montreal: A spokesman for CanWest Global says more than 300 written applications have been filed with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on behalf of Global’s entry into the Quebec tv market.
Glenn O’Farrell, vice-president legal and regulatory affairs, CanWest Global System, says more than 20 Montreal- and Toronto-based media buyers, including The Association of Canadian Advertisers, are backing the entry along with scores of community and business groups.
According to O’Farrell, media buyers want ‘more conventional Canadian inventory’ in the English-language Quebec market, the country’s third-largest English-language broadcast market.
He says a new Global operation in Quebec will repatriate ad dollars going to u.s. border stations, which he says have an outsized 33% aggregate share of the market.
The proposal for the new station is from TVACanWest, a joint venture between Montreal-based Telemetropole, which owns a majority of the TVA Network stations in Quebec, and Winnipeg-based CanWest, which holds a 51% controlling interest.
The deal calls for the conversion of cbc relay station ckmi-tv in Quebec City to an extended Global System station.
About 20 applications were filed against the proposal.
Newly named cfcf-tv President Rene Desmarais says CanWest’s projected $11 million to $13 million in ad revenues from ckmi ‘will come right out of (cfcf’s) pocket.’
Desmarais says even if Global’s selling is restricted to national advertising, its entry will create a ‘price war,’ drive down prices and force cfcf to solicit radio and print retail dollars in the already flat Quebec tv advertising market.
The crtc has decided to delay the TVACanWest hearing from Nov. 30 to ‘on or about March 25’ after a petition from Cogeco Cable to Quebec Superior Court asking that cfcf be obliged to submit the $720 million cfcf/Videotron deal to shareholders.
The crtc says the March 25 hearing is based on the assumption applications and amended applications from interested parties are received by Dec. 15.
Otherwise, the commission says the hearing will not proceed until June.
