Viewers Choice was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program ...

(PPV) and near video on demand service. It was owned by Viewers Choice Canada Inc., which at the time of its closure was majority-owned and managed by

Bell Media Bell Media Inc. (Canadian French, French: ) is a Canadian media conglomerate that is the mass media subsidiary of BCE Inc. (also known as Bell Canada Enterprises, the owner of telecommunications company Bell Canada). Its operations include nati ...

, with minority partners Rogers Media and ESPN Inc., and had been carried by various

cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...

and

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

service providers, primarily in Eastern Canada. Launched in September 1991, Viewers Choice was the first pay-per-view service permitted to operate in Eastern Canada (a counterpart in Western Canada also used the Viewers Choice brand name for several years), and was the sole English-language PPV provider in that region until 1999. However, it shut down on September 30, 2014, as the service's two main owners at the time, Bell and Rogers, had each gained full ownership of a competing general-interest PPV service ( Vu! and Sportsnet PPV respectively). Viewers Choice said it would be working with its remaining partner service providers to transition to other pay-per-view services.

Overview

The Viewers Choice pay-per-view service consisted of 45 standard-definition channels and two high-definition channels. Programming included movies, concerts, live

combat sport A combat sport, or fighting sport, is a contact sport that usually involves one-on-one combat. In many combat sports, a contestant wins by scoring more points than the opponent, submitting the opponent with a hold, disabling the opponent (''knock ...

events such as

boxing Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...

and

mixed martial arts Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a full-contact fighting combat sport, sport based on strike (attack), striking and grappling; incorporating techniques from various combat sports from around the world. In the early 20th century, various inter-s ...

( UFC), and live

professional wrestling Professional wrestling, often shortened to either pro wrestling or wrestling,The term "wrestling" is most often widely used to specifically refer to modern scripted professional wrestling, though it is also used to refer to Real life, real- ...

events ( WWE, WCW, ECW, and TNA). Pornographic content was also available through the ''Adam'' and ''Eden'' services. ''Adam'' featured content for homosexual men, while ''Eden'' featured content of interest to heterosexual men. Although Viewers Choice (and pay-per-view services in general) continued to be a main provider of big-ticket live events, much of their movie content had been duplicated by

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films Digital distribution, digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typica ...

(VOD) services operated by cable and

companies (and as noted below, Viewers Choice was not available on any Canadian satellite provider, from late 2007 to its closure in 2014). As a result, many cable systems had been slowly reducing the number of pay-per-view channels carried. In an effort to compete with VOD, Viewers Choice launched "All Day Ticket," which allowed customers to purchase a movie for up to a 24-hour time period until 6:00 AM (local time) the next day, and view the movie as many times as they wished until the time period expired.

History

Launch as monopoly provider

In March 1991, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) granted a broadcasting licence to Viewer's Choice Canada to operate a regional pay-per-view service serving Eastern Canada (

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Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, and the Atlantic provinces). Viewer's Choice Canada was a partnership between Astral Communications with 50.1%, Rogers Pay Per View Inc. (a subsidiary of what is now called Rogers Media) with 24.95%, and TSN Enterprises (part of what is now known as CTV Specialty Television Inc.) with 24.95%. The service launched on September 5, 1991 using the "Viewer's Choice" name on-air. For its first year and a half, it used the same graphics and logos as the Viewer's Choice service in the United States (now In Demand). In early 1993, Viewer's Choice introduced its own logo and on-screen CGI idents, which were used until April 2004. The old logo was 3 triangles with a rectangle with the words "VIEWER'S CHOICE". The name was later simplified to "Viewers Choice" without an

apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...

, and changed its logo to a more common logo with a new logo with 3 black rectangles with the banners. The upper has the word "VIEWERS", and the lower has the word "CHOICE". Originally, Viewer's Choice was the

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek and ) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic Competition (economics), competition to produce ...

provider of pay-per-view service in Eastern Canada, while Western International Communications (WIC) was granted a similar monopoly for its Home Theatre service in

Western Canada Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West, or Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a list of regions of Canada, Canadian region that includes the four western provinces and t ...

, mirroring the regions held by Astral and WIC for

pay television Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to Subscription business model, subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichan ...

service (

The Movie Network Crave (formerly The Movie Network or TMN) is a Television in Canada, Canadian premium television network and Streaming service provider, streaming service owned by the Bell Media subsidiary of BCE Inc. Launched in 1983 as the national service ...

and Superchannel, respectively). However, from 1993 until 2007, Home Theatre operated under the Viewers Choice name and used the same satellite feeds.

