Canada’s broadcasting regulator should give more flexibility to cable operators and television stations on advertising, Canadian content and channel packages, according to a report commissioned by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The study will feed into the federal regulator’s public consultations next year on speciality and pay channels and cable and satellites services.

Lawyers Laurence Dunbar and Christian Leblanc, the report’s authors, said the CRTC should foster more competition among speciality channels by scrapping 'genre protection' and licence distinctions, since many vie for the same viewers. Stations should be free to advertise as much as they want, and consumers should have more freedom to choose the channels they get from cable operators instead of tightly regulated packages, the report also said.`

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