By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Quebecor has filed a notice with the Federal Court of Appeal saying it may seek to appeal a decision by the CRTC that approved Bell’s purchase of the V network.
The filing serves to reserve the right of Quebecor to challenge the April 3 decision because the CRTC did not release its full set of reasons for why it approved the deal – and a judicial review applicant has just 30 days to notify the court of a possible challenge. As such, following the release of the CRTC’s reasons, Quebecor will weigh whether it should proceed with the judicial review request based on the soundness of the CRTC’s reasoning and subsequently file official arguments in the case.
Announced in July last year, the then-proposed acquisition of the V network, owned by Groupe V Media, angered Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau. Péladeau claimed the deal, which included the conventional TV network “V” and related digital assets including ad-supported video-on-demand service Noovo.ca, would allow an already dominant player in Bell to further encroach on a footprint which includes Quebecor’s TVA network – which is the TV market favourite in the province.
The CRTC held a hearing in February to take arguments on Bell’s $31-million purchase application, which included a repositioning of five French-language TV stations under the Bell Media moniker. Bell and V argued that the purchase made sense because the network was losing money and the combined entity from the deal would be under the threshold that would raise competition issues because of Quebecor’s established dominance in the market.
Péladeau called Bell a “public menace” at the hearing. Bell, of course, swung back.
However, the CRTC ruled that the deal was in the public interest, with further analysis to follow.
As readers will be well aware, Bell and Quebecor, both headquartered in Montreal, have a long history of regulatory and legal battles. The two have fought over such matters including Quebecor’s decision to pull its TVA Sports signal from Bell subscribers last April, the shuffling of each others’ TV channels in their package offerings, and claims of permanent roaming, and a number of other files.
