TORONTO – The CEOs of BCE and Rogers say they are more than happy to offer access to their upcoming online subscription video-on-demand services to other TV providers, and at least one of those other providers is eager to sign up.
At the annual BMO Media and Telecom investors’ conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Rogers CEO Guy Laurence said Shomi, a joint project with Shaw that is set to launch in November, was to have other partners (as Cartt.ca first reported earlier this year). But they decided to launch without them because they “couldn’t get their act together” and make their content available, Laurence said.
“Brad (Shaw) and I got to the point where we said we don’t need these guys,” he explained, without naming the other potential companies involved. He said they had agreed on a threshold of content that was necessary for the service to work, and with Rogers’s and Shaw’s libraries they were over that threshold. “Anyone else coming in would be a nice-to-have,” Laurence said.
He added that other providers are “queueing up at the moment” to sign deals to make Shomi available to their customers.
As Cartt.ca reported earlier, Bell was supposed to be one of the other main partners in this service, but pulled out and decided to go it alone. Last week it signed exclusive deals with HBO for its content library, sharing past episodes of current series with Corus but keeping past series for itself.
BCE CEO George Cope said such a subscription video-on-demand service would be taken to market “through all the distributors in Canada.”
Cogeco is one of the providers interested in these services. CEO Louis Audet said he would be “delighted” to offer Shomi or similar services from Bell or Videotron to Cogeco’s subscribers. “We’re currently in commercial negotiations” with Bell, he said. “I don’t see a reason why we would not be able to come to a commercial agreement.”
“Hats off to George (Cope) and the team for what they’ve done with Fibe… It’s not fibre-optic. They cheated. It’s one of the best pieces of cheating I’ve ever seen.” – Guy Laurence, Rogers
Other things telecom and media CEOs said during the conference:
– Cogeco’s Audet said Cogeco is still on track to launch TiVo in Canada by the end of February after a successful test run with its Atlantic Broadband customers in the U.S.
– Asked to predict the future of channel packaging, Audet said he thinks most TV services in Canada will be made available on both an individual basis and in large packages that offer bundle discounts, giving consumers more choice.
– BCE’s Cope denied a Toronto Star report that Bell was interested in buying Ontario Lottery and Gaming. “I read it this morning like you,” Cope told interviewer Tim Casey of BMO.
– Telus CEO Joe Natale said “we’ve pushed as far as we can as a distributor” on TV packaging choice. “The roadblock to further choice is not us as a BDU. It’s content made available to us by broadcasters.”
– Natale said “we’ve got the balance sheet” to participate in both the upcoming AWS-3 and 2500 MHz spectrum auctions to satisfy the constantly growing demands for bandwidth.
– MTS CFO Wayne Demkey said his company also intends to participate in upcoming spectrum auctions.
– Rogers’s Laurence took a shot at BCE. “Hats off to George (Cope) and the team for what they’ve done with Fibe,” he said. “It’s not fibre-optic. They cheated. It’s one of the best pieces of cheating I’ve ever seen.”
– Laurence defended Rogers spending much more than Telus and BCE on wireless licenses in the 700 MHz spectrum auction, comparing its frequency-adjacent A and B blocks in most of Canada to a two-lane highway that can handle traffic better than two one-lane highways. “We have a clear path to service the industry as it grows.”
– Laurence reiterated that he believes Canada does not need a fourth national wireless carrier because most regions already have a fourth carrier. “They might not have all the same logos, but who cares?”
– Laurence said there are plenty more announcements to come as far as using NHL rights. The streaming video service GameCentre Live “is only a third of what we’re going to do” with those rights, he said.
– Sirius XM CEO Mark Redmond said his company is insulated from the increased cost of sports rights. “Ninety per cent of our content we get from the U.S., so we’re not responsible for negotiations for that element of the content,” he said. “We don’t see the increases when the cost goes up and we don’t see the benefit when the costs go down.” One exception is NHL rights, which are up for renewal next year.
