No plans to seek must-offer status for Bloomberg TV

One of the executives behind the newly announced Bloomberg TV Canada news channel says that there are no plans to seek a broadcast licence that would compel broadcast distributors to offer the channel to customers. New York-based Bloomberg L.P. and independent Canadian broadcasting company Channel Zero Inc. announced in a press release Thursday that the two companies are partnering to bring a Canadian version of Bloomberg TV to viewers by about the midpoint of this year. They said it would provide coverage of business and financial-market news from around the world and Canada. Channel Zero president Cal Millar said the plan is for the Canadian version of Bloomberg TV to replace its U.S. feed, which is widely available in Canada. "We're going to keep all the existing programming that's on it and then add to it," he said in a phone interview. "What's been missing up until now is a Canadian perspective on the news day from a business perspective." Channel Zero's website says Bloomberg TV Canada is "owned" by Channel Zero. The companies said in the press release that the news service will use a new "state-of-the-art" studio in downtown Toronto, providing easy access for interviews with those that work in the heart of Canada's financial industry. Millar said Bloomberg TV Canada is currently slated to broadcast as a Category B exempt channel. Under Category B rules, there is no requirement for broadcast distributors to carry or offer the service. In December 2013, the CRTC granted Category C national all-news specialty channels “must offer” status, meaning broadcast distributors must make them available to all of their subscribers. It also said distributors that choose to place some all-news services together on the dial must include all of those five channels in relative proximity, in a decision that affected Quebecor Inc.’s Sun News Network, which has since folded, and its TVA Group subsidiary’s Le Canal Nouvelles, as well as CBC/Radio-Canada’s CBC News Network and Réseau de l'information (RDI), and BCE Inc.-owned CTV News Channel. Being exempt, as Bloomberg TV Canada plans to be, means the channel won’t require a licence until the service's subscriber numbers reach 200,000. "We expect to reach the 200,000 very quickly," Millar said, noting it might be necessary to seek a broadcast licence before the service even launches. He noted that the U.S. feed of Bloomberg TV, which the Canadian version would replace, currently has just less than one million subscribers. There is, however, no guarantee that all service providers currently providing Bloomberg TV will automatically continue with Bloomberg TV Canada. Millar said when the Canadian Bloomberg channel reaches a point where it will need a licence, it will seek a Category B licence, which means it will still be optional for broadcast distributors to carry it. Channel Zero's president said the degree to which service providers carry the channel is not a worry, given that every major distributor in Canada provides Bloomberg TV now. He said the bigger concern is getting a sufficient number of subscribers. "We're very focused on ensuring we have as wide a distribution as we possibly can so that we can focus on earning our living on selling the advertising compared to asking subscribers to pay more on their cable bills for the channel," Millar said. Millar said Bell Media's Business News Network (BNN) has six to seven million subscribers, and he hopes Bloomberg TV Canada can get "at least as broad a distribution as they do." BNN is classified as a Category A specialty channel, which gives it "must-offer" status. Sun News Network ceased operations earlier this month, a year and a half after it wasn’t able to convince the CRTC to give it mandatory-carriage status in basic TV packages. According to the most recent data available from the CRTC, in 2013 it had 4.9 million subscribers and lost $14.8 million, compared to the profits of $5.5 million earned by CTV News Channel and $20.4 earned by CBC News Network, which had 8.4 million and 11.3 million subscribers respectively. Millar said Bloomberg's existing structure as an international news organization, and Channel Zero's experience with news with its Hamilton-based CHCH over-the-air channel, gives it an advantage Sun News never had as an upstart news channel. "We currently have a fairly large news infrastructure, and Bloomberg also has a large worldwide news infrastructure and substantial news resources already inside Canada, so these aren't new costs that the chain will have to bear just on its own," Millar said. The Canadian Bloomberg channel isn’t the only new news channel set to launch in Canada. Shaw Communications Inc. applied to the CRTC for a broadcasting licence for a new national all-news channel in September, and Rogers Communications Inc. and Vice Media Inc. are planning to launch a specialty channel as part of their $100 million joint venture, though it’s not clear whether it will be classified as an all-news channel. — With reporting by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

No plans to seek must-offer status for Bloomberg TV

News | February 26, 2015

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No plans to seek must-offer status for Bloomberg TV

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