Canada approves a la carte television

[skbl17 188]

The CRTC, the Canadian telecommunications and media regulator, has approved new rules for pay television providers. The biggest ruling was that pay television providers will now be required to implement a la carte television by December 2016.

 

The rules will require the providers to allow consumers to purchase their channels individually or as part of a "build your own bundle" system, where the consumer can create his or her own bundles of channels to pay for. There will still be one mandated bundle that includes local channels, CPAC, provincial public broadcasting stations (i.e. TVO,) APTN, and up to four U.S. television stations. Also, while private news channels are not part of the mandatory bundle, the CBC's two news channels, CBC News Network and RDI, will both be mandatory in Quebec and English Canada, respectively. The mandatory bundle will be capped at $25/month, and must be introduced by March 2016.

 

Other changes approved today include:

 

- The creation of a code of conduct to help in disputes between pay TV providers and consumers (eff. Sep 2015)

- Customers who wish to switch cable companies no longer have to give 30 days' notice

[Hexagonal10 84]

Oh well, I have an antenna anyway. But I used to use Rogers in Toronto and they would be pretty awful.

[rkolsen 1684]

The basic package sounds good. I'm still a bit iffy about the whole a la carte thing. I believe that it will ultimately cost more in the long run either by buying the channels you want or increased fees. I do wonder what it would look like if you wanted to buy a package of women's channels like Lifetime, Oxygen, We and Hallmark.

[Viper550 291]

I'm going to cross-post this a bit from Digital Home, because a few people have actually agreed with this point.

 

There have concerns that these new rules could lead to job losses if channels have to shut down because not enough people have chosen to subscribe to them. I bet the channels that aren't going to survive are the ones owned by major companies that show one or two "exclusive" American imports and then dedicate the rest of their lineup to Cancon recycled from their sister networks. And how many people does it take to run such a network? Maybe about 1 to 3, if not less, presumably. They're just pure cash grabs.

 

Quality over quantity is what our broadcasting system should be aiming for. But no, these conglomorates are still going to run these cash grab networks: it makes way too much sense to spread so little content over multiple channels, especially when you can force people into buying them one-by-one one way or another.

[NEOMatrix 1299]

I bet some companies that have duplicate channels (I'm looking at you, Corus!) will probably either shut down or merge channels. We could see YTV merge with Nick or Teletoon "merge" with Cartoon Network.

[Hexagonal10 84]

 

The basic package sounds good. I'm still a bit iffy about the whole a la carte thing. I believe that it will ultimately cost more in the long run either by buying the channels you want or increased fees. I do wonder what it would look like if you wanted to buy a package of women's channels like Lifetime, Oxygen, We and Hallmark.

 

The big companies are rising their internet fees or something else to make up for it.