CHUM, the famously independent Canadian media mini-group (including the original CHUM radio stations, MuchMusic, CityTV and other outlets that share the CHUM/City characteristic of veering between mainstream and mad) is (if approved by the CRTC, the regulatory agency) on its way to the Bell world, after a takeover bid that became public today.

It’s Bell Globemedia that’s making the bid. They are the people who currently own CTV (the largest private network), the Globe and Mail (the grand old national newspaper), and a whole rake of cable and satellite channels, and bits of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors (hockey and basketball respectively).

BG itself is owned mostly by Bell Canada Enterprises (what was once upon a time the Canadian bit of Bell as in Alex Graham) and also by the Thompsons (long-time newspaper business). Though this too is subject to change. BCE are planning to get out of BG (i.e. to concentrate on telephones, Internet and so on) and sell most of their stake to the Thompsons and to Torstar (the Toronto Star group, which includes some TV as well as the newspaper).

There’s a great chart from the regulator that gives you an idea of all the links. It’s funny even just with visual impact alone. For now, BG are swearing that they will keep separate newsrooms in areas where they now own separate TV stations (most major Canadian cities, by my reading of it) but this is still A Big Story. Goodbye CHUM - or hello angry regulators?

Slashdot with help from the CBC brings news of a much-anticipated decision from a (US) federal court in Colorado. Movie studios and directors went to battle with an unlikely enemy…companies who ‘clean up’ movies by taking out the (censored) and the (deleted) to make them suitable for family audiences. They won.

There’s a few thousand comments on the Internet about this already; about three of which are authored by people who have read the (as-yet-not-online) decision. So I’m going to hold off on proper comment for now. A thought, though, on reading the various websites and news articles on this decision. It is very confusing for free-media-free-speech advocates to talk about this case … it combines the evil power of the movie industry (or the artistic vision of the directors, bad words included) with the silliest of silly family-values types (or the right to remix).

More when the court gets around to updating its website or I get back into Lexis and find it there.