Bell trying to buy *Choice [Archive] - Lounge0101 Discussion Forum

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precious1

November 29th, 2002, 10:50 AM

I heard Bell is trying to buy *Choice and in return give them CTV. Has anyone else heard this?

emu_rules

November 29th, 2002, 11:27 AM

Would that not be the same as the DTV,DISH merger a monopoly??

To The Real King!!

November 29th, 2002, 11:35 AM

Hi Folks,

I have not heard but in my opinion this is inevitable since there is not enough population in Canada for 2 companies that sell ONLY in Canada.

But if this does happen it would open the door to American competition in my opinion. Right now the government can say there is competition but if there was none then I believe that would again cause their Supreme Court ruling to fail because the competition bureau would have a problem with this. So there would be this and the 2B ruling which will come. Once both companies would be one, the only way to get competition would be to let the American companies compete here which would only be right. They SHOULD be allowed to compete now, in my opinion.http://www.legal-rights.org/images/ttrk.gif
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Thanks & Good Luck ,

<a href="mailto:ttrk@legal-rights.org">To The REAL King!!</a>

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bill41

November 29th, 2002, 08:58 PM

I have heard a while back that Bell was trying to get lackofchoice and that lackofchoice isn't doing so well financially even though their system is superior to bevs...videocypher2 encryption and as far as I know not hacked....same system General Instruments uses in all the c-band dishes...you can see why bev would want them...TTRK knows much about the videocypher systems but correct me if I am wrong, the audio and video are 2 seperate scrambled signals with the audio re keying every so many hours to prevent piracy....no smart cards also used.
If lackofchoice gets taken over or goes under that may mean Cretiens son will be unemployed!!BUt I doubt it...-----s like that are set for life as long as the can milk the system and have someone to supply them with a patronage position!
TTRK I would really like to ask you a few things about the old c-band stuff if you have some time....I used to live about 45 minutes down the road from you...I used to race my car at les cedres dragstrip and even belonged to the local car club there....even hung out at the Palmalou club a few times...take care :)

Hi Bill41,

Actually its similar to but not identical to the Videocypher. In the Videocypher ONLY the audio is encrypted, the video is just inverted and is trivial to correct. Older receivers that had an "INVERT" button corrected the video more or less.

Regards

To The REAL king!!

jokestar

November 29th, 2002, 10:29 PM

Canada's satellite sector ripe for mergers
Swaps and selloffs are sure to involve BCE, Shaw

Matthew Fraser
Financial Post

Monday, November 11, 2002

Speculation is intensifying, again, that Canada's satellite TV industry will soon consolidate through a merger between Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice.

Some wonder why the deal has taken so long to be consummated. In a small domestic market, there doesn't seem to be enough room for two big, bulky satellite TV operators. And if you count DirecTV's so-called "grey market," satellite TV in Canada is a crowded market.

The big question is whether BCE Inc., which owns ExpressVu, would pay cash for Star Choice -- or whether, as rumoured, it may dump its media "convergence" strategy and trade CTV Inc. for its smaller satellite rival.

Swapping CTV for Star Choice would make sense for both sides, though potential obstacles are numerous. Let's start with the positives.

For BCE, acquiring Star Choice would consolidate its dominant position in the domestic satellite TV industry. At present, ExpressVu is the market leader with roughly 1.2-million customers, while Star Choice trails with about 750,000 subscribers. Following a merger, ExpressVu would be a serious rival to Canada's biggest cable TV group, Rogers Cable, which boasts 2.3-million subscribers.

An ExpressVu-Star Choice combination would allow the merged unit to realize enormous cost savings, especially in such areas as TV program acquisition, marketing and back office expenses. The cessation of satellite TV competition in Canada's non-cabled areas would also bring obvious advantages. Both ExpressVu and Star Choice have been losing more than $100-million a year in a capital-intensive business with ruinous customer-acquisition costs.

Trading CTV for Star Choice would also give BCE chief executive Michael Sabia a convenient exit from predecessor Jean Monty's vaunted "convergence" strategy. Last week, Mr. Sabia declared BCE would now focus on competing with cable TV by offering competitive service bundles -- local telephone, wireless phone, Internet access and satellite TV.

It can be assumed, therefore, that consolidating control of satellite TV would be strategically desirable for BCE. It's less certain that owning "content" -- CTV and The Globe and Mail -- brings any measurable advantages to Mr. Sabia's announced strategy. True, a TV network and a newspaper offer cross-promotional opportunities. But if BCE unloads CTV and The Globe, neither media outlet will spurn advertising revenue from BCE companies.

For Shaw Communications Inc., which controls Star Choice, selling a money-losing asset to BCE would unburden the company of a weighty drag on earnings. True, Shaw -- a major cable group -- would be handing a competitive asset to a fierce rival. But let's face it, Star Choice has little growth potential in a market where nearly every Canadian household takes either cable or satellite TV.

What's more, the optics of Shaw owning a satellite TV rival have never been good. In the United States, anti-trust officials drove cable operators out of the satellite TV business. Only a few weeks ago, U.S. regulators blocked a proposed merger between DirecTV and Dish Network, claiming the combination (with 18-million customers) would thwart satellite TV competition.

