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Public Notice
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Ottawa, 30 November 1987
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Public Notice CRTC 1987-259
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Eligible Satellite Services: Amendment to 1 August 1986 List
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In Public Notice CRTC 1984-81 dated 2 April 1984, entitled Specialty Programming Services, the Commission indicated it was establishing a list of eligible non-Canadian satellite services which could be linked with the carriage of Canadian discretionary specialty and pay television programming services. These non-Canadian services were authorized for cable carriage on the basis that they would be complementary and not wholly or partially competitive with the programming provided by the Canadian specialty and pay television programming services. To ensure that eligible non-Canadian services would not, in fact, become competitive through changes to their programming or scheduling formats, the Commission noted that it would review the list periodically so that "if a non-Canadian service becomes competitive by virtue of a change in its own format or by a change in format of a Canadian specialty service, the authority for its cable carriage will be terminated".
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When the Commission first issued the list of eligible satellite services in 1984, the Financial News Network (FNN) was included as one of the authorized services. At the time, FNN was distributing financial and business-related information programming. Subsequently, FNN changed its programming format to include SCORE in its program schedule. SCORE consists of live and taped sports programming along with sports phone-in-shows.
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The Commission has received a complaint regarding the SCORE portion of the FNN service from The Sports Network (TSN), a Canadian specialty licensee, citing problems with the negotiation of program rights for live sporting events. The Commission has reviewed FNN's programming and has determined that the SCORE portion of FNN is competitive with the programming provided by TSN. Consequently, while FNN will be included in the lists of eligible satellite services attached as appendices to Public Notice CRTC 1987-261 dated 30 November 1987, entitled Distribution and Linkage Requirements, and will continue to be authorized for distribution by Canadian cable licensees, the SCORE portion will not be authorized for distribution.
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Accordingly, cable licensees currently distributing the FNN service are required to make the necessary arrangements in order to comply with the changes outlined in this notice, or remove FNN from their cable offerings.
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Fernand Bélisle
Secretary General
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