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The Canadian Press

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OTTAWA - The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled Shaw Cable has not been marketing its gay-and-lesbian television service nearly as well as do other cable systems.

The broadcast regulators says, as a result of being subjected to "undue disadvantage," OUTtv was not getting nearly the audience on Shaw that it was getting elsewhere.

The CRTC says that in December 2007, 0.49 per cent of Shaw subscribers watched the gay-and-lesbian channel, which has 500,000 subscribers across the country.

That compares to 18.11 per cent of TELUS subscribers during the same period, 15.69 per cent of Bell ExpressVu watchers, 9.27 per cent of Cogeco subscribers, seven per cent on Rogers systems and 6.61 per cent of Star Choice subscribers.

That's an average of 10.7 per cent of subscribers watching OUTtv on the five other services - or 21 times Shaw's rate.

No sanctions were announced; Shaw has 30 days to respond to the ruling with proposed fixes.

The CRTC says Shaw did not take steps to inform customers of the service, it grouped the service with adult programming even though it contains none, and it did not make the channel as available as it did others during so-called "freeviews."

"It is clear that Shaw currently markets OUTtv in a different manner than any of the other Category 1 services that it distributes," says the ruling.

Brad Danks, chief operating officer of OUTtv, says he's not happy with the costly and time-consuming complaint process, particularly since it includes no sanctions for the offending cable system.

"The expense and timing of this process is extraordinary," Danks said in an interview. "There is no financial incentive for them to move quickly on this."