It's doubtful BCE would encounter similar roadblocks in Ottawa, where regulators traditionally have been indulgent toward industry consolidation. BCE would make predictable claims that it was ensuring a strong, Canadian force in satellite TV -- especially in the face of such "illegal" U.S. rivals as DirecTV. BCE nonetheless would be left with the nightmare of retrofitting 750,000 dish receivers to turn Star Choice customers into ExpressVu subscribers.

Any obstacles to an ExpressVu-Star Choice combination would come not from regulators, but from markets.

If BCE swapped CTV for Star Choice, Shaw would likely have to put the television network and its related assets into Shaw-controlled Corus Entertainment Inc. At first blush, that would seem fortuitous, since Corus chief executive John Cassaday was once president of CTV. He knows where the bodies are.

The problem, however, is that Star Choice is controlled by Shaw Communications Inc., but this company has no direct interest in Corus. The Shaw family -- not Shaw Communications -- exercises control over Corus, a structurally separate media holding spun off to obviate regulatory concerns about Shaw's vertically integrated control of distribution and content.

Would investors in Shaw Communications wish to trade one of the company's assets for a stake in Corus?

It's conceivable Corus could buy CTV Inc. from Shaw. Or Shaw could put the CTV network into Corus while selling off its pieces, notably such TV channels as The Sports Network. But Corus is a major play in specialty TV, so it's doubtful Mr. Cassaday would want to see TSN, Discovery, Comedy and other TV channels sold to such rivals as CanWest Global Communications Corp. or Alliance Atlantis Inc. Or would Corus get the TV channels while CTV was sold to another buyer?

A merger between ExpressVu and Star Choice may not be imminent, but it's inevitable. And it will trigger a burst of consolidation in the cable industry. Watch for Ted Rogers to make a move on Cogeco Cable Inc. The rationale: If satellite operators can consolidate, why not cable, too?

If BCE swaps CTV for Star Choice, the deal will change the Canadian media landscape. But for now, the devil is in the details.

mwfraser@rogers.com

emu_rules

November 30th, 2002, 08:06 AM

I thought TSN was owned by ESPN and rogers owned the other sports channel "sportsnet".

Dean_M_Love

November 30th, 2002, 08:16 AM

....how convenient, wait to get a Supreme Court decision under the appearance that Canadians do have choice for satellite, they can buy Bell or they can buy StarChoice, but to allow "unregulated competition" isn't fair, then once you have the "Government approved" sticker, merge and really screw the consumer.

How much you want to bet if the merger happens, you will see huge discounts for those living in cabled areas, as they have at least some form of competition there, but the rural people, for whom satellite television really counts, and quite frankly having been around the satellite industry from 1983, I can say that many of those rural customers are the grassroots that this industry was born from, they will end up paying huge subscription fees, since they have no choice. This was exactly the reason why the US regulators canned the DTV merger.

thepoet

November 30th, 2002, 09:10 AM

Originally posted by Dean_M_Love
...I can say that many of those rural customers are the grassroots that this industry was born from, they will end up paying huge subscription fees, since they have no choice. This was exactly the reason why the US regulators canned the DTV merger.

Your commentary seems to imply that, had the DirecTV/DishNetwork merger proceeded, rural Americana would've been subject to higher subscription fees than urban/suburban subscribers. If that interpretation is what you intended, I don't believe it's true. While Chz. & Co. might like the prospect of a two-tiered subscription pricing schema based on location (and by implication, lack of cable access) that would violate existing FCC regulations. (And, fat chance Congress would overturn them - even with both houses controlled by the Republicans!) That would leave Chz. & Co. the conundrum of raising general subscription rates across the board - and driving existing and prospective urband/suburban subscribers into the loving embrace of cable, or maintaining the status quo, with incremental rate increases as cable rates also inched higher over time (which, let's face it, happens). The FCC (and the Justice Department a couple of weeks later) were more concerned that absent cable availability to American Gothic households, one enterprise, Chz. & Co., would be those houselholds' only access to TV and broadband services. Congress' original intent for DBS was de facto social engineering designed to reign in cable's excessive subscription rate increases through the alternative of satellite access. They never intended that one spoiled brat gorge on the whole yummy Ku band and satellite slot pie, himself.

Dean_M_Love

November 30th, 2002, 09:57 AM

...what I am implying is that this was high among the concerns of the regulators when they rejected the merger....

thepoet

November 30th, 2002, 10:06 AM

That a merged DirecTV/Dish Network would initiate separate pricing tiers for urban/suburban vs. rural customers?

Dean_M_Love

November 30th, 2002, 10:30 AM

...I believe that among the concerns was that in non-cabled areas consumers choices would go from 2 to 1....obviously unless they initiated a "2 tier" pricing system for cabled vs non cabled areas that concern was for naught..in fact, in the absence of a '2 tier' pricing structure (or fear of one being instituted down the road) the rural consumers would have had a huge advantage, being served by a company large enough to compete nationally with the cable companies hence competitive pricing, but also available to those in non cabled areas where there is actually no competitor yet they still pay the lower price generated by the competitive markets.