OTTAWA — The federal Competition Bureau has greenlit CTVglobemedia’s takeover of CHUM, saying on Friday that it found no legal grounds to challenge the $1.4-billion buyout following consultations with industry players, including advertisers, other broadcasters and producers.

The ruling removes the second-to-last hurdle in the CTV parent’s acquisition of CHUM, leaving only the CRTC, which last week announced it will hold public hearings on the matter beginning April 30.

The bureau says the buyout did not meet the test of the law required for a challenge.

‘Although there were concerns — that were not insignificant — from advertisers, ad agencies and other players — we did not believe that there would be a substantial lessening of competition,’ as a result of the merger, says Robert Lancop, assistant deputy commissioner of mergers at the federal watchdog.

He notes that CHUM’s flagship Citytv Toronto has no top 20 programs, and that competition for the highest-ranked programming, mostly purchased from the U.S., is between CTV and Global Television. CHUM’s competition includes the CBC, Global’s CH stations and specialty TV channels.

‘Essentially what we have is an industry that is a duopoly — CTV versus Global — with a competitive fringe’ of second-tier broadcasters, Lancop tells Playback Daily.

The approval reduces the chance that CGM will be forced to drop stations in markets where CTV’s reach overlaps with that of CHUM. The CRTC could impose station drops on the deal, but could also call for softer safeguards, such as requiring stations to keep separate newsrooms.

CGM had no further comments, other than a brief release issued on Friday noting that the bureau had given the merger its approval after ‘a diligent and thorough review of the [broadcast] industry.’

But Ian Morrison, spokesperson for the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, says the bureau’s test didn’t consider important matters such as diversity of voices in local broadcasting. For that reason, he says the CRTC hearings will be what count.

In its notice for the April 30 public hearing, the commission says it is prepared to reconsider its current policy that generally permits ownership of no more than one over-the-air television station in one language in a given market.

‘In light of this proposed transaction, the commission considers that this is the appropriate time to seek public comment on the effectiveness of the current policy,’ the notice reads.

The CRTC says that it would also review its approach to the $103.5-million TV benefits package associated with the merger — suggesting that it may be more beneficial to the industry to invest the monies in capital funds to provide ongoing funding to Canadian programming, rather than to pay it out in increments over seven years. The former approach was also taken in the ownership transfers involving Maclean Hunter.

The CRTC process will be overseen by new CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, who headed the Competition Bureau from 1997 to 2003. The deadline for written submissions to the process is April 5.