CTV has been a tremendous champion of Big Brothers Big Sisters throughout the Atlantic region for a number of years. This support has had a direct, positive impact on our ability to attract volunteers, event participants and donors to our organization. We are disheartened to learn that CRTC licensing issues may force CTV and other conventional broadcasters to change drastically or discontinue the way they serve our communities with local content. The issue at hand concerns Fee-For-Carriage that is not available to conventional networks, and only applies to specialty networks. This disparity is causing the conventional networks to re-evaluate how they can be competitive on an unbalanced playing field.

Losing local television content and support would have a negative impact on Big Brothers Big Sisters and other organizations who rely on media partners to help us tell our stories to garner support from our community. Think about the number of community initiatives, events and good work you learn about during local news shows. This is the type of valuable content we stand to lose in our communities.

We encourage you to take a moment to visit www.savelocal.ctv.ca to learn more about the issue, sign the online petition and find the link to write a letter of support  to the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Heritage. Let’s make it clear to the CRTC that local television is important to our communities.