Seems the Canadian consumer I've seen for many years has demanded American Super Bowl commercials, the end to Simultaneous Signal Substitution, and (the more tech-oriented anyway) unfettered access to Hulu, American broadcasting websites, and Netflix free of Canadian content rules.

Simultaneous substitution is done for the benefit of Canadian broadcasters more than consumers, certainly. Though the alternative could be not allowing the distribution of U.S. television stations in Canada.

As or Hulu, U.S. websites and Netflix, the CRTC has no say in those and imposes no content or other restrictions on them. They're blocked in Canada because they choose to block themselves in order to respect contractual agreements with Canadian rights-holders (and, in some cases, because of copyright or other legal reasons that aren't related to the CRTC).

Maybe Bell will start listening to their consumers and customers and less to the shareholders..God Bless CRTC Chairman for staring down a big faceless corporation...my kind of guy...

@ Fagstein..do you know if any Bell bigwigs read your blog..so they can see the joy of those of us posting comments here.

A few months later Bell announces it wants to turn its back on the English community and switch the station to a French language sports station.

I'm sure you saw how Tom Pentefountas grilled Bell's Mirko Bibic on how just a year prior the point was to better serve the English-speaking population. Bibic then said something along the lines of, "yes, but things have changed."

I refuse to believe that the Bell/Astral merger was entirely concocted in 2012. I'm sure that was in the works for a long time.

I think THE story is that Bell's attempt to switch the sports station from English to French set off all the alarm bells at CRTC HQ in Gatineau.

I have no reason to believe this is true. The decision does not mention CKGM at all, except to say that since Bell's application to change its licence is contingent on the Astral purchase, it is denied as well. It would have been nice to see the CRTC explore the issues related to CKGM specifically, but the larger issue was decided on market share, not because of one radio station.

Look at what happened:

CRTC grants Bell the license to a clear channel so it can increase the audience for their hockey broadcast. CRTC said at the time it was the best use of that English frequency.

A few months later Bell announces it wants to turn its back on the English community and switch the station to a French language sports station.

That was the slap to the face of the CRTC commissioners who voted to give Bell the clear channel frequency. They were pissed and felt lied to by Bell.

More than 800 angry emails and interventions were filed by Montreal anglos outraged by Bell's decision to take away their English sports station. New CRTC chairman took note of the protest. He says he didn't take summer holidays because he was too busy reading all the interventions.

Now, imagine if you're at the CRTC, how would you feel by Bell's actions. They had to be wondering, if Bell thought they could get away with this at that time, what would they be like if they became even larger with the purchase of Astral.

Bell shot themselves in the foot with their plans to switch the English sports station to a French station. It was their arrogance that did them in. The new CRTC chairman sent Bell and all the other BIG media empires a message and it was simple: DON'T F*CK WITH ME.

tHI

Good that the CRTC is looking out for the interests of Canadians. Imagine if the FTC was going over the merger ? Done in 5 seconds.

I'll note that Canada's broadcast media remains more concentrated than the U.S.

With all this drama I hope CHOM isn't changed.

There wasn't much chance of that, at least in the short term. For now it means CHOM remains an Astral-controlled rock station instead of a Bell-controlled rock station. But if Astral is still interested in selling itself off, then we could see more acquisition drama.

Something more useful could be done with 730 other than moment by moment traffic reports

CKAC is owned by Cogeco, so it's not affected at all by Bell and Astral. The thing that's most likely to change Cogeco's mind on CKAC would be cutting its $1.5-million annual subsidy from the Quebec transport department.

I was wondering what would happen to Ted Bird if this deal had actually gone through.

Same thing that would have happened to other TSN 690 staff. The best of them would have gotten jobs at CJAD, and the rest let go. I'm not sure what their contracts say, but getting rid of staff always has costs to it.

Do we know what's in the works for 990 after the simulcast ends?

The CRTC has already given a licence to Dufferin Communications to startup an LGBT-themed French-language music and talk station on 990 after it's vacated by CKGM. (It's described here.) It will be a while before they're under way. I would guess a launch would come next fall. They have until October 2013 to launch unless they get an extension from the CRTC.

OK now its back to listening to billionaires fighting with millionaires
In the world of hockey !

Now I dislike TSN 690, to me they seem like a high school radio station, but whatever.

The big picture is the refusal, now lets see what the Conservatives will do with the ``request`` by Bell to reverse the decision. This is the big story. Will big money win ?

Bell says it's asking the federal cabinet to step in to reverse the decision

I see this going all the way to the Supreme Court, possibly even the World Court at The Hague.

Bell will do whatever it can to get its way.