A group of producers who make content for OMNI Television has launched a campaign urging the federal government to offer millions of dollars in funding to protect struggling multilingual and multicultural programming.
The producers, who represent 62 programs across 50 ethnic communities, say they risk having to cancel a chunk of their programing because of dwindling ad revenue and lack of government funding.
“The systematic marginalization and lack of support for this ethnic media sector contradict the official policy of multiculturalism,” said Madeline Ziniak, chair of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association (CEMA), which is involved in the campaign. She added that one in four Canadians speak a language at home other than English or French.
Programs on OMNI are ineligible to access the Canada Media Fund (CMF), which is the main source of funding for Canadian television production and is financed jointly by the federal government and private broadcasters.
The OMNI producers received some relief funding through the CMF at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that temporary funding ended last year.
CEMA is now pressing the federal government to direct the CMF to provide $6-million a year permanently through the fund to support multicultural programming.
The association’s request for $6-million was calculated by combining yearly producer salaries across Canada’s ethnic media sector and other operating costs, said Igor Malakhov, an editorial director on OMNI1 who specializes in Russian and Ukrainian community programming.
Mr. Malakhov said third-language television has always struggled to secure funding, but the problem has worsened in recent years as the businesses that make up the bulk of their advertisers struggle themselves.
“Most of our advertisers are small to medium-sized businesses. They’re community businesses,” he said.
“We have always been excluded from Canada’s cultural policy tools but we managed to survive and continue. Now we’re screaming for help – we’re asking the government for a lifeline.”
The CMF is made up of funding from private Canadian broadcasters, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. In 2023, its total funding budget was roughly $336-million, of which just more than $4-million went to multilingual programming, but not to independent producers such as OMNI’s.
Ariane Joazard-Bélizaire, a spokesperson for Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, said in an e-mailed statement that there has been a range of measures undertaken to support the sustainability of ethnic media. “We will continue to take action to support outlets like OMNI, while recognizing the independence of our funding institutions,” she said.
The statement did not address CEMA’s request to direct the CMF to provide them funding.
Aldo Di Felice, president of TLN Media Group, which is not affiliated with OMNI and specializes in Italian and Latin American programming in Canada, points to the fact that the CMF mainly supports programs of national interest – “documentaries, children’s programs, scripted drama and comedy, variety and performing arts.”
“Community information programs, lifestyle shows, that kind of content does not qualify under the CMF,” he said.
Mr. Di Felice’s network does receive funding from the CMF, though he agrees that the allocation of funds to multicultural media is small. “But these producers have a bigger issue because some of their kind of content isn’t even eligible,” he said.
Simmy Cheema, who produces Desi Close Look, a Hindi and Punjabi-language program on OMNI that is geared toward British Columbia’s South Asian community, said her work is now almost entirely volunteer-run. “The little funding we get goes to the camera person,” she said.
Ms. Cheema said her show has a significant impact on the community, with members regularly reaching out to pinpoint or pitch stories.
“I get so many calls. They ask me to bring the camera to Abbotsford, to Chilliwack. … It’s difficult,” she said. “To produce a quality program, you need to dedicate more time, more money.”
Sherry S. Yu, a professor at the University of Toronto’s faculty of information specializing in ethnic media, said the value of OMNI’s independent ethnic programming is often understated.
“It’s in these daily shows where immigrants who aren’t familiar with official languages can be informed about the places they live in Canada,” she said. “It’s locally produced local daily news. This is not the same as imported news.”
With OMNI, audiences get multilingual programming in a distinctly Canadian context, which is different than tuning into news from one’s country of origin, Mr. Malakhov said.
It also helps combat the misinformation that can come from satellite, state-run media outlets in the home countries of some diaspora communities. When the war in Ukraine started, Mr. Malakhov says their programming aimed to debunk state narratives coming from Russia about the conflict.
“We are not broadcasting news about Russia,” he said. “Our motto is Canadian life from the perspective of the Russian speaker.”
Mariya Postelnyak