OTTAWA – Media de Novo was denied CRTC approval for its plan to sell ad time on U.S. specialty channels’ local avails in Canada.
In its decision on Thursday, the Commission said that Media de Novo failed to demonstrate “that its proposal would provide sufficient benefits to warrant departure from the Commission’s current policy on local availabilities, or that its service should be licensed as a Category A programming service”.
It also expressed concern that Media de Novo’s proposal could result in “an unacceptable negative impact on the advertising revenues of Canadian broadcasters”, particularly “given the severe financial constraints under which such broadcasters currently operate”.
However, the Commission also said that were it to change its policy regarding the sale of commercial advertising for insertion in local availabilities in the future, “nothing would preclude MdN from offering its services as an aggregator of advertising material to Canadian BDUs that might wish to insert commercial advertising in local availabilities under any such new policy”, noting that such an arrangement would not require the Commission’s intervention.
