MONTREAL – One wants the Bell deal to purchase Astral stopped, the other doesn’t – but in the end, independent cable group CCSA and Independent Broadcaster Blue Ant both say Bell is big enough to need to be held back.
Up first on Friday morning, the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance demonstrated directly how, in its view, the existing market power of Bell Canada (without Astral) negatively impacts the price and availability of choice available to its member companies’ customers. The CCSA represents independent distributors who collectively serve about 750,000 Canadians and is worried the addition of Astral Media to Bell…
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TORONTO – Fraser Milner Casgrain (FMC) has announced that telecom expert Gregory Kane will provide counsel for the firm’s Communications Law and Public Policy, Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs Practice Groups.
Based in FMC’s Ottawa office, Kane brings more than 30 years of legal experience advising clients in all areas of domestic and international electronic broadcasting and telecommunications sectors, regulated health care, transportation, federal lobbying, conflicts and ethics. He is a member of the Canadian, American and International Bar Associations, and has appeared before a number of federal and provincial regulatory agencies and tribunals including the CRTC, Copyright Board…
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MONTREAL – Telus is another in the line of companies who want the purchase of Astral Media by Bell Canada killed.
But, if it is approved, the industry needs better rules to govern the behaviour of it and other vertically integrated companies (but especially Bell…), Telus told the CRTC Thursday morning in Montreal.
The best example of Bell’s intransigence, said Telus executives, is its dealings on multiplatform content. “It has been mentioned by many parties in this proceeding that Olympic coverage on mobile was only available to Bell Mobility subscribers,” said Telus director of broadcast regulation and corporate affairs, Ann Mainville-Neeson….
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MONTREAL – Sometimes it’s hard to put a finger on the reasons why we decide to pull something out of the tens of thousands of words spoken at CRTC hearings and turn it into a story.
Other times, such as Cogeco Cable CEO Louis Audet’s focused, furious appearance Wednesday, it’s easy to figure out why we cover some submissions instead of others…
We know everyone works hard on their presentations and the job they all do is commendable. However, as I often tell people, we can’t write about everyone. That said, there are frequent portions in every CRTC hearing that stick…
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MONTREAL – It's rare to witness tempers flare in the public forum that is a CRTC hearing, but observers saw Cogeco Inc. CEO Louis Audet at his passionate best Wednesday afternoon, ripping a deal he says should be wholly quashed, whatever the consequences.
A combined Bell-Astral would have too much power in TV, too much power in radio and that level of ownership of concentration must be denied because it is not in the public interest, the CEO said, many times, when he faced the panel of commissioners. “We’ve arrived at a crossroads at this hearing you are holding this…
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MONTREAL – One of the open questions about CBC/Radio-Canada as it heads into its CRTC licence renewal hearing in November has been the fate of its president and CEO Hubert T. Lacroix.
His original five-year contract to head the public broadcaster expires in December of this year and it would be unusual to the extreme to have Lacroix lead the CBC team to a hearing with his personal job status either unknown, or to have a CEO push through a hearing knowing he won’t be in the position a month later.
However, Cartt.ca has determined through a number of Montreal media executive sources who…
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MONTREAL – We have a real soft spot in our hearts for those regular citizens, the ones with no industry background, with nothing to gain financially, who are concerned enough about a broadcasting or telecom, issue before the CRTC that they choose to appear publicly to make their case officially.
A few years ago, it was Ottawa’s Marjorie Lemieux at the fee-for-carriage kerfuffle. Thursday in Montreal it was Rahul Majumdar, just a regular Montrealer who doesn’t want to see TSN Radio 690 (formerly 990) turn into RDS Radio. The Montreal sports fan bears the French sports…
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MONTREAL – While one large, vertically integrated Canadian media and distribution company vehemently told commissioners why it opposes Bell’s Astral purchase another, Shaw Communications, went before the CRTC right after Quebecor to say it did not see any reason why the deal should be denied.
“Strong, efficient and diversified operators will enhance the system by providing consumer choice, value and innovation,” Shaw Communications president Peter Bissonnette told the panel Tuesday morning.
Vice-chair broadcasting Tom Pentefountas, however, wondered if a combined Bell-Astral was too big for Shaw – big enough to allow it to corner the market on movies and the top-rated…
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MONTREAL – There’s little doubt of who’s the biggest fish in the Quebec media pond. Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau is a rock star here, drawing reporters, photographers and others like kids to free candy floss.
We’re hard pressed to think of an executive in English Canadian media whose mere arrival at a CRTC hearing would be akin to a red carpet walk, as the assemblage of shooters blasted away when Péladeau walked in with Group TVA president Pierre Dion and Vidéotron president Robert Dépatie. After their appearance a the hearing, more than a dozen microphones and numerous still and…
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MONTREAL – "Do you know what I did for my summer holidays?" CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais asked rhetorically to Bell Media on Tuesday. "I didn't have summer holidays. I read interventions."
Blais held up a large binder with the 774 interventions, most of them by individuals, filed in response to an application by Bell to convert Montreal all-sports AM station CKGM (TSN Radio 690, formerly 990) from English to French. “There are nine volumes like this,” Blais (pictured below on CPAC.ca holding up that binder) said of the 774 interventions filed in relation to this application.
The Commission skeptically grilled Bell…
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