketplace would certainly survive. There would be some necessary adjustments at existing television properties that could make it more difficult for them to deliver their promises to the crtc.’

Whether or not the federal regulator opens the Rogers application to competition won’t be known until October at the earliest, says a representative at the Vancouver office of the crtc.

There is also no guarantee that the commission will grant any licence at all.

Craig’s attempt to start a new television signal in Alberta was one of two unsolicited applications that were denied by the crtc last year.