CBC selling bold

[musimax]

Announced today, the CBC will be selling off bold, the drama, comedy, sports, and arts and culture channel.

More specifically, CBC/Radio-Canada will sell bold, one of CBC's specialty digital TV channels, as its licence conditions no longer fit the Corporation's strategy nor complement the other programming streams.

http://cbc.radio-canada.ca/site/budget/en/

[smallmj]

Excellent! That will give Bell, Rogers, or Shaw another place to replay their reruns. The broad of spectrum of diverse programming that they own is really crying for another channel for distribution.

Mark

[thenewdc]

I'm placing my bet. It will be bought up by SHAW so they can convert it into another womans channel.

[bigoranget]

I doubt Shaw or Bell will be interested in this channel. It will probably go to Glassbox or some other independent broadcaster.

[PFD]

Whoever buys it it will turn into a CSI channel 24/7. Too bad.

[thenewdc]

How about turning into a Fox Movie channel Canada, or TNT Canada

[LONSat]

BCE - would they even try. Shaw/Corus had a stake in it but sold it off. Glassbox could be interested as it is a category one or is that category A now.

[Fry1989]

The CBC shouldn't have been in the business of pay specialty channels in the first place. They should have launced a CBC and SRC Two, but the CRTC told them "no" back in the 90s. Personally, I don't think the CBC should even be subject to the CRTC. As a national public service, they should be under a Parliamentary Committee.

[Max Headroom]

Bold should be BOLD! It can only be so if acquired by an Indie. We do NOT need another run-of-the-mill movie channel, more CSI or another Woman Channel. Nuthin wrong with the programming concept here. It just needs a lil TLC, something unlikely to be supplied by Bell, Shaw, Corus, Rogers.....that being said, it's possible a backroom deal with one of the aforementioned has already been completed....sigh

[PokerFace]

Owning a specialty channel is supposedly a licence to print money, but for the CBC, they were probably worried about being arrested for counterfeiting and had to dump the channel before they were exposed as fraudsters.

http://cbc.radio-canada.ca/annualrep...ents/Q3-en.pdf
[CBC's financial numbers]

For the first nine months of 2011-2012:

Specialty services, which include subscription and advertising revenue from the Corporation’s CBC News Network, bold, documentary, ARTV and the Réseau de l’information de Radio-Canada (RDI), generated $124.6 million (approximately nine per cent of total revenue and sources of funds).

In 2010, I believe Bold had just over 1 million subscribers, so I doubt that it was a "dragon" killer in 2011. Skating can only take you so far, but I do recall that Bold used to air reruns of the cancelled 2005 Fox TV series The Inside (which I watched online many years ago -- currently on YouTube), starring the lovely, Rachel Nichols (soon to be seen on the Showcase TV series Continuum, debuting May 27). Live from Abbey Road is another show I occasionally watch on Bold, so although I'm not really upset that Bold might be rebranded, I still think that there are far worse Canadian specialty channels out there that need to be killed first.

However, now that CBC has put its Bold specialty channel up for sale, I predict that Kevin O'Leary will buy it and rebrand it as The bAld Channel ... To bAldly Go Where No Hair Has Gone Before.

The bAld Channel will air episodes of Max Headroom (I wonder where I got that idea from?), Kojak and various other hairless programming. Infomercials such as: The O'Leary Chia Pet, and Kevin's version of Hair Club For Men ... Baby Seal Clubbing for Real Men will run in the early-morning hours.

Peter Mansbridge will join Kevin on the O'Leary and Mansbridge Over Troubled Water nightly current affairs show dealing with topics like the increasing bullying of the balding.

[MCIBUS]

A million subs isn't that bad.

How many do other specialty channels have? I'll bet not as many as Bold.

I don't know who will buy Bold or what will happen to Bold.

But here's the thing assuming a "indie" company gets its runs the channel the way it is presently for a year or two then turns around and goes to the CRTC and says we want 'change' the license programing to such and such, the CRTC agrees and either allows it to stay as Cat 1 or change to Cat 2.

In any case you've got a channel and your in Biz.

Like I said I'm not sure what will happen with Bold or what I said will come true or not only time will tell.

[Tridus]

Isn't the license for this still for a rural focused channel from back when it was Country Canada? Bold in no way adheres to that, and the CRTC doesn't really mind (same with History, etc).

So I doubt anybody would bother applying to change the license.

[Lindsay649]

The number of subscribers is misleading as the channel is available in a number of packages that are available from providers. Real figures would only account for those actually and directly paying for the channel. This is the problem with most speciality channels and is very misleading.

[PokerFace]

I agree with Lindsay649. It is very misleading because of the various packages that are available. Get in a good enough package and a million subscribers is not that difficult to achieve (1 million seems to be the norm).

