BCE Inc. said Tuesday that its $1.3-billion purchase of the CTV network doesn’t mean it won’t share content with competitors.
Chief executive George Cope told a CRTC hearing that BCE would be open to supplying content to others and expects its competitors to make their content available to BCE.
“It means we’re open for business when it comes to moving the product,” Cope told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
BCE, parent company of Bell Canada, wants to put video content including television programs, on personal computers, tablets and smartphones.
Cope said BCE bought the remaining CTV assets it didn’t own to prevent its cable competitors such as Rogers and Quebecor Inc. from being the sole content-providing telcos.
“We don’t want to buy all of our supply from our competitors,” he said, adding that “there will be other service providers who will want content from us and we will be open to supplying it on a commercial basis.”
But Cope said he expects a level playing field.
“I will tell you with certainty [that] if we don’t see reciprocity from other content suppliers, we will act accordingly.”
The CRTC is holding hearings this week to determine whether it will give regulatory approval to BCE’s purchase of CTV. It will release its decision in 35 days.
CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein asked Cope if BCE would hold back content from its competitors.
Cope said that from “time to time” BCE may have exclusive arrangements with content suppliers, noting how Bell’s wireless service provides exclusive access to NFL football games, but added that BCE wouldn’t behave in an anti-competitive way.
“We haven’t even owned it for a day yet and the assumption is that we’re going to do something that isn’t in the interest of the Canadian marketplace, and we would say that’s not our strategy at all,” Cope said.
“Our strategy, quite frankly, was to make sure that the content industry wasn’t 100% controlled by the cable industry.”
Cope also told the commission that BCE is now willing to pay a premium—or what it’s calling “a tangible benefits package”—of between $142.7 million and $220.8 million to acquire the CTV assets.
The money would be used to contribute to Canadian programming, news (particularly in Western Canadian markets), and high-definition news production.
Bell had previously argued it didn’t need to pay the benefits because it had paid $230 million in benefits to acquire CTV back in 2000.
