The Molson Companies filed a lawsuit Dec. 9 with the Federal Court of Appeal alleging that its contract to sell its 20% interest in CTV Sportsnet to Rogers Broadcasting became null and void when the crtc denied the Rogers application to do so.

‘We’re replying [to the court] that this is not correct,’ says Jan Innes, Rogers vp communications. ‘We certainly believe that the contract is in full force.’

Molson’s filing comes on top of CTV Sportsnet’s appeal to the court, filed earlier this month, which argues that the crtc erred in law and exceeded its jurisdiction when it ruled that Rogers could not increase its stake in CTV Sportsnet to 40% from 20%.

If Molson’s filing is successful, the brewery would be free to hold or sell its 20% stake in Sportsnet to other suitors. In the past, Liberty Media Corp. (a joint venture between cable giant tci and Fox Sports) expressed interest in upping its stake in the channel to the legal limit of 33%.

In other Rogers news, Rogers Cablesystems is raising its basic cable rates by 90 cents and hiking the monthly rate of its tier 1 package by $1.00 effective March 1, 1999.

The basic increase is due to the addition of two ctv specialty channels to Rogers Basic Cable Service : CTV News 1 and CTV Sportsnet. Rogers director of media relations Taanta Gupta says the increase is the maximum allowed by crtc regulations.

Rogers will receive four cents of the increase per subscriber while ctv will receive the remainder. This is Rogers’ first basic cable increase in two years.

The $1.00 increase for tier 1 is unregulated because ‘the customer has the option not to take it, whereas you have to explain any increase on basic,’ says Gupta.

In November, Rogers largest competitor Shaw Cablesystems gave notice of a basic cable rate increase to its subscribers that becomes effective January 15, 1999. Shaw also increased rates in January 1998.