OPINION
Opinion Editorial
By Slava Levin and Hari Srinivas
If you have a VCR in 2019, it’s
likely gathering dust on a shelf. There’s
nothing wrong with it. It still does the
same job it always did. But today we
live in a streaming, on-demand world.
The relentless drive of progress has
turned your perfectly good VCR into a
museum piece.
That’s how innovation works. It
disrupts. Sometimes, that disruption
can be messy. But it gives us solutions
that actually meet customers’ needs.
And they will take the better option
every time, by voting with their feet
– and their pocketbooks.
Both of us understand this
very well. We’re innovators and
entrepreneurs. We thrive on bringing
new ideas to our customers. Through
our company, Ethnic Channels Group,
we pioneered delivering television
signals over the internet (IPTV) years
before Bell and Rogers introduced
Fibe and Ignite.
From our headquarters in
Markham, we use IPTV to deliver
multi-ethnic programming faster
and at lower cost that many people
in the industry ever thought possible.
Today, Ethnic Channels Group is the
largest distributor of multi-ethnic
television in Canada. Our technology
is the backbone of the ethic television
packages offers by Rogers, Bell and
Shaw. Without us, Canadian’s would
PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY March 1 - 15, 2019
Canadians Deserve 21st Century Ethnic TV
Channels like OMNI once served us well. What we’re
offering is a huge leap forward.
not have the ethnic television choices
available to them today.
So, we know ethnic television. We
understand the crucial role it plays
in helping new Canadians integrate
and succeed in this country while
maintaining a connection to where
they’re from. And new Canadians
aren’t just an important audience,
they’re a large one: equivalent to the
population of Quebec. For all those
reasons, we strongly believe that now
is the time to take ethnic television in
Canada to the next level.
For years, Canadian television
consumers have only really had
one multilingual television brand to
choose from: OMNI. OMNI Television
broadcasts third-language (in other
words, non-English or French)
programming across Canada under
a mandatory-carriage license. That
means that every cable and satellite
provider in Canada carries it, and
every customer gets it. You could say
OMNI TV is omnipresent.
There’s no question that OMNI
has played a groundbreaking role in
delivering television to a multiethnic
audience over the past several
decades. But OMNI is based on
an outdated model. Programs in
languages like Cantonese, Mandarin
and Punjabi get preferential, prime-
time placement on OMNI’s schedule.
Other languages get relegated to off-
hour timeslots and lesser airtime.
Today, OMNI is just like your old
VCR in our on-demand, streaming
world. It still does the job it was
designed to do. But is there a better
option?
The issue is up for discussion today
because — right now — the CRTC is
considering new applications for the
mandatory-carriage license now held
by OMNI’s owner, Rogers. To be fully
transparent — we have submitted our
own application for that license, for a
new service called Voices.
Voices is unlike any kind of multi-
ethnic television service Canadians
have ever seen – or heard. It will
deliver multi-ethnic programming in
ten languages, through simultaneous
translation, for 55 hours a week. The
languages will be chosen based on
what the data tells us are the ten most-
spoken third languages in Canadian
homes. And ten is just in the first year
– the number of languages carried
on Voices will grow to 25 after three
years.
Voices is built on the same
technology that CBC uses to
broadcast Hockey Night in Canada
in Punjabi. Indian broadcasters have
delivered a similar service for years
now. What we’re proposing isn’t a
radical technological change. It’s
just a more effective use of tools we
already have to create a better viewing
experience for Canadians – have one
of the most diverse viewerships in the
world. It is a viewership that is, in our
view and the view of many others,
being underserved by the status quo.
Our competitors don’t want to
change the way we deliver multi-
ethnic television. If it isn’t broken,
they’d argue, why fix it? Frankly, that’s
an argument VCR manufacturers
would have agreed with. History
shows us that Canada’s major media
companies do not embrace change.
As entrepreneurs and innovators,
we thrive on change. We embrace it,
and pursue it relentlessly, because
change is how we drive progress. And
in the end, it is Canadian television
viewers who benefit. As broadcasters
privileged with work in this great
country, under license from the
Federal government and on behalf of
the Canadian people, delivering the
best possible product is – and should
always remain – our highest priority.
************
Slava Levin is the Chief Executive
Officer of Markham-based Ethnic
Channels Group. Hari Srinivas is the
President. Learn more about Voices
at www.voicestv.ca.
Government announces 2,000 additional spaces under
the Provincial Nominee Program
Ottawa, ON – The Honourable
Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigra-
tion, Refugees and Citizenship, deliv-
ered today on a commitment to ex-
pand pathways for temporary foreign
workers by allocating an additional
2,000 spaces under the Provincial
Nominee Program.
The Government of Canada is
committed to an immigration system
that strengthens Canada’s economy
and contributes to the growth of good
middle-class jobs. We are committed
to providing foreign workers, in par-
ticular those filling long-term labour
market needs and who have integrat-
ed into Canadian society, with more
pathways to permanent residency.
These additional spaces will pro-
vide more opportunities for existing
temporary foreign workers at the in-
termediate skill level (National Occu-
pation Code C) to transition to perma-
nent residence, and help to address
worker vulnerability.
This fulfills the Minister’s man-
date commitment to further develop
pathways to permanent residency so
that eligible applicants are able to
fully contribute to Canadian society. It
means more opportunities for workers
who are well established in Canada
to access the economic immigration
pathways that are the best fit for their
qualifications.
These additional spaces under the
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Provincial Nominee Program comple-
ment other immigration programs, in-
cluding the Atlantic Immigration Pilot
and the recently launched Rural and
Northern Immigration Pilot, which can
also help temporary foreign workers
become permanent residents.( IRCC.
COMMMediaRelations-Relationsme-
[email protected])