The CRTC has renewed the broadcast licences for all eight of Blue Ant Media’s Canadian channels for an additional five years.

Licences for specialty channels Love Nature, Cottage Life, Makeful, BBC Earth, T + E, Smithsonian Channel, A.Side and HIFI were all renewed under a group-based approach until 31 Aug. 2023, with the Canadian production expenditure (CPE) set at 21% of the previous year’s revenues and programs of national interest (PNI) spending set at 13.5%.

While the CMPA filed an intervention suggesting Blue Ant’s CPE spend should be set at 30%, the commission decided that a 21% spend was sufficient as Blue Ant exceeded that level over the prior licence term.

“Blue Ant has shown a willingness to outspend its CPE requirements of 21%, having spent an average of 24.5% of the previous years’ revenues over the 2014-2017 period,” read the CRTC’s decision. In addition, Blue Ant will receive a 50% credit towards its CPE requirements for expenditures on Canadian programming produced by Indigenous producers, as well as a 25% credit against its CPE requirements for expenditures on Canadian programming produced by official language minority community (OLMC) producers.

On the PNI front, the commission said that maintaining a 13.5% level was fair, noting that Blue Ant’s PNI contributions are relatively high in comparison to most other services operating in the English-language market. “Blue Ant has built its programming strategies in line with these spending requirements,” said the commission in its statement. “Increasing its requirements would, in effect, punish good behaviour by requiring additional expenses and, potentially, force Blue Ant to alter its overall broad programming strategy, thereby affecting its competitive position in the market.”