Various subscriber numbers have been posted on this website in the past, but Bell wants each of its Category 1 specialty channels (such as TSN and Discovery) to achieve at least a 50% minimum customer base for each of the BDUs. If one of its Category 1 channels fails to reach a target minimum, it must be put in a "better" package to increase its subscriber base. This matter was recently dealt with by the CRTC, but of course, it sided with Bell.

http://blog.fagstein.com/2012/04/06/...cable-dispute/
[CRTC sides with Bell Media in dispute with cable companies]

April 6, 2012

A lot still has to be determined at the arbitration stage. If the wholesale rate on the penetration-based rate card is too high, small cable companies won't take advantage of it to offer consumers more choice. If it's low enough that it makes sense to offer more packaging choice, we might see other cable and satellite providers try à la carte models. Currently choosing channels that way is available only in Quebec, and really only because of competitive pressure from Videotron that has forced Bell and Cogeco to do the same in Quebec but not elsewhere. Bell and Rogers both come out against more packaging flexibility for consumers, saying it's either too complicated or consumers aren't interested in it. (Bell Media even said at the hearing, when speaking of allowing Videotron to move to an à la carte model: "In hindsight, I wish that horse could be put back in the barn.")

But while the CRTC could have taken a strong stand in favour of consumer choice, it decided instead to stay on the side of some of the biggest money-makers in Canada. Channels like TSN, Space and Discovery are hardly in financial distress. Instead, they are the most profitable specialty channels and each make millions of dollars every year. Still, the CRTC has decided that it's okay for big companies like Bell Media to impose minimum levels of subscribers for these channels, which means if not enough consumers choose them, cable and satellite companies can be forced to add them to basic packages and charge people for the channels whether they want them or not.

If there's one bright spot, it's that the CRTC believes that there's an adjustment period here, and that eventually these specialty services will have to stand on their own two feet without this crutch of a minimum subscriber base. By the time of the next contract in a few years, all cable and satellite companies could be entirely free of contractual headaches that put limits on packaging flexibility, and consumer choice could reign.

If you would like to discuss the à la carte topic in detail, I also posted the above link in the appropriate thread:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=145804
[CRTC to ensure wide choice of TV programming]

------------------------------------------------

One of the owners (Leonard Asper) of the Fight Network basically mentioned that the 1 million or so subs that it has, isn't really enough to secure enough new and live programming for the channel.

Asper also mentioned that it's very important to get into a better package with the more popular channels (just like Mark Cuban always wants for his channels). Although it's true that Bold is part of the Rogers VIP package, I would like to know how many subscribers each channel has as an à la carte service. The problem is that many channels can only be purchased as part of a package (or are mandatory), which makes the subscriber numbers very misleading.

----------------------------

http://www.thestar.com/business/arti...-fight-network
[Asper hopes to score a knockout with revamped and rebranded Fight Network]

ASPER: I’d like to grow faster than we are. It’s nice growth but to enable us to buy more and better content we need to be in the 1.3 million to 1.5 million range. That means changing a package. You can be in a package that 50,000 people get or be in a package that 1 million people get. One negotiation that gets you from one package to the other suddenly expands significantly the number of homes (you have access to). We need to move closer to the packages that have the TSNs and the Scores and the Sportsnets and away from the bleachers and the cheap seats.

-------------

In December of 2010, (The) Fight Network had approx. 450,000 subscribers.

And when Asper was asked (in June of 2011) where he'd like Fight Network to be in 5 years, he said this:

"I'd like to think we'll be in eight million homes by that time," he says. "We’ll have 100 live hours of programming this year, from Japanese MMA to European kickboxing, boxing to Canadian mixed martial arts and Japanese mixed martial arts, and that's going to continue to rise. We certainly have a long way to go, but we're on the upward swing. We're bringing on marketing people, online people. We're talking to producers about bringing aboard more local original programming than there is now so there's not so much repetition."

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Leo...#ixzz1rHGNucls

----------------

Perhaps just as important is the carriage fee. Did Bold secure high enough carriage fees to make that 1 million subscribers milestone even matter? Apparently, TSN has/had the highest carriage fee (over a buck for each subscriber) of the specialty channels, but it would be even higher if its subscriber base dropped. The lower your subscriber numbers are, the higher your carriage fee needs to be in order to survive. However, whether or not you can negotiate a higher carriage fee is another story.

And yes, once a specialty channel is launched, it's not that difficult to get the CRTC to look the other way when you want to make changes to your programming lineup, however, the CRTC actually blocked Bold's attempt to completely rebrand itself a while back, so that was probably the tipoff that the CBC was eventually going to dump Bold (the CBC complained that it couldn't properly compete with its current Country Canada limitations).

According to TvBasics':

In 2010, there were only 327 conventional, specialty and pay channels in Canada, as compared to 1,381 channels in the United States.

The North American TV Market Rankings (based on population) for 2011/2012 (as of Jan 2012: Nielson and BBM Canada):

1) New York
2) LA
3) Chicago
4) Philadelphia
5) Toronto-Hamilton
6) Dallas-Ft. Worth

12) Detroit
13) Montreal (French and English combined)
14) Minneapolis-St. Paul

USA (Pop.): 291,746,000
Canada (Pop.): 33,593,000

[Fry1989]

The really strange thing about this, is as CBC is selling Bold, they're simultaniously lanching a new French-service specialty channel called Explora.