Québecor replies to Bell’s reply after the hearing
By Denis Carmel
MONTREAL – When Cartt.ca wrote about the CRTC hearing examining Bell Canada’s proposed purchase of V Télé, we had anticipated the advertising markets issue as well as program acquisition was an important issue since the CRTC’s Diversity of Voices policy considers the French and English Market separately – and that Québecor argues that if Bell were to get into the French conventional television side of the business, its weight in English Canada would give it an advantage when it negotiated with major players.
So when the reply came, the following day, sure enough, Bell argued the transaction was strictly a Quebec affair and Karine Moses, president, Bell Media Quebec, contradicted Québecor who had said a day earlier that Bell’s negotiating power prevented it from getting the rights to Games of Thrones by saying that super popular HBO show was available on addikTV, a Québecor specialty channel.
Québecor then offered us a reply to the reply.
“First of all, it should be noted that prices for content are much higher on the English Canadian market than on the French-language market. For international distributors, English Canada is a much more important and lucrative market than Quebec. By acquiring V, Bell would be able to use the acquisition of English-language rights to force content providers to include French-language rights. In other words, Bell would be able to shut down competition in the Quebec market by including French rights as an add-on to its deals for English rights. We would no longer be able to negotiate rights for the Quebec market in a ‘healthy’ competitive environment,” wrote Yann Paquet, vice-president, strategy and international business for Quebecor Content.
“In fact, Bell has already used this type of tactic by signing exclusive agreements for both languages with major content providers such as HBO and Showtime. These multi-language agreements are possible because of the prices paid on the English market. As a result, other French-language broadcasters can’t even try to acquire series such as Jean-Marc Vallée’s Big Little Lies, or Chernobyl, Succession and Billions. These aren’t even offered to other players anymore; they go straight to a Bell channel. Imagine the power Bell would have with the addition of a conventional channel such as V,” he added.
Finally, Paquet added: “Game of Thrones is a good example. When the series began airing in 2011, we couldn’t buy first-window rights because Bell bought it in English and French and premiered it on Super Écran in Quebec. We were able to offer it on addikTV only two years after it aired on Super Écran.
“Furthermore, since Bell signed a new exclusive agreement for both languages with HBO in 2015, if a new Game of Thrones came on the market, no other player could broadcast it at all, just as no one else can carry prestigious series like Big Little Lies, Chernobyl or Billions. No one in our market can even bid on it. It can hardly be argued that Bell’s power in English Canada has no impact on the Quebec market!”
