The Great Big Bell Deal
The deal that Bell announced with CTV this morning is rattling the media industry.
From the CBC’s point of view the new Bell-CTV company looks like a major new competitor, especially in the online and mobile space.
But it’s not that the CBC will be left out in the cold on this.
In May the CBC signed a major deal with Rogers that sees the corporation provide Rogers customers with access to the CBC’s TV shows (including hockey and the world cup) for its on-demand, digital cable, and mobile platforms.
The fruits of that deal were evident during the world cup when Rogers customers could watch games on their smart phones. Remember that ‘Gooooooal’ commercial with that shirtless guy running around in his office?
So the CBC has gone with Rogers.
And now CTV has gone to Bell.
It’s a big realignment.
The industry newsletter for CARTT wrote this afternoon,”the new company will bring under one roof the top broadcaster and specialty service company in Canada, our biggest ISP, largest traditional telco, second-largest wireless provider, third-largest TV carrier and several of the most popular web destinations in Canada (sympatico.ca, ctv.ca, tsn.ca, rds.ca).”
That’s a lot of properties and platforms – all together under one company.
Now that the different carriers have pretty much caught up to each other in terms of their platforms and speed, it looks like they’re going to compete on content.
For the CBC, which produces or owns a lot of its content, that may be a good thing. We’re content rich.
On the other hand if Bell starts limiting access to its online and mobile networks, or even if it starts to show preference to its CTV content, that could spell trouble for the CBC. It would essentially prevent us, or hinder us, from reaching a chunk of the market on Bell platforms. We’ve already seen a bit of that last week with the fight over local satellite signals and now there may be more to come.
What do you think of this deal?
Leave a comment with your thoughts, I’d love to hear your perspective on the deal.
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I see that Rogers has been providing a free preview of CBC’s “Documentary” digital channel, and I’ve been tuning in a bit to sample it. However, if CBC really would like me to subscribe to a specialty channel, I’d suggest they put together a “CBC Retro” channel (similar to “TVLand” in the U.S.), where they run classic programs from yesteryear such as The Beachcombers, North of 60, and my personal favourites: Front Page Challenge and The Tommy Hunter Show. As it is, I currently watch more U.S. series from the 60′s and 70′s available on DVD than I watch anything playing on contemporary TV, either U.S or Canadian, simply because I personally love the style and substance of all TV from that era. Today’s TV series all have too much of a “rock ‘n’ roll” mindset for my tastes, so a retro channel would appeal more to those of my age group, I suspect.
It’s all about exploiting your content but CBC will have to upgrade their website. It’s too static and busy all at once.
Video on demand is the thing – stories, news, features.
CTV is aggressive and popular on the web.
Cheers
I’m glad the obnoxious CTV billboards are gone from the John street hydro station. Log live the iPad.
I would prefer to not have seen this Bell-CTV deal happen at all. Or better still, CTV hived off into a stand-alone company again.
The situation continues to disturb.
Picking up on Stephen Pate’s point about video on demand… CBC really needs to make CBC NN available for live streaming 24-7. I think RDI is available live online. In Canada, we can even watch France 24 live online, but not CBC NN (except for certain shows like P&P, Exchange, Connect, The National, and local news). Why?