By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – Quebecor Media will not challenge the CRTC’s decision to approve Bell’s purchase of the V Network in the Federal Court of Appeal, according to a letter to the court.
The letter, sent June 23, said despite finding an error in the Commission’s approval of the purchase, it wishes to discontinue the proceeding.
Quebecor first filed a notice in the court in early May reserving its right to challenge the CRTC’s decision approving the purchase in April. It did not decide whether it wanted to appeal the ruling because at the time, the regulator had not released the reasons for its decision and the Federal Court of Appeal requires a notice of possible appeal within 30 days of that decision.
The CRTC released its reasons on May 19, backing up its original finding that the purchase was in the public interest, especially seeing the poor financial position of V and the fact the combined entity would still only represent a small portion of total advertising revenues in the French-language market.
The deal to buy V network, which was owned by Groupe V Media, was announced in July last year and it angered Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau. Péladeau claimed the deal, which included the conventional TV network “V” and related digital assets including ad-supported video-on-demand service Noovo.ca, would allow an already dominant player in Bell to further encroach on a footprint which includes Quebecor’s TVA network – which is the TV market favourite in the province.
The CRTC held a hearing in February to take arguments on Bell’s $31-million purchase application, which included a repositioning of five French-language TV stations under the Bell Media moniker. Bell and V argued the purchase made sense because the network was losing money and the combined entity from the deal would be under the threshold that would raise competition issues because of Quebecor’s established dominance in the market.
The decision not to challenge the buy is a little surprising, considering the two companies have been fighting each other on the regulatory and legal battlefields for some time. The two have fought over such matters including Quebecor’s decision to pull its TVA Sports signal from Bell subscribers last April, the shuffling of each others’ TV channels in their package offerings, and claims of permanent roaming, and a number of other files
