Videotron has followed through on its plans to remove Bell Media’s Vrak and Z specialty channels from its cable service, and Bell has responded by dropping TVA’s Yoopa from its own TV services.

On Wednesday, Vrak and Z were no longer on Videotron’s channel grid. By Thursday, Yoopa was no longer available for Bell TV subscribers.

Vrak is a French-language specialty channel focused on teens and young adults. Z is a French-language channel focused on science fiction, fantasy and technology. Yoopa is TVA’s channel focused on programming for kids between the ages of 2 and 11.

In August 2022, Bell Media filed a complaint against Videotron with the CRTC after learning of plans to stop carrying Vrak and Z, saying it unfairly disadvantaged the company while giving Videotron parent company TVA an undue advantage by continuing to carry its own discretionary channels. The CRTC dismissed the complaint in February.

Videotron had continued to carry Vrak and Z, as Bell Media’s complaint triggered a standstill rule, which states that a television service provider must continue to distribute channels that are the subject of a carriage dispute; following the CRTC’s decision, the standstill rule was no longer in effect.

During proceeding with the CRTC, Videotron cited declining subscribers, shrinking audiences and lower market value as its reasons for dropping the stations. Bell shared similar reasons for dropping Yoopa.

Videotron had approximately 1.4 million television subscribers at the end of 2022. Bell does not break out its TV subscribers by region, but in its second quarter financial results, the company reported 2.7 million retail TV subscribers.