Telecom giants differ on who pays for local TV
TORONTO — Two of Canada’s biggest telecommunications companies, Bell and Rogers, are clashing over the future of local television and who should pay for it.
In its submissions to the CRTC, Bell said it believes changes should be made by the regulator to allow local TV stations to be reclassified as “local specialty services.”
The move, said Bell, which is owned by telecommunications giant BCE Inc., would allow stations to charge broadcast distributors, such as cable companies and satellite TV firms, wholesale rates subject to existing must-carry rules.
The money generated would be combined with advertising revenues and go toward supporting local television, it said.
However, fellow telecom giant Rogers Communications says it won’t support the plan for the new expenses, which it feels would likely filter down to the cable bills of customers.
“We are trying to avoid what some of the other groups are doing, which is loading up consumers with a lot of new fees,” Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory for Rogers, said.
In addition to Bell, BCE owns 30 local television stations including the CTV network as well as 35 spe- cialty channels. The company also provides TV service by satellite and through its Fibe TV offering.
Rogers owns a smaller slate of 11 local TV stations under the City and OMNI banners.
The disagreement came as the CRTC wrapped up a formal interventions process on Friday, part of its public consultations where it has collected comments from Canadians and the industry on the evolution of the broadcasting system.
While the public consultations were designed to take into account various aspects of the future of TV broadcasting, much of the focus has been on the so-called pick-and-pay model for cable television, which would give consumers more choice, rather then being locked into expensive bulk specialty channel packages.
Each company highlighted its own concerns in their filings or statements issued Friday.
Some concerns within the industry were that the pick-and-pay concept could dramatically increase the price of paying for a single channel, basically pushing consumers into buying specialty channel packages they didn’t want in the first place.
Bell said it supports pick-and-pay and believes Canadians “shouldn’t have to pay for channels they don’t want just to get the channels they do.”