GATINEAU – There is no undue preference, no undue disadvantage in the fact that Sun TV News is not available to Bell Satellite TV customers.
In fact, it’s all Quebecor Media’s fault, according to a letter to the CRTC from Bell filed last week. Quebecor, Sun TV News’ owner, didn’t play fair, kept what it was doing a secret until the last minute and proposed a first offer that was a “take it or leave it” proposition according to Bell’s response to Quebecor’s complaint to the CRTC over the matter filed last month.
As first reported by Cartt.ca, Quebecor had its new news-talk channel removed from the Bell TV satellite line-up at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 3, and while Quebecor claims this is clearly a matter of undue preference under sections 9(1) and 9(2) of the Broadcast Distribution Regulations, Bell says that simply isn’t so.
While the Sun News channel slot itself remains, the feed has been replaced with text telling customers that the channel “has been taken down at the request of the owners of Sun News."
As Sun TV News head of development Luc Lavoie told Cartt.ca in May, Bell forced Quebecor’s hand and it had to demand signal removal. “They have carried the signal on their satellite without trying to even have an agreement with us,” he told Cartt.ca last month.
According to the Bell letter to the CRTC dated June 10, it has a different viewpoint on what, exactly, happened. “QMI’s unreasonable conduct, not Bell Satellite TV, caused the affiliation negotiations to fail,” it reads.
“The Company denies the existence of any disadvantage or undue disadvantage to Sun TV News,” reads Bell’s letter. “Despite QMI’s repeated, unsuccessful attempts to circumvent the Commission’s licensing rules, Sun TV News was licensed as a Category 2 National News service with the same standard Conditions of Licence (CoLs) applicable to all other such services.
“As such, Sun TV News was granted no mandatory carriage rights under Commission regulations or under its COLs – on Bell Satellite TV or any other BDU in the country. Therefore, the fact that Sun TV News service has not yet reached a distribution agreement with and is not currently distributed by Bell Satellite TV does not, indeed it cannot, constitute disadvantage, let alone undue disadvantage as it has no entitlement to carriage.”
Besides, says Bell, it found Quebecor’s only offer with “take it or leave it” rates and packaging demands, wholly unacceptable.
Plus, Bell wants to know, is the channel a local, Toronto OTA station or a national specialty service? It’s something Quebecor wouldn’t even tell Bell in the weeks and months leading up to its April 18th launch and for now, it’s both (a must-carry local in southern Ontario and a discretionary digi-net in the rest of the country). “QMI has been less than forthright in its dealings with the Commission and industry stakeholders regarding the operation of Sun TV News under two very different broadcasting licences with fundamentally different obligations,” says Bell.
“The programming schedule available at the Sun TV News website indicates little, if any, local programming, local presence or priority programs are being aired by the service, notwithstanding that it continues to operate under both licences. This raises the questions as to whether QMI is operating Sun TV in compliance with its OTA conditions of licence (CoLs) and related expectations and the standard CoLs applicable to a competitive Category 2 national news specialty service.”
So, Bell’s letter also called for the CRTC to undertake a public hearing on deciding what Sun TV News is for licensing purposes, calling out the “fundamental contradiction between the national programming orientation which Sun TV News must meet under its competitive mainstream national news service programming licence… versus the local programming and local presence orientation required for compliance with the conditions applicable to CKXT-TV and CKXT-DT as a Toronto OTA programming undertaking,” says Bell’s letter.
“For the reasons below, it is unclear to the company whether Sun TV News is compliant with either or both of these fundamentally different sets of licence requirements and therefore asks the Commission to convene a public proceeding to investigate these compliance issues in order to guarantee the on-going integrity of the Commission’s licensing procedures.”
What’s interesting to note is that ratings for Sun TV News haven’t been awful. According to the Bell letter, its average minute audience over its first six weeks as a new brand was 12,900, almost half of what CP24 gets (a brand that’s nearly 14 years old). The company is bound to get a ratings bump if and when it gets back on Bell Satellite TV.
Finally, Bell’s letter also says that the two sides are back bargaining, noting a new carriage contract proposal it received from QMI on June 7 it is reviewing.
“The fact that negotiations are now resuming is consistent with the commercial and market-based framework that the Commission envisioned for Category 2 services, one under which the Commission does not regulate distribution rates for Category 2 services,” reads the Bell letter.
