Vision TV to contest CRTC decision denying rate increase
Vision TV president and CEO Bill Roberts says he plans to contest a recent CRTC decision that denied the specialty TV channel a wholesale rate increase. "Vision TV would clearly have been in line for a rate increase based both on reality and the evidence on the file (showing economic need)," Roberts tells CCR. "Either Vision has enough money or it doesn’t, and by any rationale, it doesn’t." Roberts says he is consulting with his legal counsel to see what avenue of appeal Vision TV will take – either consulting directly with the commission on a licence amendment for a rate increase or launching an appeal to either Cabinet or the Federal Court of Appeal. Vision TV was seeking a monthly wholesale rate increase from seven cents to 15 cents per subscriber during its licence renewal process. "We understand the matters of non-compliance. We are not taking issue with that," says Roberts. "But I’m not sure that the commission and Vision got into the right conversation about what the point is. And for us, the point is we successfully demonstrated economic need." The CRTC granted Vision only a short-term licence renewal, extending it from Dec. 1, 2001 to Aug. 31, 2004. The commission was concerned about Vision TV’s lack of compliance with its condition of licence concerning Canadian content. For more on this story, see the next edition of CCR. More details.