By Ahmad Hathout
Corus has failed to show that any of its Disney-themed channels are comparable to Disney+ programming, making its undue preference complaint against Rogers unfounded, the cable giant said in response to the media company’s Part 1 application.
Corus filed the complaint last month alleging Rogers is giving itself an undue preference by trying to lure people to its Disney+ offerings – which Rogers provides in subscription and ad-supported formats – by manipulating how it positions those services to Corus’s Disney-theme specialty channels on the Ignite TV service, an aggregation platform. That manipulation allegedly includes the placement of Rogers’s Disney+ offers right underneath Corus’s channels; Disney+ allegedly being favoured in search rankings; and its drive to get people on the ad-supported Disney+ tier because it also manages Disney+ advertising sales in the country.
All of this, Corus alleges, is a strategy to imperil independents like itself.
But Rogers alleges in a heavily redacted response made public Friday that Corus has failed the first step for a successful undue preference complaint of this kind: to prove that its Disney-themed programming is comparable to that of Disney+.
The cable giant pointed to a public portion of Corus’s application, which reads: “…it is clear that Disney+ and several of the Corus Services offer similar types of programs and, in certain cases, the same exact titles.”
“Implicit in the above cited statement is that an undisclosed number of the ‘Corus Services’ … do not offer ‘similar types of programs’ as Disney+, and thus are not comparable,” Rogers alleges.
“As a result, not only does the Complaint furnish no evidence or analysis upon which the Commission could make a finding that any one of the [Corus] Services are comparable to Disney+, but it actually concedes that at least some of the [Corus] Services are not comparable to Disney+.”
Rogers argues that they aren’t comparable, first because Corus’s programming in question is traditional linear programming services, while Disney+ is an online undertaking that has both sub- and ad-based formats.
“It would be extremely misguided and damaging for these two types of offerings to be conflated under the regulatory framework, as they reflect very different commercial relationships, with very different underlying economics,” Rogers argues.
“They offer different viewing and navigation experiences, have catalogues that reflect vastly different programming investment levels, serve different audience segments, and have popularity and viewership levels that are anything but comparable,” Rogers continued.
In any event, Rogers denies any undue preference even if they were comparable. Rogers analyzes Corus’s examples of alleged undue preference: Rogers’s now-expired promotion of the Disney+ subscription service, which launched in 2021; and Rogers’s June 2024 launch of a promotional offering of the Disney+ ad-supported app.
Rogers said Corus has failed to show how this confers upon it an undue preference. “We have provided similar limited duration subscription offers for other streaming services, such as, most recently, Apple TV+, and are constantly exploring new and innovative approaches to bring the best content and viewing experiences to Canadian consumers at the most compelling prices,” Rogers says.
“Expecting BDUs to defend these promotional offers, and in the absence of clear evidence of direct and tangible harm identified by a complainant, would set a very dangerous precedent that would deter service innovation, reduce choice, and increase prices within the Canadian broadcasting system.”
A key part of the value proposition for the Ignite TV platform is to aggregate linear and online services into one location, Rogers continues.
Rogers also said there is allegedly no basis for Corus’s complaint that the Ignite platform’s algorithm is preferring its own services to Corus’s. Rogers claims the algorithm is “designed to serve users with the most accurate and relevant content,” adding the results are ordered by popularity and relevance.
On how promotions are displayed on the platform, Rogers said those placements are “randomly reassigned within the [TV guide] over the course of a promotion’s term.” To illustrate that, while Corus filed the application with Rogers’s Disney+ promo underneath Corus’s programming on the guide, Rogers said it found that Bell’s Crave replaced the cable company’s slot by the time it came to file its response.
Rogers alleges Corus is asking the commission to “engage in a level of hyper-regulation that would involve prescribing BDUs’ very placement of advertisements within their programming guides,” which “is plainly unreasonable and does not advance any of the [Broadcasting] Act’s objectives.”
