Copyright Board cancels distant signal hearing due to settlement

Copyright collectives reached a settlement Friday related to broadcast distributors' carriage of television program copyrights. The settlement led the Copyright Board to cancel a hearing on the allocation of royalties that was scheduled to start this week. The copyright collectives, including the Canadian Broadcasters Rights Agency, the Canadian Retransmission Collective, and several others, reached an agreement with broadcast distributors in December 2010 on royalty rates for the retransmission of “distant signals,” or non-local and foreign over-the-air TV programming, for the years 2009-2013, though the collectives did not agree on how to divide and allocate the royalties. “There was a dispute amongst the collectives about how much each should get. That was what the hearing was going to be about, strictly dividing up the pie,” an industry insider with knowledge of the issue said on a background basis. “Now they've settled that.” Sources with knowledge of the matter told The Wire Report that the distant signals fees are worth about $100 million annually. The Copyright Board had scheduled the hearing to start Tuesday to determine the division of royalties between the collectives. The board sent an email to parties involved on Nov. 9 that said the proceeding was “adjourned indefinitely.” Hank Intven, a partner with McCarthy Tetrault and counsel for one of the collectives, notified the board of the settlement in an email message Nov. 9. “The collecting societies intend to submit a formal settlement agreement with the Board shortly, together with a filing to request certification of the 2009-13 tariff,” Intven said in the email. “This settlement has arisen from increasingly intensive multi-party discussions and negotiations over the past few days, and we have just managed to reach a settlement this morning.” The “distant signal” royalties collected from broadcast distributors are paid to TV broadcasters and other content rights holders under the Copyright Act for the retransmission of their copyrighted material. Those royalties are separate from any distant signal fees paid by broadcast distributors under Broadcasting Act regulations. According to the agreement between collectives and distributors reached in 2010, broadcast distributors with more than 6,000 customers will pay the collectives 90 cents per subscriber per signal per month in 2009, rising two cents per year to 98 cents in 2013. The distributor companies involved in the 2010 distant signal agreement are BCE Inc., Bragg Communications Inc., the members of the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, Cogeco Cable Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Shaw Communications Inc., Telus Corp., and Quebecor Media Inc. The copyright collectives involved also include the Copyright Collective of Canada; the Canadian Retransmission Right Association; the Canadian Broadcasters Rights Agency; the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada; Border Broadcasters; FWS Joint Sports Claimants; Major League Baseball Collective of Canada; and Direct Response Television Collective. news@thewirereport.ca

Copyright Board cancels distant signal hearing due to settlement

Broadcast | November 13, 2012

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Copyright Board cancels distant signal hearing due to settlement

Broadcast | November 13, 2012

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