GATINEAU – Allarco Entertainment Inc.’s pay-per-view Super Channel will finally be launching on Shaw Communications’ cable systems and on its direct-to-home satellite distributor Star Choice in late April and early May respectively, according to the broadcaster.
The news was revealed following Allarco’s appearance Wednesday at the CRTC’s three-week-long hearing into pay and specialty services and broadcast distribution undertakings – at which executives complained it was proving impossible to get carriage, even though Super Channel had been granted must-carry status by the regulator.
“It’s easy to get a licence, but very difficult to execute it,” said Allarco chair Chuck Allard.
He singled out Star Choice, Shaw Cable, Videotron, EastLink, Telus, MTS and a number of cable members of the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance (CCSA) as the distributors who hadn’t yet picked up Super Channel’s HD channels, despite the must-carry requirement.
Allard noted these systems represented 50% of potential customers across the country, and that the “delays we have had to bear for ‘comparable carriage’ [to the two other pay TV services] by BDUs, in full contempt and disregard for the Commission’s decision, will have cost us $12 million in this start up year alone.”
Only satellite TV distributor Bell ExpressVu was praised for its “exemplary attitude” and its willingness to provide Super Channel with full HD and SD capacity of all of its pay-per-view channels.
Licensed in May 2006, Super Channel launched in November 2007. Despite having been negotiating with some BDUs for 10 months or longer, an Allarco insider says the company has only just received phone calls from the likes of MTS and the CCSA “in the last 24 hours,” and that Shaw’s deal is only ready to be signed now after negotiations were completed just last week as the hearings approached, noted the executives.
Allarco turned to the CRTC’s dispute resolution process to deal with Shaw. Yet the TV distributor still waited for “the eleventh hour” to come to terms, all the while costing Allarco because during the delay, it didn’t have any subscriber dollars from that distributor.
In response to questioning by CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, Allard said the CRTC staff he dealt with on the matter “felt they didn’t have a lot of clout to move it along” and that they “had to wait for the hearing schedule to open up.”
Allarco executives recommended that the CRTC ask the government to give it more powers in the area of dispute resolution, including the ability to impose fines and to grant compensation to the aggrieved party.
Allarco noted that while Super Channel wasn’t getting carriage, these same BDUs that said they didn’t have capacity had launched HD versions of U.S. channels, including CNN and Speed. Super Channel’s president and COO Malcolm Knox noted: “We recommend stronger regulatory power for the commission to deal with ‘undue preference’ situations.”
Von Finckenstein asked Allarco if the CRTC should turn to “best offer resolution,” or a process by which both parties would put their best offers on the table. The commission would then chose the one that it thought best resolved the situation, and impose it.
“In many cases that would work,” said Allard.
But Allarco’s legal advisor Mark Lewis interjected the approach might “be a snowball running down the hill” since the wholesale rate was never a factor in Super Channel’s dispute; only getting access was.
The CRTC chair retorted that both the access issue and the rate could be included in each party’s best offer.
As for Videotron, it’s contending that it shouldn’t be subject to the “must carry” decree because Super Channel consists of English-language pay TV channels, while it operates in a province that is predominantly French.
When the CRTC granted Allarco its licence it stated that Super Channel would “be distributed on a digital basis with entitlement to distribution by BDUs under section 18(5) of the Distribution Regulations.
At the time of licensing, the commission denied a pay TV application by Archambault Group, which is owned by Videotron parent company Quebecor, to operate a new national French-language general interest pay TV station and an English equivalent.
– Norma Reveler
