FYI - it's not just Bell. Rogers will be offering the same thing.

As a member of the Canadian television industry I have a different take on the CRTC regulations and actually applaud this "deal".

All HBO and Showtime content has been available on The Movie Network for years and so there was no reason to approve a seperate HBO channel that would be American owned and not produce Canadian content like TMN.

Without canadian content restrictions, not only would thousands of professionals like myself be out of a job, but millions and millions of dollars would be lost from the Canadian economy as all programing would be bought from abroad and nothing would be produced in the country.

The CRTC is not perfect, but it's NOT anti-competitive or anti-consumer!