CCR Short Takes

CCTA’s Cable Summit in Toronto postponedThe Canadian Cable Television Association’s (CCTA) annual gathering that was to be held this year from April 27-29 in Toronto is being postponed due to fears over SARS. No new date has been set. Close to 500 delegates were expected to arrive Sunday evening at the Liberty Grand Complex for the association’s revamped annual event, referred to this year as a cable summit. Industry standing committee to release report this monthThe House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has agreed to hold a media conference on April 28 after its report on foreign ownership restrictions in the telecommunications industry is tabled. The committee plans to print 1,000 copies of the report, according to the minutes of its April 8 meeting. Dissenting and/or supplementary opinions will be published in an appendix to the report and will be limited to three pages. No word yet on when the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which will touch on foreign ownership in the broadcast industry, will release its report. At press time, The Globe and Mail reported that a media release outlining the committee’s recommendations that was intended to be released April 28 was accidentally posted on a government web site. According to the release, the committee urges Ottawa to drop foreign ownership restrictions on telephone and cable TV companies. Rogers adds digital households, reduces basic cable churn in Q1Rogers Communications Inc. added 33,100 digital cable households and 50,300 Internet customers in the first quarter ended March 31. Basic cable subscribers decreased by 700, an amount significantly lower than the net loss of 18,500 in the first quarter of 2002. Operating revenue at the cable division rose 12.5%, according to company financials released April 17. The company attributed the gain in digital households to "increased marketing aimed at creating greater awareness of the value and features of digital cable, as well as the continued sale of bundled offerings combining digital cable with broadband Internet access." The increase in digital households in the first quarter of 2003 was in contrast to the loss of digital households in the same quarter a year earlier, which coincided with the expiration of free previews for new digital channels. In a conference call, Rogers Cable Inc. president and co-CEO Edward Rogers warned that there could be more job cuts. About 200 positions were eliminated from the division last year.Revenue at Rogers’ Media division increased 11.3% year-over-year, mainly because of the newly launched OMNI.2 multicultural television station, the acquisition of 13 radio stations in April 2002 and year-over-year growth at Sportsnet and The Shopping Channel. TVA, TQS, Astral join growing list of players protesting CTF cutsQuebec’s three largest private French-language broadcasters – Astral Media, TQS and TVA – have joined a growing list of industry players protesting cuts in government funding to the Canadian Television Fund (CTF). The three broadcasters want the government to approve a special budget of $8 million to fund private French-language productions that were denied funding under the CTF’s licence fee program (LFP), and a general review of the CTF’s rules.They add in an April 16 media release, "If no corrections are made, the momentum and extraordinary success of the private French-language television industry, which took years to build, will be compromised." That’s in stark contrast to comments made by Astral officials during an analysts’ conference call briefing on April 22 when the company said the cuts would have little effect. Astral’s chair André Bureau said, "As far as we are concerned, it (the CTF cuts) will not affect our bottom line (or) programming grid."The three broadcasters complain that the new broadcasters’ priorities for determining which projects get funding that were introduced for 2003-04 "did not function fairly, and the severe cuts that reduced the LFP’s resources this year only exacerbated inequalities." The French-language private broadcasters complain that 70% of this year’s LFP funding for French-language productions went to Radio-Canada. The Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) have already demanded that the $25 million per year in taxpayers’ money that was cut from the CTF be reinstated (CCR Update, April 16/03). Telesat says solar array on Nimiq 2 can’t be recovered Telesat Canada has given the Nimiq 2 broadcast satellite a clean bill of health to provide service despite considerable damage to the south solar array. The solar array cannot be recovered and currently only 26 of 32 Ku-band transponders on the satellite are operating. The company had earlier announced that the satellite had experienced a power failure on February 20 that momentarily knocked out several of its Ku-band transponders (CCR Update, March 5/03). Lockheed Martin has concluded that the most likely cause of the anomaly was an electrical short circuit caused by foreign object debris located in a single power carrying connector. Four new Toronto radio stations licensed after lengthy processThe CRTC has licensed four new radio stations for the Greater Toronto Area and agreed to change the frequency of an existing ethnic station (Broadcasting Decision 2003-115, 2003-116, 2003-117, 2003-118, 2003-119). The four stations – Canadian Multicultural Radio (CMR) at 101.3 FM, La Coopérative radiophonique de Toronto inc. at 105.1 FM, San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre at 1610 AM and Sur Sagar Radio Inc., the country’s first stand-alone transitional digital radio service – have two years to begin operating. Since CMR will be using the 101.3 frequency, the CRTC is allowing CHIN-AM (Radio 1540), an existing Toronto ethnic station providing programming to 23 cultural groups, to continue broadcasting via a rebroadcast transmitter on the frequency 91.9 FM. The transmitter will cover deficiencies in coverage in areas of Woodbridge, eastern Mississauga and Etobicoke ON. The licensing process wraps up a lengthy process that included the commission delaying the licensing process after Industry Canada said it would issue a report on dealing with frequency congestion in the country’s largest market (CCR, May 24/01; May 10/01; March 29/01; Feb. 14/01). Persona sees strong digital cable growth in second quarterPersona Communications Inc. added 1,430 net digital cable set-top boxes and 1,245 net digital cable households in its fiscal 2003 second quarter ended Feb. 28, 2003, according to financials released by the cable operator last week. The company ended the quarter with a total of 23,458 digital boxes deployed in 18,758 digital households. Digital cable growth in the second quarter compared to growth of 2,283 net digital boxes and 1,518 net digital households in the previous quarter, and 1,400 net digital boxes and 975 net digital households in Q2 2002. On a negative note, Persona’s basic cable subscriber base continued to decline in Q2. Although customer churn was 47% lower than that recorded in the same quarter a year earlier, it was higher than that achieved in the first quarter of this year, which was the lowest in nearly three and a half years. The cableco lost 4,683 net basic cable customers in the second quarter, compared to a loss of 760 net customers in the previous quarter and 8,875 in Q2 2002.Following the lead of larger broadcast distributors (CCR, Jan. 30/03), Persona announced that it would raise rates for its all-in digital package by $4 per month, which includes a new $0.99 system access fee. Basic cable rates will rise by $2 a month in all systems and reconnect and installation rates will also increase. The rate increases will take effect in the third quarter. In other developments, Persona said it would deploy digital cable service in 15 more communities this year, launch additional digital specialty channels, and launch cable and Internet bundles to customers in Atlantic and Western Canada. It was also announced that parent company Persona Inc. is changing its fiscal year-end to December 31 from August 31, effective this year.

CCR Short Takes

Broadcast | April 25, 2003

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