By Ahmad Hathout
The News Forum (TNF) is alleging Cogeco and Quebecor’s Videotron are not giving it television package treatment demanded by CRTC regulation.
The independent national news service, which broadcasters must offer to their subscribers under the 9.1(1)(h) rule, claims in separate but nearly identical Part 1 applications that the aforementioned broadcasters are excluding it from packages that include incumbent news networks CBC and CTV, thereby giving those services an advantage over it.
“Broadcasting Order CRTC 2022-297 requires BDUs to distribute TNF, CBC News Network, and CTV News Channel, and to include those services in the best available discretionary package consistent with their genre and programming, unless the parties agree otherwise,” TNF argues in its applications. “The Order also expressly identifies historical rates, penetration levels, and packaging of the service as relevant fair-market-value factors.”
Instead, The News Forum claims its service is “not being afforded comparable packaging, penetration, or wholesale-rate treatment necessary to fulfill those obligations in the marketplace.”
“Unless BDUs take active steps to provide TNF with comparable practical access to subscribers, the national-news framework risks securing only notional, not effective equality while allowing structural inequality to persist,” it says.
The News Forum is asking for the CRTC to require Videotron and Cogeco to provide it with distribution terms comparable to those granted to its competitors and by other broadcasters, including by being broadcast in institutional, commercial and transient locations.
It is also asking for immediate action considering Videotron and Cogeco command significant reach in their respective provinces.
The service is using a recent case to bolster its argument. The CRTC ruled in December that Rogers unjustly removed LGBTQ+ channel OUTtv from its premium pre-assembled television package while the two were negotiating a new carry rate.
Prior to the end of their previous agreement, OUTtv was in Rogers’s Premier television package, which the cable giant stopped marketing in favour of its best pre-assembled package called Ultimate TV. After the carry agreement ended, Rogers removed the channel from the Premier package and, instead of putting it in Ultimate TV, slotted it into two themed ones called Variety and Lifestyle and Entertainment.
“While each case turns on its record, that decision confirms that inferior package placement, diminished reach, and measurable harm are properly recognized by the Commission as regulatory concerns under the undue preference/undue disadvantage framework,” TNF argues.
Cogeco declined to comment. Quebecor did not respond to a request for comment.
TNF has been here before. It alleged in a Part 1 application last year that Rogers was allegedly disadvantaging it by excluding it from its legacy or grandfathered cable packages, which included news services from CBC and CTV. Rogers, in part, argued that it did not limit the reach of the service. The parties ended up reaching a distribution agreement and TNF pulled its complaint.
