TORONTO – Citing the CRTC’s genre exclusivity policy and a nearly identical programming schedule, Pelmorex Communications says Corus Entertainment’s application for a category 2 specialty channel providing community news, information and weather in Western Canada should be denied.
The Corus service is “a thinly disguised weather specialty channel which would duplicate completely the programming service that The Weather Network already provides to Western Canadians,” Pelmorex (owner of TWN and Météomédia) tells the Commission in comments filed on September 7. An appendix to its submission shows that about 90% of Local1’s programming would be “similar, if not the same” as that on The Weather Network.
“While not identical to The Weather Network, the nature of service description proposed by Corus is certainly broad enough to allow the undertaking to offer a weather specialty service. There are substantial similarities in the definition of Local1’s nature of service and the definition of The Weather Network’s nature of service that cannot be ignored,” Pelmorex states in its comments.
“A rose by any other name,” Paul Temple, Pelmorex’s senior vice-president of regulatory and strategic affairs, tells Cartt.ca in an interview. “They’ve described themselves as a weather channel even though they don’t call themselves that. If you read their application, it’s all about weather. Call yourself Local1 but that’s the concern.”
In its application, Corus argued that since Local1 is a cat 2 channel and the Weather Network is a must carry, the two aren’t competitive. Temple says this argument doesn’t hold water and shouldn’t pass the genre exclusivity test. He acknowledges that the Local1 channel won’t have guaranteed access as The Weather Network does, but adds this shouldn’t sway a Commission decision on this matter.
“Any Category 2 service that comes along won’t have the same guaranteed access but that’s not what the Commission is looking at. The Commission is looking at if they are carried will they be competitive and of course they will. So if Local1 is carried, will it be competitive? Of course it will be,” Temple argues.
The fact that Corus and Shaw Communications share common ownership is also a big concern for Pelmorex. Despite Local1 being a cat 2 digital channel, there’s little doubt that Shaw won’t carry it and include the channel in a basic service tier, says Pelmorex.
“If you worked at Shaw and you were making the decision as to whether you should carry this new service and where you should put it, it would be a little difficult to ignore the fact that the guy who owns your company, owns this company,” says Temple. “Obviously there’s an issue here in terms of that kind of vertical integration and it makes this a much more substantial competitive threat.”
Pelmorex also warns approving the Corus Local1 licence would set a dangerous precedent by signaling to large vertically integrated distributors (of which there are a growing number of late…) that they, too, could launch their own service in direct competition to existing services. “Approval of this application sets a precedent from which there is no escape. If approved by the Commission, we could expect similar broad brush local category 2 applications to follow, not only by Corus, but by other dominant distributors with programming interests in markets where they exercise overwhelming competitive advantages,” reads Pelmorex’s September 7 submission.
“It’s a death by a thousand cuts,” if the Commission approves the Corus application, says Temple. The large integrated distributor/broadcaster will choose to “cherry pick” the big juicy markets, saddling Pelmorex with an inability to serve the small communities because it will have to shift resources to fight Corus for viewership and advertising in the big centres.
“National advertisers don’t care too much about Cut Knife, Saskatchewan but if we want a national service that’s going to provide weather to all of Canada then you can’t let guys come in and cherry pick,” Temple states.
At the end of the day, the genre exclusivity test should be enough for the Commission to deny the Corus Local1 application, says Temple.
“The Commission has said we’re going to have genre exclusivity in weather and these are the guys who are there,” he adds. “So it doesn’t matter what you are, if you’re doing weather then you’re competitive.”
