On March 28, the Foundation submitted the following intervention to Robert Morin, Secretary General of the CRTC for consideration during its April Consultation concerning Licence Renewals for Canada's Private Conventional Television Stations scheduled to begin on April 27, 2009. We are reprinting it here for the interest of readers because it contains a suggestion for the establishment of a Broadcast Preservation Fund for Canada that would enable this country to begin salvaging its remarkable broadcast heritage.

In responding to the Commission's Scope of licence renewal hearings for private conventional television stations, Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2009–70, 13 February 2009, the major networks referenced the severe financial constraints threatening the provision of distinctive Canadian service and the pressing imperative to address the fee–for–carriage issue. In turn, the Foundation raises the appropriateness of also addressing Canada's long–term failure to preserve its broadcasting heritage and recordings of history–as–it–happens in these Licence Renewal hearings.

As Canada's private television broadcasters have delivered information and entertainment in many genres of programming to a diverse population over five decades, they have created an irreplaceable electronic record documenting and reflecting the evolution of Canadian society itself. However, Canada's broadcasting model no longer reflects the technical, economic and service requirements of our modern society. Therefore, it is imperative that Canada's demographic, geographic and financial realities are incorporated into the radical redesign of an efficient delivery of services on appropriate platforms.
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With the emergence of radio, a unique Canadian broadcasting system was conceived with complementary private and public elements that successfully delivered signals to a small population scattered across the country. Radio was the Canada's lifeline during WW2, providing information and entertainment to listeners serving ‘at home’. Only a small electronic record remains of the first two decades of radio. Four elements combined to endanger Canada's early radio heritage: focus on the daily schedule, limited resources, unrecognized value of preservation, and lack of understanding of the conditions for long–term preservation.

These four elements continued with the arrival of television in the early 1950s. When videotape became the ‘stock’ of choice in the 1960s, it was frequently re–used to save money, resulting in the loss of even master tapes of original programs. There has been no recognition of the need or responsibility assigned for the preservation of broadcast heritage in the Broadcasting Act of 1968 or 1991. In the 1980s, off–cable recording of nightly national newscasts from CTV, TVA, CBC and SRC began at the National Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada or LAC). However, broadcast heritage is but one aspect of the LAC's large mandate and it has limited resources.
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Canada's ability to preserve its A/V record had fallen far behind by the 1990s. An attempt to rectify the situation produced the Task Force on the Preservation and Enhanced Use of Canada's Audio–Visual Heritage and its 1995 report,  “Fading Away” , which offered 20 recommendations to create shared responsibility and dedicated funding. Unfortunately, broadcasters had not participated in the Task Force, and were never made aware of its eventual recommendations.¹ Thus by 2008, Canada had fallen even further behind.

The material from the birth of broadcasting through to the 1980s is now at risk due to age–related deterioration and obsolescence. Without digitization, this material will soon be lost forever. For example, within five years, the 12,000 hours of video recordings of Parliamentary proceedings from 1969 to 1997 will be unrecoverable. Canada's broadcast heritage problem combines the decades of analogue audio and video material to be digitized (or lost forever), and the ‘going forward’ plan to collect and preserve the digital programming that is becoming the norm.

¹FREEZEFRAME, a report on Audiovisual Preservation in Canada's private broadcasting, regional educational and community radio sectors, CBMF/FMCR, November 2008.
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Canada is unique among developed nations in that it has no coherent domestic process for preservation of its broadcast heritage. However it can learn from the examples in other countries. Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands have each recognized the need for archiving and established an entity to work with the broadcasting sector to preserve their radio and television programs. Furthermore, Sweden, France and Australia have organizations with budgets ranging from $9 to 150 million, employing 90 to 945 staff specifically to preserve the audio–visual heritage. And Britain has several entities that share responsibility for preservation, employing 250 people. In many cases, because of the scope of the challenge and the resources required to adequately preserve national A/V inventories, these foreign initiatives take the form of private–public partnerships.
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To address Canada's A/V preservation requirements in 1995, it was estimated that $6 million annually in ‘new money’ would be required. In the last 14 years, the nation's inventory of radio and television has increased enormously, especially with new services and a more complex broadcasting system. The suggestion to include a per–subscriber fee–for–carriage of Canadian OTA television services might offer an opportunity for funding broadcast heritage. Setting aside a small percentage of the fee for a broadcast heritage preservation fund could form an incremental benefit to the Canadian public, who will inevietably bear the brunt of any such fee. Based on a conservative combined subscriber base for cable and satellite of 10,581,700 million households in 2007, a one cent monthly charge would generate $1.3 million dollars annually. Thus far, Canadians have had generally limited access to broadcast programs that they have directly or indirectly financed. A corollary proposal and ancillary public benefit could be the creation of a national initiative by LAC and/or other institutions to provide future public access to an inventory of vintage Canadian programming.
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Canada needs a practical, affordable process that will result in the collection and preservation of the remnants of its analog radio and television heritage and parallel initiatives dealing with ‘born digital’ programming. The Foundation requests that preservation of basic records and artefacts documenting a station's history be included into the process for the closure of established stations, and offers its assistance with such a process. The consideration of expansion of fee–for–carriage to Canada's OTA broadcasters might be the last chance to make right the loss of seven decades of the country's electronic record. In the national interest, failure to act is not an option.
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