ExpressVu/Bell Fund submissions roll in
Letters both for and against have been flowing into the CRTC regarding a proposal by Bell ExpressVu to change its Canadian production contributions in such a way as to potentially put hundreds of thousands of extra dollars a year into Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund coffers (CNM, June 24/05). The proposed change would be for ExpressVu’s pay-per-view services. Currently, Bell ExpressVu’s PPV operations contribute 5% of revenues to the creation of Canadian programming, with 80% of that tagged for the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) and 20% for the Bell Fund. The same change, however, would mean an end to Canadian Television Fund contributions by the DTH company for its PPV operations. ExpressVu is asking the regulator to change that to allow ExpressVu to put its entire contribution into the Bell Fund. But, it is also asking for regulatory symmetry with cable companies in changing how it calculates its contribution such that the gross annual broadcasting revenues would be deemed to be 50% of the total retail revenues received from customers. At press time only a handful of letters had found their way to temporary publication on the CRTC’s site, including by ABA Consulting, LVL*Studio, the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA), Tele Inter-Rives Ltée, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corp., and the Bell Fund itself.

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