Exactly. The CBC would be fine if Rogers and Bell didn’t continually overpay for the rights to sporting events.

As someone being bled dry by Bell for the most elementary of their services, I sneer at their greed and also at their shameless tactic of “people will lose their jobs over this”. I don’t even like football and won’t be watching any part of the Super Bowl - well, maybe the Lady Gaga part - but fuck you, Bell.

Thanks. I know it’s a silly thing to write so much on but I’m a little blown away with people defending Bell and their corporate dickery of all things.

Bell did have years. People didn’t start complaining about this in 2015. 2015 is just when the CRTC took action because people were annoyed and had been for some time. I’ve been watching the Super Bowl for at least 25 years and me and my friends/family have always expressed the opinion that, given the choice between…

Thanks for the explanation and context. It was sadly lacking in the original article.

Except the Super Bowl is really the only time of year where Companies go out of their way to create specific advertising for it and where that advertising, whether you think it’s sad or ridiculous or whatever, is part of the cultural conversation that emerges from the game. SimSub at any other time of the year doesn’t…

All this ruling is doing is saying they can’t double dip. They can’t sell their consumers the ability to watch American stations as part of their Cable package and then, when people want to watch those American stations, pre-empt them specifically because people do want to watch the American channels instead of their…

The only stupid thing is believing a company like Bell about why they’re making layoffs.

I think you’d need to understand the antagonistic relationship between this company and Canadians to get it. Bell, along with their main competitor Rogers, are really our only source for Cable TV, Internet access, Cell Phone service, home phones and they also own most of the TV stations(they also, jointly, own the…

But I think that’s sort of the point. For years and years and years Canadian viewers have been like “We’d like to watch the American version” and CTV has said “Nah, you don’t care about it” so they had the opportunity to work out a deal with the league where they got some ad dollars. They ignored the issue for years…

OMFG! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

I’ll be honest, how we’re perceived by the country that elected Donald Trump doesn’t really weigh too heavily on my mind.

The Super Bowl may be a convenient scapegoat for Bell buts its part of a larger worrying trend for all the OTA networks in Canada. For years CTV and Global (Not so much Rogers, who were late to the game in establishing a national network) were largely able to coast on simsubbing US content while producing very little…

Canadian here. Classic case of mega-billion corporation pointing at drops in the bucket as a reason to lay people off, despite massive profits. Business as usual.

You have the idea wrong...

What is? That you guys make a big deal about super bowl ads? I suppose so but I think you’d feel differently about wanting some variety after seeing your 85th promo spot for the CTV nightly news.

Yeah, presenting this as “NFL runs over tiny Canadian broadcaster” is silly. It’s more like “Giant Media Company that makes their living restricting their customers choices and generally behaving like an anti-competitive bastard told to eat it and let their moron customers watch American commercials if they want”.

No, seriously though, fuck Bell on this one. I don’t give a shit about seeing the ads but for years Bells response to the complaints were “Nobody gives a shit about seeing the US commercials and, in fact, people aren’t annoyed at all by our constant simsub fuckups where we miss parts of the broadcast”.

I get what you’re saying and everything but you have to admit that for many years the ads have been made a part of the experience that people talk about the next day.

Sell enough Budweiser and Doritos and no one is climbing over anything.