TORONTO – Bell Canada informed its customers last month that it is dropping a number of TV channels from its lineup.
While everyone is dropping ichannel because the parent company, Stornoway Communications, shut it down August 15, some of Bell’s other channel cuts are somewhat surprising.
As of September 1st, Bell is dropping Gusto and on September 27th it has told customers it will remove The Shopping Channel, CNBC, MSNBC, Nickelodeon and Sundance. (See screen cap of the note to customers below. Click it to enlarge.)
The Shopping Channel is a Rogers Media retail channel while American news channels MSNBC and CNBC are owned by NBC Universal. Kids brand Nickelodeon and independent film channel Sundance are both Corus Entertainment channels. Bell is also moving MyTV Buffalo to its “Better” package.
Dumping Gusto seems particularly surprising, given the fact that Bell Media just purchased the brand, but the official word from Bell is that it is relaunching the brand with much 4K Cancon (in fact, Bell Media is rebranding the much better penetrated M3 as the new Gusto, the company has confirmed).
Bell’s official response to the changes when asked by Cartt.ca is: “We always give customers advance notice of changes to channel line ups. Given Bell Media’s acquisition of the brand and its coming launch of Gusto with original Canadian programming all in 4K, the channel in its present format will be going away. As for the other channels, we would not discuss specifics around any but we do regularly make changes to our packages and channel lineups to ensure they’re competitive and reflect the current market.”
A Rogers spokesperson said the company does not comment on commercial negotiations while an NBCUniversal spokesperson said in a statement: "NBCUniversal is in active negotiations with Bell for continued carriage of Golf Channel, CNBC and MSNBC, and we hope to come to a mutually acceptable agreement so that Bell can continue providing these networks to our valued viewers."
Corus has not responded to our query.
