But it may have support to change that CoL from other Canadian BDUs
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal this week refused to hear Vidéotron’s appeal of its condition of license which requires it to take part in a new ratings system using set top box data from all large pay TV providers.
Earlier this year, the Quebecor-owned BDU pulled out of the industry working group which is tasked with making the set top viewer data part of the ratings of the television industry in Canada and in May, as we reported, the company asked the CRTC to amend its conditions of license so that it would not be forced to share its cable set-top box audience measurement with Numeris, which has built the data into a new ratings system. The Commission refused to alter the CoL and Videotron went to the Federal Court of Appeal.
The company told the court “the Broadcasting Act contains no explicit provisions empowering the CRTC to force operators to share their facilities with third parties as a condition of licence, and certainly not for the purpose of giving third parties a commercial advantage.”
The CoL stems from a March 2015 CRTC decision (part of the Let’s Talk TV process), which reads: “The future success of the broadcasting industry will depend on the industry’s ability to tailor the contents of programming packages as well as the programming itself to the needs and interests of Canadians. Viewer information will be essential in this emerging viewer-centric environment. New tools, such as a set-top box-based audience measurement system, are key. In light of this, the Commission is requiring the industry to form a working group to develop a set-top box-based audience measurement system.”
The Commission made it a BDU CoL in 2018 and told the companies to get it done by September of this year. In light of Vidéotron’s moves, the deadline was pushed to January 15, 2020.
The Court, in one line, kiboshed the attempted appeal. “The application for leave to appeal is dismissed with costs,” reads the decision, in French, from justice Marc Nadon.
It’s not clear what options remain for the company, other than compliance, since it is near impossible, legal experts told us, to get the Supreme Court to consider something the Federal Court of Appeal has already rejected.
A Videotron spokesperson told Cartt.ca the company is considering what to do next.
Here comes a potentially important however…
However, Videotron may well have the support of other BDUs in this matter. We say may, because it the big BDUs want to change this set top box data CoL, but we can’t tell for certain how. Yet.
Bell is currently in the throes of renewing its licence for Fibe TV and the CRTC, as it always does, asked certain deficiency questions of Bell over its renewal application. One of the questions Commission staff had for Bell in a July letter is why, in its application, it did not include the existing CoL requiring it to take part in the set top box data consortium and allow its STB data to be used.
Bell’s August 16th answer reads: “On 9 August 2019, we filed a joint application with Shaw and Rogers in which we propose amendments to the above condition of licence. We refer Commission staff to that application.”
Now, we’ve checked and that application is not public yet (or if it is, we can’t find it), so we don’t know what it says, but it appears Videotron may have help in its quest to at least alter that CoL.
We’ll keep following this story.
