Discovery Health Channel's CANCON relief

Discovery Health Channel was granted a reduction in their CANCON requirements yesterday. Their application to the CRTC was based on several arguments: the first being that they cannot find sufficient Canadian content, the second that the usable life of such content is short, the third being that they've never attained the subscriber base they projected and the last being that they've fallen short on anticipated advertising revenues. Essentially, the station is struggling both financially and in fulfilling its mandate and, therefore, sought relief. Financial hardship caused by failure to attract viewers or advertisers should not be sufficient reason to alter the conditions of license until its normal renewal period. However, a true inability to meet the conditions of license due to content unavailability is probably a reasonable justification for an interim review and adjustment to the conditions.

In allowing relief, the commission cited both the financial aspects and the content availability issue as reasons for granting relief. Because the basis of the decision was not limited to the non-financial considerations, we shouldn't be surprised to see other struggling licensees looking to pair similar justifications with financial hardship in order to seek similar relief. That an unsuccessful business model is being accepted as partial justification for reduced Canadian content requirements certainly opens the door to this being used as part of similar relief applications and it would not be surprising to see more such applications in the near future.