CRTC accepts arbitration for distribution of Quebecor, Bell sports channels

The CRTC will decide how much it will cost Bell and Quebecor to broadcast each other’s sports channels, it said this month. The two companies agreed that they could not hash out commercial terms to distribute Bell’s RDS and Videotron’s TVA Sports and filed in November a request for the regulator to make that decision. The commission agreed in a letter dated May 15, saying the request met all the required criteria for a final offer arbitration hearing: the dispute is shared between the two; it concerns only monetary issues; the parties exhausted all methods to come to an agreement;...