GRANTING BELL THE RIGHT to buy Astral Media will make an already big company that acts badly, enormous, add incentive for it act even worse, which in the end will crush competition and choice in Canada. Therefore, the deal needs to be quashed altogether or tough new rules applied to constrain the biggest player in Canadian media, say final replies to the CRTC’s public proceeding into Bell Canada’s quest to buy Astral Media.
Those last written rejoinders to the Commission’s public proceeding into Bell Canada’s purchase of Astral Media (CRTC 2012-370) from intervenors were due into the Commission on Friday,…
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I DON’T RECALL THIS question being clearly asked last week of the company executives who would block Bell Canada’s purchase of Astral Media: Why do you fear Bell would act the way you say it will?
The subject was broached a few times last week during the CRTC hearing and was sort-of asked, just not in as direct a way as we’ve put it above. The answer was given a number of times. Put simply, the executives of Quebecor, Cogeco, Rogers, EastLink and others say Bell is behaving poorly already and they fear an even bigger Bell would act as…
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TORONTO – North American wireless carriers reported strong Q2 margins, with combined wireless EBITDA service margins for Rogers, Telus, Bell, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, LEAP and MetroPCS up 342 basis points and EBITDA growth up 14.5% over the previous year. This according to figures reported in Dvai Ghose’s Canaccord Genuity Daily Letter for September 17.
He says the improved margins were driven by reduced device subsidy pressure. Wireless equipment subsidies dropped an estimated 12% in Q2 due to a “dearth of iconic device launches.” He noted that with the Samsung Galaxy S III and the iPhone 5 recently launched “we…
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TORONTO – Less than three years after coming to market, Wind Mobile says it now provides wireless services to more than 500,000 subscribers across Canada. Wind, owned by Globalive Communications, launched in December 2009, Mobilicity and Public Mobile entered the market in the spring of 2010 and Quebecor's Videotron later that fall.
It’s estimated that the four new wireless entrants will capture about 5% of the Canadian market, or about 1.3 million subscribers, by the end of this year.
"We've worked hard to get to where we are today and I'm so proud of our team and everything we've been able to accomplish…
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MONTREAL – It was almost a game of regulatory Call Of Duty for Bell Canada on Friday as company executives brandished figurative pistols to whack as many of its enemies claims as it could while defending its position on its deal to buy Astral Media for $3.38 billion.
While the company recommitted itself to providing everything it promised earlier in the week, and reiterated how the combined company’s level of ownership and audience share would not “come anywhere close to any reasonable or customary assessment of dominance in any developed country,” said…
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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 ? With a three-hour break mid-day (we were told someone had to go to a funeral, so quit complaining&), yesterday?s long hearing day featured a ton of back and forth between Bell executives and the panel of CRTC commissioners.
Long lovely narratives explaining each exchange would be nice but time restraints mean we?re going for the bullets only of some of the highlights. We think we?ve hit some of the main points with our bulleted rundown here.
* In his first public appearance as chair of the CRTC, Jean-Pierre Blais acquitted himself well, nailing a few biting comments throughout the…
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MONTREAL – Sensing the opposition to its proposed benefits package was pretty strong, the first thing Bell Canada did Monday morning when it faced the CRTC was to boost that package – making it bigger and, in the opinion of its executives, better.
As many companies which have faced the CRTC over the years are wont to do, Bell looked at the opposition to its benefits package filed with written comments to the CRTC prior to the hearing and boosted what it originally proposed by $41 million dollars, increasing the overall value of the package to $241.3 million, to be…
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WHILE BOTH SIDES OF the Bell-Astral deal debate were ensconced in Montreal hotels on Sunday polishing their lines and rehearsing their delivery in advance of the CRTC hearing starting Monday morning, the SayNoToBell forces fired out one more press release Sunday afternoon.
The Quebecor-Cogeco-EastLink backed public relations campaign claimed Bell has been preventing its TV ads from airing on CTV until just now.
“Twenty-six days after being asked, CTV has finally broadcast its first television commercial opposing its parent company's ambitions to control an even greater portion of the Canadian broadcasting space,” says the Say No press release which was headlined:…
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