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Thursday, January 14, 2016

TV producers wary of Corus deal.

Corus’s $2.65-billion acquisition of Shaw Media in cash and stock will erode the bargaining power of Canadian TV producers, warned a group representing several hundred TV content producers.

If the transaction gets the Canadian Radio-Television Commission stamp of approval, Corus’s entertainment portfolio will grow to include 45 specialty TV channels, 39 radio stations, 15 conventional television stations - including the Global Television network - and the animation studio Nelvana, which operates out of Toronto.

That would mean Corus and Bell Media would control 70 per cent of the English TV viewing market, according to the Canadian Media Production Association, which represents 350 companies that make English-language TV content.

The deal is worrying news for TV producers, says Reynolds Mastin, president and CEO of the CMPA.

“There is already a massive imbalance in commercial bargaining power between these consolidated broadcasters and individual production companies,” he told the Star.

“If this transaction is approved, it will make this already highly consolidated market hyper consolidated on the broadcasting side.”

The afternoon that the acquisition was announced on Wednesday, the CRTC said on Twitter that it would examine the deal closely to see if it was in the public interest. They later tweeted: “Transaction announced today shows that Corus/Shaw believes strongly in the future of broadcasting in Canada.”

Both Corus and Shaw are owned by the Shaw family of Alberta.

“But up until this point, those companies were at least notionally competing with each other,” Mastin said. “Now they’re going to be consolidating. What this means from a producer perspective is you’re now going to have one fewer door to knock on when pitching and selling your shows.”

A Corus spokesperson wasn’t immediately available. In a conference call with analysts and reporters on Wednesday morning, CEO Doug Murphy said the deal is a “game changer.”

He later told journalists in a press conference in Calgary that the deal would turn Corus into a heavyweight and give it more ability to compete in the marketplace.

“Now scale is everything,” he said. “You need a strong balance sheet to acquire winning content to grow your audience and revenues.

Asked if viewers should expect any changes in programming, Murphy said they might see more “cross promotion” of Corus brands on air.

The W Network, a Corus asset, might be promoted on HGTV, part of Shaw Media’s old portfolio, and vice versa, he said.

On Global TV, viewers may see much more “talent or new sharing,” he added. 

Corus brands

Television: Brands include YTV, Treehouse, Nickelodeon (Canada), Teletoon (English), ABC Spark, Cartoon Network (Canada) and Disney Channel Canada; and the women’s brands W Network, Cosmopolitan TV, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network (Canada), W Movies and CMT (Canada).
Additional assets include Sundance Channel (Canada) and Telelatino; Quebec’s French-language channels Historia and Séries+, TELETOON and La chaîne Disney; western Canada’s pay TV service Movie Central, with nine multiplex channels including HBO Canada; and three local over-the-air television stations.

Radio: Corus also owns 39 radio stations clustered in eight out of the ten top Canadian markets, including a network of news.

By:  Geoffrey Vendeville. 

Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.
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