Entering competition

Viewers Choice's monopoly on pay-per-view service in Eastern Canada ended in 1999, when Bell ExpressVu (now

Bell Satellite TV Bell Satellite TV (; formerly known as Bell ExpressVu, Dish Network Canada and ExpressVu Dish Network and not to be confused with Bell's IPTV Bell Fibe TV, Fibe TV service) is the division of BCE Inc. that provides satellite television service a ...

) was permitted to launch its own PPV service, Vu!, dropping Viewers Choice in the process. Shortly thereafter, Vu! also began offering pay-per-view service to other service providers, meaning that Viewers Choice was now competing with Vu! for the right to supply cable providers, though on any given service provider only one of these services would be made available to customers.

Shaw Communications Shaw Communications Inc. was a Telecommunications in Canada, Canadian telecommunication, telecommunications company which provided telephone, Internet, television, and mobile services. The company was founded in 1966 as Capital Cable Televisio ...

purchased Home Theatre (the service branded as "Viewers Choice" in Western Canada) in 2001. By 2006, it was able to switch its licence to a national one; the transition was completed on December 27, 2007, when Shaw Broadcast Services replaced the Viewers Choice-originated feeds with a "PPV"-branded service. This displaced Viewers Choice from Shaw, Star Choice (now

Shaw Direct Shaw Direct G.P. is a direct broadcast satellite television distributor in Canada and a subsidiary of the telecommunications company Rogers Communications. As of 2010, Shaw Direct had over 900,000 subscribers. It broadcasts on Ku band from two ...

), and any other system receiving its pay-per-view feeds via Shaw Broadcast. As a result of this change, and since the only other satellite distributor (Bell TV) was already offering Vu! instead, carriage of Viewers Choice was restricted to cable systems and other providers able to receive the feeds via terrestrial fibre. Viewers Choice Canada Inc. was originally the largest shareholder and managing partner (40%) in the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

pay-per-view service Canal Indigo, launched in 1997. However, on March 20, 2008, Groupe TVA announced it would be purchasing the remaining shares in the service from all other shareholders, including Viewers Choice Canada Inc. The CRTC approved the sale later that year. On March 6, 2012, the CRTC approved Viewers Choice's request to remove its regional restrictions and allow it to broadcast nationally.

Acquisition by Bell and shutdown

Following Bell Media's 2013 acquisition of Astral, it took control of Viewers Choice, owning a net interest of approximately 70% in the service (through the 50.1% previously owned by Astral, and through 80% ownership of CTV Specialty, which itself owns 24.95% of Viewers Choice). Bell simultaneously maintained full ownership of competing provider Vu!. In July 2014, industry news website Cartt.ca reported that Bell Media was notifying cable providers that Viewers Choice would be shutting down on September 30, 2014. The notices were issued just after the CRTC renewed the licences for various PPV services, including Sportsnet PPV, a service wholly owned by Rogers (and carried by both Rogers and Cogeco alongside Viewers Choice) which was previously restricted to sports and special events. Under the renewed licences, all PPV providers would be subject to standard conditions of licence permitting a full range of PPV programming including movies, implying that Rogers could use the Sportsnet PPV licence to take full control of the pay-per-view lineup and corresponding revenues on its cable systems, much as Bell and Shaw have already done. In a later press statement confirming the decision, Bell stated that " e two co-owners of VCC, Bell and Rogers, both have their own pay-per-view services and thus feel there is no need to keep the service operating as a standalone entity", but will work with service providers to ensure a smooth transition to another PPV service. The Viewers Choice channels left the air between 10:00pm and 12:00 midnight EDT on the evening of September 30, 2014. The final programs scheduled for the various channels included replays of the previous weekend's UFC 178 event; movies, including '' Winter's Tale'', '' 300: Rise of an Empire'', '' The Quiet Ones'', '' The Grand Seduction'', and '' The Other Woman''; and various adult programs. The service's barker channel continued to air previews up until midnight EDT, at which point it began to air a loop of an animated Viewers Choice bumper until eventually shutting down entirely. On December 27, 2014, the channel's license was revoked, 2 months after the channel went off the air. On that day, the Viewers Choice website was also shutdown, and was replaced with a shutdown message saying "Please note the Viewers Choice Pay Per View is no longer in service. Viewers seeking

(PPV) options in Canada should contract their television provider. Thank you for using Viewers Choice Canada!". The shutdown message was used until the website was completely shut down sometime around June 2015.

References

External links

Viewers Choice
(from Internet Archive Wayback Machine) {{Canadian premium television services (PPV) Pay-per-view television networks in Canada Former Bell Media networks Defunct specialty television channels in Canada Rogers Communications Television channels and stations established in 1991 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2014 English-language television stations in Canada 1991 establishments in Canada 2014 disestablishments in Canada