Bell acquired CTV and all their assets a year ago for $1.3 billion with the goal of accelerating “video growth across all three screens – mobile, online and TV”. Soon after they rolled out the ability to watch BNN on mobile devices and now they’ve gone ahead with live broadcasts of Grey’s Anatomy, The Amazing Race, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Pan Am and Whitney. All this falls under a new property of Bell Media called “CTV MOBILE” and it’s currently only available to Bell and Virgin customers… no word yet on if it’s an exclusive partnership or when Rogers, Bell, TELUS or any of the new carriers customers will be able to watch the shows.
Update: We’ve been informed by Bell that “The package of content is available to all carriers”.
Bell has 300,000 Mobile TV subscribers and this feature of course comes at a price, $5/month for 5 hours of Mobile TV data on smartphones and “Superphones”, tablets are $5 more per month.
Bart Yabsley, EVP, Content Sales and Distribution, Bell Media said “With CTV MOBILE, Bell Media is ensuring that viewers get Canada’s most-watched television programming on every screen, whenever and wherever they want to watch.”
Source: BellMedia
