CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. – As general manager Jim Forsyth feared, Shaw Communications revealed the depth of its anger Tuesday afternoon and shut down most of the distant TV signals for Campbell River TV.
“We’ve been disconnected by Shaw from just about everything. The microwave system has been turned off and all of our digital services are off and the vast majority of our satellite channels are off,” Forsyth told www.cartt.ca Tuesday evening.
CRTV is preparing a court injunction to force Shaw to turn its Cancom feeds and microwave distribution back on, said Forsyth, who added Shaw executives have yet to return his calls. “We have no other option,” he explained.
Cartt.ca talked with Shaw Communications president Peter Bissonnette this afternoon, about four hours prior to CRTV’s loss of signals, in response to cartt.ca’s earlier story on the situation and Bissonnette indicated then that shutting down its distant signal feeds could be one course of action.
The problem, says Shaw, is that CRTV is encouraging customers to go to the town of Courtenay – a Shaw Cable region about 45 kms south – purchase digital set top boxes there and bring them back for use in the Campbell River system. Since both companies run full Motorola systems, the boxes are easily compatible.
“(W)e tell (customers) the boxes are available to purchase in the big box stores and it’s up to them if they want to buy them,” said Forsyth in Tuesday’s story.
Bissonnette says this is theft and that this type of thing has become a trend from CRTV – and that Shaw isn’t going to stand for it anymore. He said this is the third “distasteful” incident where CRTV took something from Shaw.
The first occurred in 2002 when CRTV employees purchased a large number of digital set tops from a retailer in Courtenay in order to sell them to CRTV customers. “The first time, some of their employees went into the retail centre in Courtenay and (bought) 100 digital cable terminals,” said Bissonnette.
“So, we addressed that with them, told them they can’t do that and those have to come back.”
CRTV sent the boxes back, said Bissonnette.
Forsyth said the problem was a couple of energetic employees “who were thinking of reselling them locally,” and that the number of boxes involved were 20 and not 100.
Plus, added Forsyth, these are not cases of theft. “Again, remember, this is Future Shop. A retail store. (Bissonnette) has to understand that when it comes down to it a customer can walk into a Future Shop or an A&B Sound and say I want to buy a digital cable box and that’s it.”
Not so fast, explains Bissonnette. These are Shaw boxes which Shaw purchases and places inside electronics retailers like Future Shop and it tells those retailers that the boxes are for Shaw customers only.
“We buy those boxes from Motorola and provide them to the retail stores for use with our customers. We’ve directed them that these boxes – because we subsidize them by $200 – are intended clearly for Shaw’s customers and that’s the direction that we’ve given to them: Don’t sell these to anyone else.”
“That is B.S.,” said Forsyth.
Gary Griffin, a former CRTV board member and current cable subscriber told www.cartt.ca that he recently purchased a new digital set top terminal from Future Shop in Courtenay and said, “They were quite happy to sell it to me.”
The retail salesperson told him that as a Campbell River resident he was not eligible for the rebates Shaw offered (and had to pay the full $750 retail price, which is subsidized by Shaw) and warned that CRTV would charge a setup fee for activating the DCT in its system.
“They advised me that CRTV would charge me a fee to add it to their system. I said ‘fine,’ and they proceeded with the sale,” recounted Griffin. “At no time did Future Shop indicate that there was anything wrong with that, other than it was going to cost me an extra fee ($30) when I took it to Campbell River.”
“It’s very evident to Campbell River from our previous discussions that such a thing would be fraud,” said Bissonnette, “that they were buying boxes at a discounted price, cheaper than they can get them from the supplier.
“They know we’re paying a subsidy on these boxes.”
The second time Shaw had an issue with CRTV, in 2003, it took the co-op to court, saying it was stealing Star Choice signals. The judge sided with Shaw and awarded the company $38,000.
Shaw was tipped off by someone in the community about an illegal Star Choice hookup in the CRTV headend and the company obtained a court order for a police search.
“One of their employees became a Star Choice customer and took the receiver to their headend to distribute signals,” explained Bissonnette.
CRTV said it had to be done because it was having technical difficulties with the microwave system. Bissonnette says the microwave problem only cropped up after they were caught with the Star Choice gear in their headend.
So, after the initial two incidents, “then we find out that they are directing customers to go to Courtenay, pick up a box and they would authorize it on their digital addressable control system,” explained Bissonnette.
“It’s to the extent where we just won’t deal with a company in any way, that’s stealing from us,” he said. “It wasn’t once. It wasn’t twice. It was three times that this has happened and if you look at the integrity of the relationship, there just doesn’t seem to be any.”
“We’re going to pursue our legal remedies (civilly and criminally) and we’ll just go from there.”
And for CRTV to wonder why Shaw is bothering with it, based on the discrepancy in size of the two organizations? “It’s rationalizing theft, frankly,” said Bissonnette. “And one industry member stealing from another is just distasteful.
“I don’t know if we want to do business with a company that steals from us.”
Forsyth added he has also left messages at the CRTC (which traditionally has taken a dim view about this type of action), for help to remedy the situation because with its traditional HITS architecture, it is almost completely reliant on Cancom for signals as the system can not readily be modified to receive everything from Bell ExpressVu.
“It looks like we’re going to have to try, on some of our services, to switch over to ExpressVu and we’ll be doing that later tonight,” said Forsyth.
“We can’t rely on Shaw, that’s for sure.”
Surf back to www.cartt.ca for more as this story unfolds.
