OTTAWA – The CRTC is expected to rule this week on Corus Entertainment’s request to buy French specialty channels Historia and Series+ and the piece of Teletoon (including its other animation brands) it does not yet own.
Corus agreed to purchase the assets last March as part of the divestitures required as conditions of Bell Media’s purchase of Astral Media. While Corus already held 50% of Teletoon/Télétoon (as well as Teletoon Retro in English and French, and the Cartoon Network) with Astral, it owned neither of the two French specialties, both of which had been split 50-50 between Astral and Corus’ corporate cousin Shaw Media.
According to the CRTC filings, the value ascribed to the Teletoon brands is $249 million, while Historia’s purchase price is $98 million and the price of Series+ is $179 million.
The Commission is also expected to render a decision on a new regulatory framework that would treat all Category C national news services – new and existing – as one group that should be given equal distribution access by all BDUs.
Some of the Commission’s proposed recommendations included a requirement that distributors place Canadian news services in close proximity within their channel lineup; national news services must be available in a theme package and on a stand-alone basis; and, the channels should be offered in the most appropriate packages according to their content.
The proposed framework sprang from the Commission's August decision to deny mandatory distribution to Sun News Network.
More to come.
