Capacity constraints force Star Choice to drop some pay-per-view channels

Star Choice Communications Inc.’s decision to drop some pay-per-view channels due to capacity constraints has caused concern with at least one cableco in the Quebec market but seems to be having little effect in the rest of Canada. "Unfortunately, we have lost seven Indigo channels. Those are the French versions of The Movie Network. As you can imagine, being a French market, we had a lot of unhappy customers," notes Carol Lemieux, operations director at Cablevision du Nord de Québec. In contrast, Jim Forsyth, general manager of Campbell River TV Association (CRTV), calls the development a "non-event." The small, non-profit cableco serving just under 1,000 digital TV subscribers and about 12,700 basic cable subscribers in Campbell River BC, had to drop 20 PPV channels and was left with 16 due to the Star Choice move. "We were worried about it at the beginning before it happened. But once it happened we sort of looked at it and said there’s little to no reaction from our customer base. We were quite surprised," Forsyth tells Canadian Communications Reports. He adds, "I think it was a non-event right across the board. It actually showed up as a 10% reduction in PPV viewing in the last month. But it did not impact profitability. You know 10% is not bad when you have just moved more than half of the channels off." Saskatchewan-based Access Communications, the seventh-largest cable TV provider in Canada, launched new PPV channels as it had announced but then Star Choice cancelled ten of them. Askivision, based in Saskatoon SK, also had to drop 10 PPV channels as Star Choice discontinued providing Viewer’s Choice channels 17-26. Star Choice’s move to drop some PPV channels may be temporary. The satellite signal provider was forced to reduce its PPV offering to make room for some small-market stations whose carriage was mandated by the CRTC (CCR Update, Jan. 7/04). The small-market channels that Star Choice added include CTV’s Kenora station (CJBN), CBC’s Kamloops station (CFJC), Radio-Canada’s Ottawa station (CBOFT), which the commission ordered carried in a ruling dealing with out-of-market TV signals. Star Choice could reinstate the PPV channels once the Anik F2 satellite is launched later this year, giving it additional capacity.

Capacity constraints force Star Choice to drop some pay-per-view channels

Broadcast | April 8, 2004

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