Today BCE Inc., owner of Bell Canada and Bell Media, has announced the purchase of Astral Media Inc. for $3.38 billion in cash and stock. Astral is Canada’a largest owner of terrestrial radio stations, but its assets also include a number of specialty pay channels including HBO Canada and The Movie Network.
As we know, Bell has been consolidating a lot of different types of media under its Bell Media division; recently it purchased a part stake in MLSE, owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptops franchises, along with a controlling share in CTVglobemedia. The Astral deal cements Bell’s commitment to bringing content to multiple platforms and screens, including its Mobile TV app.
Bell CEO George Cope said of the deal, “This also represents for us significant growth opportunity because the content asset will now begin to distribute its products over the next two to three years over four screens, not the traditional one. As you know, at BCE we’ve been quite passionate about that as a future direction.” While Mobile TV offers a smattering of HBO content on its Mobile TV app, you can expect a more tightly-integrated lineup and exclusive offerings that wouldn’t be available from other mobile carriers.
We’ve already seen the fruits of consolidation quite clearly with Bell’s mobile sports offerings: NFL, NHL, NCAA and others, can be watched live on Mobile TV. We’d expect similar plans are in place for premium TMN and HBO Canada content, too.
The CRTC will have to approve the deal before it closes, and Bell may have to sell off some of its assets, but this further cements the big players in Canada (Rogers, Bell, Quebecor) as vertical integrators, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how mobile plays into all this.
Source: CNW
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
