Bell calls for revocation of TVA Sports licence at tense CRTC hearing

Gatineau, Que. — Quebecor Inc. CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau was unrepentant as he justified his decision to pull the TVA Sports signal from BCE Inc. TV subscribers Wednesday, indicating to CRTC commissioners he wouldn’t rule out doing so again once a court injunction expires next week. “Right now, our intentions are to analyze the situation and to react accordingly,” Péladeau said, in French, in response to a question from CRTC legal staff about whether the company would remove the signal again on April 24. If the CRTC forces Quebecor to keep broadcasting the signal through a mandatory order, Péladeau said during the half-day hearing that the company would have to consider how viable TVA Sports is and whether to shut it down. He told reporters after his appearance that TVA Sports has been losing millions of dollars for a number of years. He said if the CRTC won’t secure “reasonable” carriage fees for the channel, the likelihood of having to shut it down is very high, though he wouldn’t specify how long it would take to get to that point. The CRTC called the hearing last week, after Quebecor stopped broadcasting TVA Sports to Bell TV service subscribers -- in violation of the CRTC’s standstill rule -- over what it says are too-low carriage fees Bell pays for the channel, an issue that’s been long been of concern to Quebecor. The companies were in negotiations until Friday, April 5. Quebecor then began, over that weekend, threatening to pull the signal, which it did last Wednesday as the Stanley Cup playoffs began. The quick turn around for the hearing wasn’t the only unusual aspect of how the proceeding played out -- CRTC hearings don’t usually see CEOs of the biggest telecoms appear, or delegate most of the questioning of witnesses to legal staff. But that’s just what happened Wednesday, when CRTC Chairman Ian Scott chose not to ask Péladeau or Bell representatives any questions. Scott did say in closing the hearing that the CRTC would issue a decision shortly, though exactly when that will happen is unclear. Bell representatives, meanwhile, told the CRTC it shouldn’t allow Quebecor to pick and choose which laws and regulations are valid and that the company should be subject to “the most punitive of sanctions.” That means revoking the licence of TVA Sports entirely, Bell proposed. If the CRTC isn’t willing to do that, then its licence should be suspended until the end of the NHL playoffs. Alternatively, TVA Sports shouldn’t be allowed to collect wholesale fees for the whole playoff period or air commercials during live NHL broadcasts, Bell suggested, but either way, it said the CRTC should issue a mandatory order stopping Quebecor from pulling the signal and fine the company $250,000. “This is a regulated industry,” Bell’s senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, Robert Malcolmson said. “Imagine the chaos if industry participants can decide on their own whether or not they will comply with the regulations. Just think about what happened last week and multiply it.” Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Bell’s vice-chair in Quebec Martine Turcotte brought up, in comparison, a scenario in which Bell chose to cut the broadcast of Game of Thrones, which just began its final season to record-breaking ratings. Company representatives said Quebecor’s pulling of the signal affected about one million subscribers of both Bell and smaller TV providers, and that the company doesn’t yet have a number on how much it will cost it to keep offering affected customers free access to Rogers Communications Inc.’s Sportsnet as compensation. When asked whether Bell will go back to the court to ask for an extension to the Quebec Superior Court injunction if the CRTC doesn’t issue its decision by then, Bell chief operating officer Mirko Bibic responded that “with all respect, we ask the commission to regulate, and to ensure that stakeholders before it comply with the law.” He added that Bell is asking the CRTC to issue a mandatory order before the injunction expires. “We don’t think … the burden ought to be on us to go to back to court again,” he said. Speaking to the The Wire Report after the hearing, Bibic declined to specify what avenues would be open to Bell if Quebecor were to cut the signal again. “I’m not going to contemplate those scenarios because clearly the CRTC should act given the flagrant disobedience by Quebecor in this context,” he said. During Quebecor’s appearance, CRTC lawyer Valerie Dionne outlined a number of options the CRTC could decide to take, including suspend TVA Sports’s licence. Péladeau said if the CRTC did that, “this would probably mean the death of TVA Sports and a return to the monopoly of” RDS, Bell’s rival sports channel. Bibic said in an interview that the options presented by Dionne “are all valid options, and equally valid are the ones we presented in our opening statement, which are the ones we think should be applied.” Other options outlined by Dionne were for the CRTC to issue a licence suspension that would only be in effect for the time that TVA Sports was withholding its signal from Bell, and fining TVA. Péladeau was vague on the solution he would like to see in response to the situation. The company’s opening statement said it wants to see changes to the criteria governing final offer arbitration. Péladeau said the final tariffs should be left up to the market and that customers should be able to choose whether to pay for them or not, as they would decide for streaming services. “The commission does not decide the tariffs of Netflix or Hulu,” he said. “If a citizen or viewer decides that … Netflix is too expensive, well, they will stop subscribing.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Bell calls for revocation of TVA Sports licence at tense CRTC hearing

Broadcast | April 17, 2019

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Bell calls for revocation of TVA Sports licence at tense CRTC hearing

Broadcast | April 17, 2019

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