TORONTO – While acknowledging he speaks from the position of a regional monopoly, Corus Entertainment CEO John Cassaday doesn’t think the CRTC should license other analog pay TV services.
Cassaday was speaking as part of a broadcast panel with CHUM Limited CEO Jay Switzer and Alliance Atlantis executive chairman Michael MacMillan at the BMO Nesbitt Burns Media and Telecom conference which concluded Wednesday in Toronto.
Earlier this year, four companies applied for new pay TV licenses from the Commission, looking for carriage requirements like the existing pay services Movie Central, owned by Corus, and Astral Media’s The Movie Network.
“They will have to demonstrate it’ll be more than a zero sum game,” said Cassaday after being asked about the new applicants, who will go before the Commission in October.
After saying any approval will probably mean increased costs to the consumer, Cassaday added that if the CRTC does grant approval, that “we hope the Commission will make them do it the hard way as we did with digital,” and ensure any new pay license is a purely discretionary pickup for BDUs.
MacMillan was then asked why his company didn’t apply for a license. “We couldn’t figure out how to make any money at it – end of story,” he responded. “We’re not thrilled with the reliance on subscription fees as the single source of revenue in that business model.
“We just couldn’t make it stack up… it didn’t make sense to us.”
