TORONTO – Quebecor’s Sun News was removed from the Bell TV satellite lineup at 10 a.m. this morning (Tuesday, May 3).
While the channel slot itself remains, the feed has been replaced with text telling customers that the channel “has been taken down at the request of the owners of Sun News."
According to Sun News head of development Luc Lavoie, Bell forced Quebecor’s hand and it had to demand signal removal. “They have carried the signal on their satellite without trying to even have an agreement with us,” he told Cartt.ca this morning.
When Sun News launched last month, it transitioned its conventional TV station to the Sun News content just as it launched the new specialty channel of the same name and content – meaning local terrestrial carriers like Rogers and Cogeco and even Bell’s Fibe TV in the Greater Toronto Area, for example, must carry it.
But for out of market carriers and satellite companies, Sun News is a category 2, discretionary digital service requiring an affiliate carriage agreement in order to be offered to subscribers.
According to a source, Bell wants to continue to treat the channel as an OTA and not a specialty and offer it for free. (Ed note: Sun News is a unique channel in that it is, for all intents and purposes, both and the CRTC is likely to take a dim view of this turn of events.).
“We said to them, this is a specialty channel and you need to have an agreement with us and we offered them one similar to the one that was signed with Shaw,” said Lavoie. “They came back to us and said that our offer was unreasonable, which is really not fair because if it’s reasonable for Shaw and it’s reasonable for Videotron,” then it should be for Bell, he explained.
“Bell is not acting in good faith. We think that they are playing the game of undue advantage. They never wanted to negotiate in good faith, they wanted to go for free and what I can tell you is what we were asking for, for Sun News was way below CTV Newsnet,” added Lavoie.
CTV’s all-news specialty, now branded CTV News Channel, has a CRTC mandated rate of $0.145 per subscriber per month when it is carried on basic by carriers.
“Why is CP24 and CTV News Channel, both of which are owned by Bell, on the satellite and not us?” asked Lavoie who added the company is being inundated with phone calls asking why they are no longer available to Bell subscribers.
“We are sorry for the people who do not have access to Sun News… The only thing we can say is call Bell.”
Lavoie did not indicate what the company plans to do next and Bell has not yet confirmed an interview request made by Cartt.ca.
