SO IT?S NOT JUST Quebecor, Cogeco and EastLink demanding the CRTC say no to Bell Canada'?s $3.38 billion purchase of Astral Media after all. Telus, Rogers, MTS Allstream, the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and others want this latest edition of the ongoing vertical integration story erased.
(An earlier version of this story said Friends of Canadian Broadcasting were also opposed to the merger. That us not the case and Cartt.ca regrets the error.)
Still, other groups such as ACTRA, the Writers Guild, the CMPA and Directors Guild, while not ultimately opposing the…
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TORONTO – With less than two weeks to go until its Canadian debut, Shaw Media has kicked off a national advertising campaign to introduce Lifetime to Canadian women.
Targeting women 25-54, the off-air campaign highlights series Dance Moms and The Client List, plus layers in a third image piece featuring A-list talent including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Queen Latifah, Lindsay Lohan and Heidi Klum. Together, the campaign aims to promote the brand’s breadth of programming including scripted drama, unscripted series and movies.
Out-of-home executions include a “subway domination” at Toronto’s St. George station, plus large-scale billboards in the high-traffic Toronto Eaton Centre…
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VANCOUVER – Add Telus to the list of stakeholders opposing Bell’s planned purchase of Astral Media.
The telco issued a statement Tuesday backing the ‘Say No To Bell’ coalition, and voicing its concern over the “unprecedented concentration of market power in the broadcasting sector would have on Canadian consumers”.
“All Canadians should be able to access the content they want through the provider they choose; we all benefit from competition between a variety of organizations and no one company should be in a position to take away choice or access to content for consumers,” said president and CEO Darren Entwistle,…
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OTTAWA – The ‘Say No To Bell’ coalition is taking issue with Bell’s interpretation of its Canadian TV viewing share should its acquisition of Astral Media be allowed to proceed.
The group, spearheaded by Cogeco, Eastlink, and Quebcor, issued a statement challenging Bell’s calculation that the combined English-language market share of Bell Canada and Astral Media is 33.5%.
“The correct number for the Canada-wide English-language viewing share of the combined companies is in fact 41.4%”, reads the statement. “This goes to the heart of the problems inherent in the proposed transaction: a degree of single company market dominance greatly exceeding that…
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WHILE LISTENING, PERPLEXED, to Tuesday’s “Say No To Bell” press conference led by Quebecor Inc. Cogeco Inc. and Bragg Communications, I tweeted “Horse is out of the barn, is lost in the woods and the barn is on fire.”
Many of us are fond of using the “horse is out of the barn” cliché when it comes to big media mergers, noting it’s far too late now to close the door on any of it. That is undeniable, and the proposed Bell Media purchase of Astral Media is just about the last of them. The Canadian barn…
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MONTREAL – Bell Canada was quick to respond to what it described as a “public misinformation campaign” launched by Cogeco, Eastlink, Quebecor earlier in the day around its acquisition of Astral Media.
The communications giant issued a statement acknowledging that the proposed transaction will change the competitive landscape, and said that “new reality has competitors worried”.
"With Astral, we're actually leveling the playing field with the long-dominant media/cable company in Québec, Québecor, and bringing new investment and increased competition to the media marketplace," said Martine Turcotte, Bell's vice chair for Quebec, in the statement. "Coupled with the fast growth of…
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TORONTO – It’s not just about choice, it’s about how that choice is defined.
According to the Canadian Independent Distributors Group (CIDG), which lost its final offer arbitration dispute against Bell Media just over a week ago, the CRTC appeared to agree with the communication giant’s definition of choice which, simply put, is the more television channels that Canadian viewers can buy, the better.
But is choice about volume, or is it the ability to pick only the channels that viewers actually want to watch?
According to the CIDG, made up of Cogeco, MTS and the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance (CCSA), their consumers…
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OTTAWA – While Friday’s CRTC rulings may indeed eventually pave the way towards more choice for consumers in the selection of TV channels, what remains unclear is whether that “choice” will truly be driven by Canadian viewers or continue to be shaped by the country’s biggest broadcasters and television service providers.
Friday’s CRTC decision, which chose Bell Media’s final offer over the one presented by the Canadian Independent Distributors Group (CIDG), noted that “both parties’ offers moved in the direction of providing more consumer choice”, plus contained “incentives to provide a wide choice of programming in the broadcasting system, and…
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OTTAWA – Communications giant Bell Media was batting .500 Friday after the CRTC awarded it a win, and a loss, in two final offer arbitration disputes between it and the Canadian Independent Distributors Group (CIDG) and Telus.
In its decision on Bell Media versus the CIDG, a group consisting of the CCSA, Cogeco and MTS, the Commission noted that both sides made “significant strides” to resolve the issues between them, and that both offers provided commercially reasonable terms and more consumer choice.
The CIDG final offer affiliation agreement, however, was “inconsistent” with the standstill rule of the Commission’s vertical…
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GATINEAU – Unless there is a last minute change of heart from one side or the other, a panel of three CRTC commissioners will soon decide the terms of the next carriage agreements for 29 Bell Media specialty channels on a number of independent BDUs.
The Commission panel will choose one offer over the other in the final stage – known as Final Offer Arbitration (FOA), sometimes referred to as “baseball arbitration” – of this carriage battle. It’s high-risk business brinksmanship. In Major League Baseball, if a player and his team can’t come to a negotiated salary agreement, an arbitrator…
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