Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Super B.

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Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Super B.

Postby kal » Sat Jan 27, 2018 2:40 pm

At least for this year's Super Bowl.

BCE Inc.'s CTV network will have to make do with its feed interspersed with Canadian commercials, while many Canadians will be switching to the US channels in order to get their dose of commercial content produced exclusively for the big game.

There will be no simultaneous substitution of Canadian commercials over those American commercials.

BCE will once again take a financial hit for the 2018 Super Bowl but the Supreme Court ruling hasn't closed the door entirely on simsub. Although a stay for this year's Super Bowl was denied Bell, will proceed with an appeal of the CRTC ruling banning simsub in the first place.

Last year's drop in viewer numbers was referenced by Bell when it cut radio and TV jobs across the country.
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby Howaboutthat » Sun Jan 28, 2018 9:36 am

Excellent news! Got tired of seeing the same 4 commercials over and over again thru the game on CTV.
Houston, We're dealing with morons!.
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby rtirdnewsguy » Sun Jan 28, 2018 11:19 am

Right you are howaboutthat ! So sick of CTV and TSN promos again and again and like you say the same stinking commercials too ! Here's an idea - let the VIEWER choose what they want to watch without big brother telling us what we can and can't see !
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby Coolcat » Sun Jan 28, 2018 11:54 am

Hopefully, this is not going to be an annual whining from CTV, I don't need to see the same GMC truck commercial 7 times in an hour or even worse promos for other CTV programs, products and related companies 21 times an hour (is this some sort of tax loophole for them as well?).

While the courts are at it they should question the whole concept behind channel substitution. A network like CTV is focusing most of their efforts on showing as much US programming as possible all day long and piggybacking their ads onto them which does not require that they run their network like American, Australian or UK networks are run. I don't think this was the original intent behind channel substitution, Netflix could do the same thing at a fraction of the cost with very little infrastructure.

Maybe 30 years ago it made some sense but in the smartphone age it does not.
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby paterson » Sun Jan 28, 2018 5:53 pm

Annual whining by CTV and the NFL. The NFL is sitting along side CTV at the Supreme Court and has supported CTV since this first surfaced a few years ago. Weird how the NFL has their high priced lawyers arguing to keep the substitution feed. CTV/TSN pays big bucks to run the NFL in Canada and last year the super bowl dipped over 3 million viewers on the network. Guess the NFL is missing the lower fees that CTV will be paying since the network really won't have exclusive rights to the game with US border stations covering most of the country. As usual all about the money.
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby Richard Skelly » Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:51 pm

For some reason, we mere citizens must elevate the Supreme Court Of Canada to an exulted status. Yet, compared to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS), our Justices are a lazy lot. They hear fewer cases and take immeasurably longer to issue rulings than SCOTUS. Time and again, those rulings are then so vague (hello native rights) that issues remain festering and often spark new cases that meander up to the Canadian Supremes years later.

Re: Super Bowl ads...I’m no lawyer. But one solution might see the Supremes rule that market forces apply. But with the proviso that the Canadian rights holder cannot charge US Super Bowl advertisers proportionately more than the American network pays. If NBC this year charges Pepsi $5 million for a 30-second spot, then the soda maker would pay no more than, say, $500K to run it in Canada. These ad contracts are probably signed well in advance. If a US advertiser refused to pay for Canadian broadcast then our rights holder could substitute for that 30 seconds.

But what if all US advertisers colluded against playing that game? Well the Canadian rights holder would have a much more compelling argument to sway public opinion: The Yanks are too damn cheap to pay the justifiable rates for reaching Canuck eyeballs. Perhaps Toronto media bigwigs should have used this argument all along. Surely, nothing has prevented American brands—over the years—from paying to air those special ads up here. Maybe they tried, but wouldn’t accept gouging over and above my guesstimated 10 percent rule-of-thumb ratio. To me, that’s a key untold tale of this endless saga.
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby paterson » Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:54 am

Did a little digging on this one. CTV was charging $150,000 to $190,000 for a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl a few years back prior to the CRTC ruling. They do set aside a certain amount of time for local ads and promo for some of their programs. Since the audience is huge they promote some of their new or biggest shows during the game.

Last year the ratings for CTV/CTV 2 and TSN/RDS were 4.47 combined total viewership. In 2016 total viewers were 7.1 million. Numeris wasn't able to calculate an exact number of Canadians that watched the game on FOX last year since all of the border FOX stations are not covered by Numeris. Super Bowl ratings were down 1% in the US for 2017.

Interesting to note that the ratings for the Grey Cup this year totaled 4.3 million viewers for TSN/RDS. Makes me wonder what the Grey Cup ratings could have been if they were on the same number of channels as the Super Bowl. A lot of rural viewers don't receive TSN and I remember when the Grey Cup was on CBC ratings were huge. In fact the Super Bowl only overtook the Grey Cup in television ratings about 8 or 9 years ago in Canada.
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby WheresFredTaylor » Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:09 am

paterson wrote: A lot of rural viewers don't receive TSN and I remember when the Grey Cup was on CBC ratings were huge. In fact the Super Bowl only overtook the Grey Cup in television ratings about 8 or 9 years ago in Canada.


This isn't 20 years ago. TSN reaches most of Canada now.

The evolution of sports on TV highlighted just how bad of a TV sport the CFL was a decade ago. The league struggled with ratings up until the last year or two and they're still tinkering. Ambrosie is proposing an early start/finish to the season, which will only make it worse.
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Re: Canada's Supreme Court says "no" to simsub stay for Supe

Postby paterson » Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:58 pm

TSN has covered most of Canada for years but it is still a pay channel. Rogers for example does not offer TSN on their basic service, you pay extra for this.
Bell does not have Sportsnet on their basic service. I don't know about Telus basic since I live in Ontario and their website wouldn't let me look it up. So the NFL is more readily available with CTV/CTV 2 which are on all basic services. That is one of the reasons that Hockey Night in Canada is still on CBC since some people do not receive or have Sportsnet. Rogers recently extended the deal with CBC to continue carrying NHL hockey for at least 4 more years.

Also the NFL on CTV does not normally show up in the top 30 Numeris ratings until the play offs. January 8-14 Numeris survey NFL on CTV had 1.083 million viewers. CFL playoffs on TSN on November 13-18 last year were 1.368 million viewers. Overall the NFL has many more viewers since they are on more channels/networks and have many more teams.

But as a business case CTV pays a lot of money for Canadian broadcast rights for the NFL and actually the ratings are mediocre prior to the playoffs and Super Bowl. CFL TV ratings have been fairly consistent but did take a bit of a dip when the games moved to TSN. CFL has had more issues putting bums in the seats in a few markets over the years than the actual TV ratings.
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