Canadian Telcos Lobby Against Pick-and-Pay TV 244
silentbrad writes with an excerpt from the Financial Post: "BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., and Shaw Communications Inc. which together control two-thirds of the $8.3-billion broadcast distribution market, are lobbying against the so-called 'a la carte' model that would allow customers to pick and pay for individual networks, arguing the change would have disastrous consequences for programmers, such as Bell Media and Shaw Media. 'A regulation requiring that all programming services must be made available to consumers on a stand-alone basis would have far-reaching ramifications,' BCE, whose Bell owns 30 specialty networks, said in a submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. 'Undoubtedly, a market shake-out, causing many specialty services to exit, would ensue.' The three big players, led by BCE, have told the CRTC they support the status quo of 'tied selling,' or the practice of grouping weaker-performing networks in with a popular channels, versus a new approach to sell channels individually. ... In the race for subscription dollars, rates for TV services across providers have risen sharply over the last decade as the number of specialty channels, each commanding its own fee, has soared. Net costs to subscribers climbed another 2.6% in 2011, while average bills now hover around $60 a month."
Re:what's broadcast? (Score:5, Informative)
In Montreal we have six OTA digital channels (Radio Canada, CBC, CTV, Global, Télé Quebec, V).
I opted to not go with cable, IPTV or satellite because of the quantity of commercials on top of the fee I have to pay for these packages. I hate most are shows that spend more time announcing what is going to come on next and what they just showed, amounting to five minutes of real content in 20 minutes. I have Netflix and I am very happy. All I would like now is to be able to watch Crunchyroll via Plex.