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Telecom company Telus doesn't plan to own the content it puts on its TV, online and wireless services and won't match competitors Bell and Shaw by buying up media assets.
Instead, Telus will continue its strategy of providing content that's already out there, chief commercial officer Joe Natale said today.
"We don't believe that you need to own content in order to provide content to the industry and to consumers as a whole," Natale said.
Telus now finds itself as the only major telecom provider that doesn't also own a large stable of media assets.
The parent company of Bell Canada is buying the rest of CTV it didn't already own for $1.3 billion, while Shaw Communications Inc. is acquiring Canwest Global's TV assets in a deal worth more than $2 billion.
Rogers Media has 53 AM and FM radio stations, five Citytv stations as well as five OMNI multicultural stations, Rogers Sportsnet and the Shopping Channel. Rogers also produces many well-known consumer magazines such as Maclean's, Chatelaine, Flare, L'actualite and Canadian Business (Rogers also owns Marketing).
And new wireless player Videotron has access to French content for its mobile devices and online services via its parent company Quebecor, which owns TV stations and numerous publications as well as flagship newspaper, Le Journal de Montreal.
Natale said there's content available globally for Telus.
"Our core competency is not producing content," Natale said via webcast from Toronto at the BMO Capital Markets media and telecom conference.
"Our goal is to aggregate and collect the best of that content whether it comes from capabilities in Canada, the U.S., or internationally," Natale said.
Natale also said he believes the federal broadcast regulator will ensure that content is made available to all providers.
"Fundamentally, we believe that the CRTC will reinforce the position of not denying access to important content for consumers."
Instead of acquiring content, Natale said Telus has been building out its broadband access and its Internet-based TV services, saying, for example, that convergence means giving the consumer the ability to use a smartphone to program a personal video recorder to record a television program.
Since the announcement of BCE's acquisition, several analysts, including Scotia Capital's Jeff Fan, have warned of the dangers the so-called "content gap" poses for Telus.
"Telus is the only distributor without any control over its future access to content or its cost," Fan wrote in a research note this week. "When content ownership did not all rest with the competitors, Telus's partnership position made sense."
But other analysts have noted it's unlikely the CRTC would allow BCE, Shaw and Rogers to keep content from competitors such as Telus.
Source: Marketing, 09/14/2010
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