Evidence of meeting #32 for Canadian Heritage in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, CTV Inc.
I think it will be more choice; I think there will be lots more choice.
Senior Vice-President, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Bell Canada
There definitely will be more choice. It will be a different choice in terms of the viewing platforms. Clearly there's more choice with all the networks we have. I think there will be more choice of content to watch on those platforms, if we invest more in that content, which we plan to do. There could be all kinds of choice in terms of niche add-ons.
A very simple example is that now, if you're a Bell Mobility subscriber, you can vote for the three stars at the end of the game on your Bell mobile phone. It's a neat little add-on to our ownership position in the Montreal Canadiens. That adds choice. It's fun for a Montreal Canadiens fan. It's not going to tip the scales one way or another, but these are the kinds of things we can experiment with, and we can do even more of it.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
On Tuesday we had Corus here. I think you monitored the hearings. They were telling us they needed to be bigger and better to be more competitive globally. We heard the same thing from the banking sector years ago when they proposed mergers as well. We felt it could be anti-competitive and would lead to less consumer choice. What do you have to say?
Senior Vice-President, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Bell Canada
One huge difference is that if you're merging Bank One with Bank Two, you're left with one bank. Here, it's vertical integration: you have a distributor with a content provider; there's no reduction in the number of content providers. So it's a completely different situation.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, CTV Inc.
You're still going to have the 500-channel universe.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I want to go back to the small broadcasters again.
Who is left? And aren't they in jeopardy of being gobbled up as well? What will be their role going forward?
Senior Vice-President, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Bell Canada
We did a quick count before appearing here of the number of separate ownership groups in Canada. In a rough count, and I'm sure I didn't catch them all, there were more than 60 of them. So there is a vibrant, independent production community that adds significant value, and there's a bright future available to all of them, given the number of opportunities that exist through mobile viewing, Internet viewing, traditional viewing, satellite viewing. There's lots of choice.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
The same thing happened when the book companies all merged. It squeezed the small independents.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, CTV Inc.
As I said earlier, small independent broadcasters serve their communities, where we are not. They play an important role. In Mr. Del Mastro's community, for instance, they have a local TV station. We would not normally go to that market. But it's served through the Corus family, and they do a good job. As Mr. Del Mastro can attest, the community wants to watch local news every night. It's important to them.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
My final question is on the role of the CRTC. In light of the increasing vertical integration and changes, should their role be changed or broadened in any way?
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, CTV Inc.
They can only do what the act tells them to do. They have done a good job dealing with a lot of the issues that have come before them, particularly in our case, on conventional television. If you're going to look at the CRTC, I think you need to look at the act first, before you go there.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you very much, Mr. Sparkes. Thank you, Madam Crombie.
Your turn, Ms. Lavallée.
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for meeting with us.
It is hard to believe that all the mergers we are seeing right now will not lead to an entire industry made up solely of large conglomerates, with very little else.
Can you give me some reassurance? People will disappear, people with whom you are negotiating, who will not be able to join your organization, who will not have the ability to produce or show their products. You do not think that consolidation will inevitably lead to fewer players in the field?
Senior Vice-President, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Bell Canada
Again, our transaction....
Senior Vice-President, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Bell Canada
No, it has to do with vertical integration, not mergers. It is not a matter of Canwest, CTV, Corus and so forth merging. CTV will stay CTV, but it will belong to BCE.
As for independent content producers, no matter what opportunities they have, we intend to continue distributing the services of independent broadcasters and producers. There is so much distribution today. If the customer, the subscriber, wants their services, then we will distribute them, because we have to. That is how we will attract more customers and make money.
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
A number of the small companies that have appeared before the committee, as madam pointed out earlier, bemoaned the fact that, when negotiating with other companies—and I do not mean you, because you are not in talks with them—it is a David versus Goliath scenario. At the end of the day, their position falls on deaf ears.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, CTV Inc.
You're talking about negotiating with independent producers--
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, CTV Inc.
Okay, yes.
If you watch CTV and our other channels, we have a lot of Canadian content, which we're required to put on. So we do a lot of business with independent producers, and we're going to continue to do that.
With this proposed purchase by Bell, if I were an independent producer, I'd be pretty excited about the other opportunities that are going to present to them.
We deal with them every day. Some have great, fantastic shows that come to us, as you can tell, and we're even partnered with them and selling them to the U.S. distributor. That's going to continue.
Senior Vice-President, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Bell Canada
I will give you an example. The Quebec market is extremely important to Bell Canada, for obvious reasons. We have a formidable rival or competitor in Quebec. That is one of the reasons why we signed a deal with Radio-Canada to distribute more than 250 hours of its programming to our subscribers.
And why would we not? It is in our best interests to sit down with independent French-language broadcasters to do a better job of offering more choice to our Quebec customers, so we can compete with our main competitor there. Our door will always be open.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
I would add, if I may, that there is still one cable distributor in Quebec offering many specialty channels as well as its own programming. When new specialty channels get their licence, they have a very tough time establishing a place for themselves on cable. In fact, there is nothing stopping the company in question, ADR, from applying to the CRTC for its own licence.