The CRTC Lets Bell Buy Astral, Sells Canadians Down The River Again

Last Updated on: 1st March 2017, 12:22 pm

Update: I still don’t have a percentage of the Canadian radio market that even more monstrous Bell holds following the sale, but have a look at the list of stations they’re taking over. Remember, this is just new stuff they own now. It’s not a list of stations they already had. Competitive broadcasting system, my ass.

Original Post: CRTC Approves Bell’s Acquisition of Astral

Colour me shocked, if in your world shocked means disappointed, disgusted and completely unsurprised.

I’m not going to write out my usual jag about the poor state of media and competition in this country again. I’ve done it enough over the years and I’m sure I’ll have plenty more opportunities to do it in the future should the mood strike. what I’ll do instead is throw a couple of numbers at you. There are a lot of numbers in this news release, but only two of them are important. They are 22.6% and 35.8%. those two numbers represent Bell’s share of the French and English television markets in Canada respectively once the deal is finalized. Add those two numbers together and you get 58.4%, which is astoundingly high. Thanks to the CRTC and the Competition Bureau, one company owns nearly 60% of all television in the entire country of Canada. That’s a lot of media, and we haven’t even touched radio which I can’t find percentages for.

Somebody remind me again why we have a competition Bureau when there’s so little competition to oversee anymore and it doesn’t seem like it’s in any hurry to reverse the trend.

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