INTEREST IN SATELLITE TV ON THE RISE, SAYS EXPRESSVU
By Adnews Staff
A recent poll found that 22% of Canadians would be interested in having digital direct-to-home satellite TV in their homes. This is up 12% from a similar poll last December. The study was commissioned by Expressvu of Mississauga, Ont., and conducted by Environics Research Group of Toronto. Expressvu is a consortium of Canadian companies that will start offering TV service via a pizza-sized satellite dish in September. It got the go-ahead last week from the federal cabinet to launch at that time. Expressvu put an agency search on hold earlier this year while regulatory matters were being sorted out, but it has hired two Toronto agencies on a project basis to handle launch advertising. They are Twaits & Company Marketing & Communications and Communitech. Originally, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission had exempted Expressvu from needing a license to operate, but said that firms with foreign ownership would have to be licensed. This set off a protest from competing service Power DirecTV, which is partly American owned, because without having to go through licensing red tape, Expressvu would get a big headstart. Subsequently the cabinet ruled that Expressvu would also have to get a licence, which drew a protest and threat of legal action from Expressvu which had invested a lot of money in a September launch which would have been delayed by the licence application. Last week the feds ruled that although it will still have to get a licence, Expressvu is also free to start business in September. Other companies, including those with foreign ownership, may apply for a licenses, but the process is to be expedited so that Power DirectTV could start operating by Nov. 1. The CRTC has been instructed to quicken the approval process which has taken as long as a year in the past. "If there's one positive legacy of this high-profile brouhaha, it is the fact that more consumers than ever are aware that digital television will arrive this fall," Expressvu president and CEO Ted Boyle says in a release. "The best news for Expressvu is that the more Canadians know about our digital service, the more they want it."